BitterSweetLife

I just finished George MacDonald’s Phantastes; seldom has a book been better timed. As C.S. Lewis wrote, this story has “a certain quality of Death, good Death.” One gains the sense that to lose, to fall by the way, even to die—in all its range of meanings—may be in the end The Way. Because of Christ, loss is not always what it seems. An air of the unattainable runs keenly through this story. Beauties brushed, never clasped, miracles glimpsed, but not evoked—not yet. A heart’s-weight of sorrow is accrued in a careless instant; moments pace by, the heart grows grayer and wiser, and in the end more joyful. To get, to hold, to possess, in our terms, could be to miss the way, to remain in a dusty turn-off while the road winds on, further and further, and I am left behind.

Sad is the man who fumbles for joy in an empty castle while Life outruns him. We should shed tears, thread the next entry, and walk on. Ahead lies deep good, undimmed and as yet inexpressible, no matter years or loss or pain. Christ defies appearances. As MacDonald ends his book, “Yet I know that good is coming to me—that good is always coming; though few have at all times the simplicity and the courage to believe it. What we call evil is only the best shape, which, for the person and his condition at the time, could be assumed by the best good. And so, Farewell.”