The Rock That Is Higher

by Madeleine L'engle

  But we must accept our marvelous complexity before we can understand this. Fairy tales speak in a language which does not need to be translated for us by specialists, a language easily understood by children, if only we are open to it and are not afraid of reality. For fairy tales speak of the real world, the world beyond plastic credit cards and traffic jams and word processors that suddenly gobble up half a chapter of what we are writing.

  If we open ourselves to story, to fairy tale, fantasy, myth, novel, we cannot help being aware of the ultimate unexplainableness of the deepest depths. We know we are on a quest, but we do not know the entire nature of the quest, nor where it is going to take us.

  The great Sufi master Nasrudin went into a small store and said to the shopkeeper, “Have you ever seen me before?” “No, never,” the shopkeeper replied. “Then how do you know it’s me?” the Sufi master demanded.

  We start the Quest, uncertain of who we are, and where we are going. For many of us, we start our quest unknowingly, in our cradles, at the time of our baptism. I am grateful for my infant baptism, because I know that it was entirely a gift. I didn’t ask for it. I did nothing to earn it. I was given my name and the gift of my direction. We are headed towards the coming of the kingdom, and what we do or do not do will hasten or delay that day.

  That is a staggering responsibility, and we dare to continue along the path only because God calls us by name, and bids us come. And I cannot be healed or made whole or holy unless God calls and keeps calling me by name, and unless I hear and heed the call.

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  Once there was a man who was a Namer. That is what he was called by God, to be, and to do. Out of the earth, in the days of the beginnings, the Lord God formed every beast of the field and every fowl of the air and brought them to Adam to see what he would name them: and whatever Adam called every living creature, that was its name.

  Adam’s vocation as a son was to be a Namer; that was how he was to co-create with the Maker of the Universe. If you name somebody or something, you discover that the act of Naming is very closely connected with the act of loving, and hating is involved with unNaming—taking a person’s name away, causing anyone to be an anonymous digit, annihilating the spirit.

  When we are unNamed, we are broken; all around us we see fragmented, mutilated people. And the world offers little help for healing, for knitting up the “raveled sleeve of care.”

  That is why it is important for us to take time for prayer, for being with our Amma/Abba who loves us, all of us. That is why it is important to take Paul’s exhortation to pray at all times with the utmost seriousness.

  The prayer of the heart is a short petition from Scripture which includes the name of Jesus and which becomes part of the rhythm of our heartbeat and of our breathing. It is sad that this prayer of Jesus has become suspect among some Christians. I think that much of the fear comes because even in the church we have accepted the safe world of the elder brother, rather than the dangerous world of the Quest of the younger son and the true princess. We have been taught that we must be in control of ourselves and our lives, and it is difficult for us to let ourselves go, to put our entire lives with absolute faith in a Master of the Universe whom we cannot in any way control.

  And indeed the prayer of the heart is nothing to be taken lightly or dabbled in. Like anything else worthwhile, it is fraught with danger and risk. It is an offering of love, and when we love we are vulnerable. And the temptation is to run away. When I held on to the words, “Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me,” after the truck smashed the little car I was in, I knew myself to be totally dependent on God’s mercy.

  We say the “Our Father” prayer so frequently that we forget that it begins with Our Father, which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name, and in hallowing the name of God we also Name ourselves.

  The psalmist affirms that God calls all the stars by name, all of the stars in all of the galaxies. And God calls us by name, each one of us, and sometimes—no, often—el calls at night, when the elder brothers let loose their attempts at control, and we are most free to listen and hear.

  Does it matter that your name is Tom or Eliza or Donald or Jane? A friend said to me, “When God calls me by name, I’m sure it isn’t George.” Perhaps not. But when God called young Samuel it was not by a strange or unknown name. Perhaps el didn’t use the name, Samuel, but what Samuel heard was “Samuel!” And he answered, “Here I am.”

  God called Isaiah by his own, earthly, human name. I’ll venture a guess that when God speaks our name it might just as well be a new name. But it was recognizable, and the men and women of the Bible didn’t sit around waiting for some esoteric, secret name to be revealed to them. They heard their own names, and they answered to them: “Here I am, Lord. Send me.”

  When Adam and Eve refused responsibility for their own actions (“The woman made me.” “The snake made me.”), they stopped being younger sons. It is the elder brother, not the younger son, who tries to dump the blame on somebody else. It was the Second Adam who took up the story that the first Adam could not finish.

  The Second Adam, Jesus—a name of great power. When you give someone your name, you give that person power over you, and we’ve forgotten this. We jump too lightly into first names—on television talk shows, for instance—without thinking.

  Our names are more than we know, just as we are more than we know. Jesus said, “I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes” (KJV).

  And Scripture tells us,

  For ye see your calling, brethren, how that not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called: But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty. (KJV)

  Those are the words which the guardian angel, Mrs. Who, quoted for Meg Murry, and I find that being able to accept myself as foolish and weak is very comforting, for if I can recover some of the openness of my child self, which is still within me, then perhaps I can understand, even if just a little, what it is to be killed to the world and Named forever in the kingdom.

  The storyteller must open the listening ear vulnerably, willing to be condemned as foolish and weak, for of course the world looks down on the foolish and the weak.

  So do we look to the world and its shallow expectations, or the incredible demands of God? Paul of Tarsus asked God three times to take his affliction from him—and if I know Paul, it was probably thirty and three—and God replied calmly, “No, Paul. My strength shows best in your weakness.”

  In story, isn’t it usually the weak one, the foolish one, who ends up doing what the worldly and strong people fail to do?

  The world looks down on the weak and glorifies the strong. It ignores our wholeness. The result of this is that we have become fragmented, broken creatures. The vocation of the storyteller is not to worry about the expectations of the world, but to bear the pain of redemption.

  Redemption is indeed often painful. It was for King David. Almost everything had to be taken away from him—wives, children, friends, kingdom—before he was stripped of pride and vanity and self-indulgence and became truly royal. In his old age he moved from the role of the younger son and into that of the wise king who rules over his kingdom with humility, prudence, and power.

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  Indeed, we are the youngest son, all of us, male and female.

  The younger son (and of course Cinderella is a younger son, and so is Snow White, and so is Sara Crewe, and so is Meg Murry) succeeds in the quest where the powerful elder brothers fail. The younger son realizes, if only intuitively, that the Quest is a cosmic one, involving the healing of the whole creation which has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time
. Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies.

  The mystics throughout the ages have known that meditation involves letting the mind expand. Theologian William Johnston writes of “a loss of self, and entrance into altered states of consciousness, a thrust into dimensions beyond time and space, in such wise that not only man’s spirit but his very psyche and body become somehow cosmic.” Just as the great suffering of the mystic is his sense of separation from his end, which is the resurrection, so the great suffering of the universe is separation from the end towards which it is straining and striving.

  The mystic, who is always a younger son, knows that we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against the hierarchies, the establishments, the authorities, against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.

  It is not an easy quest we are sent on, and it is fraught with dangers. How dare we set out on it? We dare only if we know that power, and high IQs, and moral rectitude are not really what we need, for God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong.

  When St. Paul was busy persecuting the Christians, when he cheered the stoning of Stephen, he was indeed an elder brother. But the elder brother, like Paul, can be changed. My son-in-law, Alan Jones, contrasts metanoia, conversion, repentance, with paranoia. Before his conversion on the Damascus Road, Paul, the elder brother, might be described as being in a state of paranoia, out of his right mind. And after his conversion from the elder brother to the younger son, he was in a state of metanoia. He was completely turned around and, as younger son, was in his right mind.

  Contrition, penitence, turning again, are part of becoming who we are, of becoming Named. This contrition doesn’t mean wallowing masochistically over the depth of our sin or beating our breasts in order to be “sinfuller” than thou. It does mean a willingness to be turned, to allow God to turn us so that we may be healed.

  We are broken creatures, and yet this is not in itself a ter-rible thing. Refusing to admit it is what is terrible. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit. A broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise, sang King David in Psalm 51. The younger son is usually considered by the older siblings to be so stupid that they feel he’s a drag on them as they set off on the Quest, so they leave him alone in the darkest part of the forest, in order to get on with the business of the world. They expect to succeed and to succeed through their own power and control. And they are not generous. Many of Jesus’ stories point this out. When the Prodigal Son returns, the elder brother is not pleased. He goes out and sulks because he does not want his father to give a party for this kid who has made such a mess of his life. The elder brothers in the parable of the workers in the vineyard are furious at the vineyard owner for paying those who worked for only an hour at the end of the day the same wages as the good elder brothers who worked all day in the heat of the sun. The elder brothers all scream for justice, fairness. And there is something in most of us that agrees. It isn’t fair! we cry out. And it isn’t. But God is not a God of fairness, but of Love.

  Sometimes younger brothers forfeit their status as younger sons, as Adam and Eve did, and that is always tragedy.

  The second Adam did not. The Father said, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased. Listen to him!” And if we listen, what we hear is that the glory is always God’s, and we are bathed in it—burned in its purifying fire—and with angels and archangels and all the company of heaven we laud and magnify his Holy Name, evermore praising him and saying, “Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of hosts. Heaven and earth are full of thy glory. Glory be to thee, O Lord most High.” Amen.

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  One of my favorite biblical fairy stories is that of Tobias and the angel in the Book of Tobit. This book also happens to have the only nice dog in the Bible. Tobit, Tobias’s father, is blinded by some bird droppings that cause white patches on his eyes (cataracts are still a big problem in the Middle East). In desperation Tobit sends Tobias, a true younger son, off to collect some money owed him by a cousin in a far land. Tobias’s mother insists that he must have a guide, and lo! Tobias meets a stranger who says he knows the way and is willing to go along with Tobias. So Tobias sets off with his dog, and the stranger, who is, of course, an angel in disguise.

  They spend the night by the river Tigris—Tobias, the dog, and the angel—and in the morning when Tobias is washing in the river, a great carp leaps at him to eat him. The angel tells Tobias to club the fish, which the boy obediently does, and then to cut the fish up and take its heart and liver and gall and keep them safe.

  Tobias does this, and they eat the rest of the fish for breakfast, giving the dog his fair share. Tobias asks the angel why he must keep the heart and the liver and the gall, and the angel explains that if a smoke is made of the heart and liver it will drive demons away. And if the gall is rubbed on the eyes of someone with white film, the eyes will be cured.

  They arrive at their destination, and the angel tells Tobias that they will spend the night with his kinsman, who not only has the money for Tobias but also has a beautiful daughter. Tobias and the daughter meet and immediately fall in love. However, there’s a big problem, because Sarah has already been given in marriage seven times, and each time a monster has killed the groom on the wedding night.

  But the angel tells Tobias not to fear (“Fear not, Tobias!”), and the two are married. Sarah’s mother whispers to her husband that he might as well go out and dig the grave. Tobias and Sarah go up to the bridal chamber, and Tobias makes a smoke of the heart and liver, and when the demon comes he smells the smoke and he flees to the farthest parts of upper Egypt and there the angel binds him.

  The gall cures Tobit’s blindness, and they all, including the dog, live happily ever after, giving much glory to God.

  Pure, charming, delightful fairy tale.

  Gideon, too, is a younger son, and the hero of a fairy tale. When the angel comes to him and says, “The LORD is with you, mighty warrior….Go in the strength you have and save Israel out of Midian’s hand,” Gideon, the typical younger son says, “Who? Me? You surely don’t mean me! My father’s tribe is the least of all the tribes of Israel, and I am the least of my father’s house.”

  “You,” says the angel.

  First, Gideon is told to tear down the temple of Baal, which he does at night because he’s afraid someone will see him. Then, still reluctant, he suggests that if he’s really the one to save his people, the dew that night should fall only on a fleece of wool that he’s going to put out. And the dew falls only on the fleece of wool. “Well,” he says, “Just to be sure, how about if the dew falls on the ground tonight, and not on the fleece of wool?” And so it happens. So he gathers himself an army, and God looks at the army and sees that there are a lot of people. Since there are so many that they might think their success in defeating the mighty enemy is a result of their own valor, God tells Gideon to send everyone home who’s afraid. About half of them go away. But God looks at those who stay and says there are still too many, so el has Gideon send them to the brook to drink, and they are divided according to those who drink from their hands and those who lap like a dog. Gideon is left with a tiny little band who couldn’t possibly conquer the great horde of the Midianites with their own strength. Nevertheless, they blow their trumpets, and cry out, “A sword for the LORD and for Gideon!” and the Midianite horde is vanquished.

  The story of Gideon emphatically underlines that the point of the stories of the younger son is that the younger son knows that he does not accomplish the Quest on his own. He knows that though with him it may be impossible, with God nothing is impossible. He knows that he cannot take the credit for the achievement, that he did not do it himself.
He accepts his interdependence. He is willing to listen, as the writer must listen to where the story wants to go. The younger son, listening to the angel, to the fairy godmother, to the talking beast, listens and hears and is willing to go where he is sent, no matter how strange it may be, or how terrible.

  (“My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will.”)

  Nowadays we’re surrounded by the worldly older son who foolishly considers his power to come from his own virtue (rather than vertue), who mistakes the real purpose of the quest, and looks for more power and more money and more everything. If he meets failure, his confidence is destroyed, and he gives up. He wants credit for his deeds; he wants to be praised for them. I don’t think any of us is completely immune from liking a pat on the back, from being told we’ve done a good job. But that’s very different from the need for constantly gathering spiritual merit badges.

  Napoleon, Hitler, Tiberius—these are all examples of the elder brother, and there are plenty of others nearer to us in time. It is the elder brothers who worship golden calves, or get hanged on their own gallows (like Haman), or who pragmatically decide that it is expedient that one man die for the sake of the nation.

  The younger son doesn’t feel that he is entitled to any special privileges. He isn’t surprised when he takes wrong turnings, makes mistakes (all those pages which end up in the wastepaper basket), those cruel reviews written (usually) by elder brothers, those unpublished books, unsung songs, unsold paintings.

  And age—chronology—like sexism, has nothing to do with it. The younger son can be middle-aged, like Moses when he was sent on the Quest, or old, like Sarah or Hannah or Elizabeth.

  If the storyteller follows the elder brothers he may well get on the best-seller list, but he will not be a true storyteller. Surely we want our work to be accepted, but if we write or paint or compose only with worldly success in mind, we fail. What incredible faith in his quest van Gogh must have had to continue to paint wherever his pictures drove him, despite total lack of acceptance or worldly success. Surely he understood in the depths of his being that the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.