Bright Evening Star

by Madeleine L'engle

  Words which hurt.

  After the service a woman came to me and took my hands. “You were so kind to me last week. You put your arm around me and let me cry.”

  Words of healing.

  Sometimes we are aware of the effect our words may have. Sometimes we are not. On our trip along the narrow Scottish roads, Luci and Bara and I found it easy to use the words of healing, opening ourselves to each other, knowing instinctively that we would not be misunderstood. We shared joys and griefs. We gave and received words of healing.

  When I was starting to write A Swiftly Tilting Planet, I had the plot pretty well established in my mind, but I wasn’t sure how to get into it or how to structure it. While I was struggling with this, I opened the day’s mail and there, from a friend who was in Scotland visiting Iona, was a card with the words of “Patrick’s Rune,” the rune which was to be the backbone of my plot.

  In this fateful hour

  I place all Heaven with its power

  and the sun with its brightness

  and the snow with its whiteness

  and the fire with all the strength it hath

  and the lightning with its rapid wrath

  and the winds with their swiftness along their path

  and the sea with its deepness

  and the rocks with their steepness

  and the earth with its starkness

  all these I place by God’s almighty help and grace

  between myself and the powers of darkness.

  So there was the structure of my novel, come to me in the mail. I thought of those words often as we drove across countryside where runes and blessings and mysteries were still part of the air we breathed.

  Spontaneously we were opening ourselves to the holy.

  The way to Iona, our first major stop, led across the long, dark island of Mull. Why do I call it dark? It was a grey day, not quite rainy, not quite foggy, but with low clouds, making it seem later than it was. The road was the narrowest yet, a single-lane road so narrow that two cars coming from different directions could not pass each other, so every few yards there was a pull-over, a half-moon of space so that one car could pull over and the other pass. We drove along, all three of us feeling a peaceful quiet, where we could relax and enjoy our adventure and the stark beauty of the land around us without needing to talk.

  After a while we realized that there was a tourist bus on our heels, tailgating us rather unpleasantly. Pushing. Obviously wanting to get by. We were going at what was a reasonable speed for that road, and there was another car in front of us. It was Luci’s turn to drive, and when she saw a pull-over to the right she turned off the road so that the bus driver could get by. In an instant he had slammed into the car in front of us, with a great shattering of the rear window, but amazingly little damage. It should have been a bad accident, but other than broken glass the car in front of us seemed unharmed.

  Doors were flung open. Suddenly the bus driver’s dark and angry face was thrust in Luci’s window and he was shouting at her, blaming her for the accident, telling her that she should have taken a left-hand pull-over, not a right-hand one. On that tiny road it seemed that any pull-over which would allow another vehicle to get by was the one to take. But the bus driver kept up his angry accusations. We realized that in his rage the bus driver was willing to blame anyone and everyone but himself, and the fact that our car was not part of the accident seemed to increase his fury. His face was black with rage.

  “It’s your fault, my girl. You caused it.”

  Barbara, the diplomat, got out and began talking with the passengers on the bus. They were a group from the States en route to Iona, and Barbara actually knew several of them. They were very willing to say that the bus driver had been going too fast, that he had already driven a cyclist off the road, that he had been tailgating our little car. They were willing to sign a statement that he had been driving recklessly and unsafely.

  The tour group said that they had hardly felt the bump of the accident. It was very strange. What should have been a terrible accident, involving our car, which was not touched, turned out to be amazingly minor.

  I was feeling very shaken, but not physically. Before I had left for this trip I had had an uncomfortable sense of foreboding. I do not have these dark feelings often, and I have learned that they are not to be taken lightly, nor can I try to avoid them. I do not think they are what is called prevision. They are not forecasting a predetermined future. When I had this same sense of foreboding when my husband and I were in China, the cancer that was to kill Hugh was already in his body. I was not concerned about something that was not there or that had not already happened. I am not sure what I was picking up on before leaving home. Certainly there is evil in the world, and traveling in a strange country opens us up to unexpected dangers. I had not told my traveling companions my concerns; talking about them would have served no good purpose and might even have opened more darkness.

  We sat there in our car and waited for a replacement tourist bus, for the angry bus driver had damaged his own bus; oil was leaking onto the road. People chatted, Barbara soothed, but there was no soothing the bus driver who wanted the world to know that the accident was our fault, not his. His rage was like an ugly rain falling on us all.

  When the new bus came, we said good-bye to the people whose window had been smashed, and they set off to find a garage. The bus rumbled down the road, Luci started our car, and we finally took off once more. In a low voice I said that I felt that we had been spared from a fearful danger by some wonderful grace, and neither Luci nor Bara laughed at me. They agreed that there was something very strange about the accident, that it should have been far worse than it was, and that our car should have been involved.

  And the sense of foreboding left me.

  It did not return. On that narrow road in Mull we had been at a crosspoint of darkness and light, and the angels of light were there. That is not an explanation, but it is what I felt.

  As we drove toward the end of the island we tried to pray for the bus driver, our words fumbling but earnest. We did not want to pick up on the anger of the bus driver and let it get into us, which would have been very easy. We tried to pray for a light of love which would take away from his dark. He was, we agreed, trapped in some kind of evil, and we asked God to free him. And us.

  We got to the end of Mull and parked the car and took out our bags for the ferry trip to Iona. It was good to be on the water, to feel the fresh sea breeze.

  Once we landed we had a struggle to get our bags up the hill. We piled them into a waiting wheelbarrow, but it did not move easily and the way was steep. Finally we were helped by a kindly Scotsman and got to our hotel where we had simple, cell-like rooms which were full of peace and quiet.

  In the long twilight we wandered around, and finally sat on the low, remaining walls of a ruined convent to say our Evening Prayers. We were not sure exactly in which century the convent had been burned, the nuns raped, everything demolished. This horror had not been done by some alien enemy invader, but by other Christians. It was horrifying to us that whoever was in power, Protestant or Catholic, felt that the demand to kill, literally murder, the other, was the will of God. We’re still doing it, though perhaps in different ways.

  This convent was so ancient that all feelings of horror were dissipated by the healing of time, replaced by a sense of acceptance and peace and God’s healing. We said our night prayers and talked a little more about the afternoon’s accident, again saying that we had been spared by a generous grace that transformed anger into compassion.

  Jesus never stayed in anger, but moved into a tender compassion for those who wronged him. As he grew in years from childhood to maturity, from the bright twelve-year-old who awed the elders in the temple to the mature young man who returned to give his message of love, his understanding grew, too. His vis
ion moved from one of exclusivity to one of inclusivity. What would he have thought of those who raped and murdered the nuns in this old convent in his name? The Christians who murdered Orthodox Christians? Not long ago I heard a very loving woman refer to someone as not being Christian, and then draw in her breath to stop herself; it was old Protestant training resurfacing. The person she was referring to was Catholic.

  Jesus refused to wipe out. Even for the Romans, the enemy, the conqueror, he showed no hate. He did not hate those who were not Jewish, and when his own people turned against him, he did not hate them, he forgave them. Oh, yes, on occasion his temper flared. He let the scribes and Pharisees know what he thought of them. But the anger never stayed. Compassion did.

  When that bus driver was pouring blame on Luci, surely he felt self-righteous. Wasn’t he, in his accusations, participating in terrorism? Why do we need to feel virtuous? When I feel self-righteous, am I in the mode that can produce terrorism? Perhaps we have more compassion, more objectivity, in story, than when we think we have the facts.

  Jesus was surprised that the church authorities felt outraged when he healed on the Sabbath, so outraged that they wanted to kill him. Surely their anger toward him was similar to the anger of the bus driver, whose face was so stormy it looked like a tornado. And didn’t Jesus expect the elders who had been so impressed with him when he was twelve to listen to him with understanding now that he was a man? Surely their rabid anger was baffling to him.

  When he told his first stories, didn’t he expect them to be understood?

  It was only after his parables met with resentment and rejection that he began to address them pointedly to those whose anger was as irrational as that of the bus driver.

  Early in his ministry he told those who had come to hear his words, “You have heard it said, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, but I say to you that you shall not resist evil. But if someone smites you on the right cheek, turn your other cheek, too.” Gentle, if unexpected advice.

  Yet later on he said, “Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, for you devour widows’ houses, and for a pretense make long prayer; therefore you shall receive the greater damnation.” And their anger towards him was as self-centered and ugly as the bus driver’s. It is an irrational anger that has not changed in kind since the people screamed, “Crucify him! Crucify him!”

  In Iona we moved intentionally out of the noise of hostility into the quiet of compassion as though we were recovering from a severe illness. In the morning after breakfast we took a buggy ride in a cart drawn by a horse named Humphrey. How could a horse named Humphrey not be holy? Clopping along through the stark beauty of the island chosen by Columba (Columcille) because from its summit he could no longer see Ireland, from which he had been expelled, we felt the holiness he had brought to Scotland, to this island. We felt his awareness that everything is holy because everything is of God.

  In the afternoon Luci and Bara took a walk across the island. I did not go with them because my knee was painful, and so was my foot which was swelling hotly and hurting more each day. I would have slowed them down with my limping along, so I sat on a stone wall overlooking the water and wrote.

  This land is holy

  the sheep and the lambs

  the abbeys destroyed

  in the name of God

  the remains of stone huts

  for God-seeking hermits

  the prayers of the nuns

  still lingering like fog

  despite rape and the fire

  the sound of their voices

  singing the praises

  of God and the morning

  the water for washing

  the pots for the porridge

  the fisherman’s nets

  and the sunset through raindrops

  When we weren’t looking

  holiness broke through

  bright as a rainbow

  I sat on the wall, bathed in peace, listening to the quiet sound of the water. Tourist ferries came and went but did not break my solitude. There was no room for impatience or darkness of heart. Oh, Jesus, my Companion, my Guide upon the way, my bright evening Star.

  The day after leaving Iona we drove to Lindesfarne, the three of us quiet as we traveled, thinking about what had happened, what had nearly happened, trying to see it as Jesus would have seen it. Being with two women whose faith was deep and strong helped me not only to strengthen but to articulate my own still-emerging faith. I knew that Jesus would have seen through the bus driver’s hate to the brokenness that caused him to capitulate to the darkness within him. I knew that Jesus still sees through the horror to the unhealed wound that causes acts of terrorism.

  What inchoate darkness was behind the torching of churches in the spring and early summer of 1996, churches attended largely by black people? This kind of racial hatred is incomprehensible. Do the arsonists think they are pleasing Jesus? Or are they simply sick people who cannot resist fire? Are they people who hate and fear those who are different? Do they actually think they are doing God’s will? Hate has erased all the normal barriers. The burning of a church of any denomination is always suspicious (far too frequently arson) and cuts across religion and race. But this spate of one church after another breaks all statistics of hate and screams out the ghastly loss of the sacred. The powers of darkness seem to be closing in on holiness.

  And yet how different is this from the raping of the nuns and the burning of the convent on Iona?

  When I was a child, a church or synagogue used to be safe from vandalism. The sign of the cross was a protection against evil. Silver vessels and candlesticks used to be safe from thievery. What is happening to our places of sanctuary? Hate is like cancer, separate from the normal cells, devouring and not being nourished, annihilating itself along with everything it attacks. Hate is contagious. We asked ourselves how immune we were.

  I told Bara and Luci of an evening newscast where it was suggested that what the world needed was not more prisons, but more churches. It was a strange and wonderful thing to hear on TV but, we asked, are the churches up to the challenge? The need is desperate. We must let go our rigidities and open up to the wonder that God so freely offers.

  Luci, Bara, and I are all Episcopalian, but Luci grew up with the Plymouth Brethren and Bara grew up in the Catholic church. Many barriers seem to be falling away as our planet gets smaller and we learn more about what is happening in far-flung parts of the world. Certainly there were no barriers between us as we traveled and talked and prayed. We didn’t have to understand every aspect of our faith in exactly the same way. It was enough that we knew that the Incarnation is God’s amazing gift of love and we cannot explain it. When we try to explain it we lose it, as I discovered in my middle, rational years. I do not understand the Incarnation. I rejoice in it.

  Lack of provable facts no longer bothers me. Theologians and philosophers and biographers have been arguing for two thousand years. From the Gospels we have a good idea of what kind of person Jesus was, and the Jesus who comes to me in the Gospels is far more exciting than the Jesus of many Sunday schools and sermons.

  In a recent batch of mail I had a troubled letter from a young woman who believed that the Gospels indicate that Jesus totally denied the senses. What?

  Read them again, I suggested. Listen to Jesus. He remarked that John fasted and wore camel’s hair, and that he, conversely, was accused of being a glutton and a wine bibber. We know that he enjoyed eating with friends, relaxing at the end of the day. He healed the bodies and souls of ill and troubled people, and that’s a pretty sensory thing to do. He had close friends, female as well as male. His first miracle was turning water into wine at a wedding feast, and he referred to himself as the groom, coming for the bride. He agonized at the thought of going to the cross, and begged that he might be spared this terrible cup.

  No,
I don’t think Jesus denied the senses and their proper and legitimate uses. He was angered at the abuse of the senses, but that’s a very different thing.

  Now that I think of it, being born was pretty sensory. Was Jesus flesh and blood, as some of the early heresies denied, or was he energy only pretending to be flesh and blood? He was born a good Jewish baby, circumcised, brought up according to Jewish law. How on earth did anti-Semitism creep into Christianity when our God was born as an Orthodox Jew?

  One of the books I remember from my freshman year in college is Henry Adams’s Mont St. Michel and Chartres. After all these years the one thing that remains vivid in my mind is that the ordinary people in the Middle Ages living lives of great struggle turned to Mary for comfort. Jesus had become so divinized by the church that he no longer seemed in touch with everyday problems. But Mary was not aloof, was a woman like other women, bearing babies as all babies are borne, in pain and hope.

  I have never understood the fear some Protestants have had of the honoring of Mary. Why was she such a threat? Is it largely because a patriarchal society sees women as unimportant and unworthy? Did they want Jesus to spring, like Athena, from his Father’s brow? Was the Incarnation too much for the reasonable male mind? Did giving Mary importance seem to take away from the uniqueness of Jesus?

  One of the blessings of growing old is that I have finally moved past Thomas with his insistence on seeing the wounds to knowing that the wounds are there, for me, in me, in you. Perhaps it takes moving through a good deal of chronology to know how thin the world of facts is, how rich the unprovable love which made it all. What I believe in lies in the realm of love, not fact.

  I was much more concerned with facts when I was forty than I am now.

  Is the fear of Mary fear of Jesus’ humanness, fear of the dual nature? Do we want to divinize him so that his divinity makes it impossible for us to follow in his footsteps, in his compassion, forgiveness, laughter? Is there something in us that wants a more unapproachable God? Or is it, yet, again, denigration of women? Women in Jesus’ day were less than second-class citizens. Does love of his human mother elevate women to the position in which Jesus held them? Is the fear of Mary simply an aspect of the fear of women?