Michael Henchard and Repentance: Ten Minutes Too Late

“But the proposal came ten minutes too late.”  These are some of the saddest words in The Mayor of Casterbridge.  Michael Henchard, immediately after convincing his stepdaughter (whom he believes is his biological daughter) to take his name, finds out that she is indeed the daughter of the sailor, the man to whom he had sold his wife 19 year before.  His Elizabeth-Jane had died three months after they separated, and Susan (his legal wife) had given the new child the same name--because “she filled up the ache I felt in the other’s loss.”  Michael is too proud to tell Elizabeth-Jane that he is mistaken, and she accepts her step-father’s story and takes his name.  But Elizabeth-Jane notices that something is terribly wrong.  

By accepting her father’s name, she had hoped that the harshness of his manner towards her would be softened, but exactly the opposite happens.  Michael, in his disgust with himself and the situation he has gotten himself into, becomes harsher and more distant.  In her ignorance and innocence Elizabeth-Jane blames herself for her father’s behavior and seeks to improve herself through reading and tries to shed the country mannerisms of her vulgar up bring which always seem to trigger her father’s angry outbursts.  As her father becomes more and more distant and she realizes that she cannot escape from her past (from herself) and thus cannot but distress him, Elizabeth-Jane looks for a way to separate from her father.

Then the opportunity comes: Elizabeth-Jane is invited to be the companion of a comparatively genteel and wealthy young lady who has newly moved into town.  When she asks her father if he has any objections to her going away, he immediate responds (before asking for any details), “No--none whatsoever.”  Moreover, he proposes that he set up an annuity for her “so that I may be independent of you.”  It is not until the next day, when he sees her moving out of the house, that Michael has any second thoughts.  Speaking harshly to her and blaming her for wanting to hurt him by the suddenness of her taking him up on his word, Elizabeth-Jane for the first time says to him bluntly (“with spirit”): “O Father! how can you speak like that? It is unjust of you!”  This little rebuke seems to get him thinking.

Michael goes up to his daughter’s room, a place he hadn’t been since she had moved in.  And here for the first time through the medium of her room, Michael sees, really sees, Elizabeth-Jane:

Evidences of her care, of her endeavors for improvement, were visible all around, in the form of books, sketches, maps, and little arrangements for tasteful effects.  Henchard had known nothing of these efforts.  He gazed at them, turned suddenly about, and came down to the door.

“Look here,” he said, in an altered voice--he never called her by name now—“don’t ‘ee go away from me.  It may be I’ve spoken roughly to you--but I’ve been grieved beyond everything by you--there’s something that caused it.”

“By me?” she said, with deep concern.  “What have I done?”

“I can’t tell you now.  But if you’ll stop, and go on living as my daughter, I’ll tell you all in time.”

But the proposal had come ten minutes too late.

As an Orthodox Christian, I glory in the power of repentance.  The role of the Saints abounds with the names of great sinners who have repented and have been saved.  However, there is also such a thing--although it is not much spoken of--as losing the ability to repent.  St. Paul interprets the story of Jacob and Esau in the book of Hebrews saying that after Esau sold his birthright and wanted to inherit the blessing, “he found no place for repentance, though he sought it diligently with tears” (Heb. 12:15-17).  There is such a thing as getting what you ask for, reaping what you sow.

Today (October 29^th) in the Orthodox Church we celebrate the memory of St. Abramicus and his niece Mary.  Mary became a nun taught by her uncle St. Abramicus.  However, she fell into sexual sin, and then into despondency, and then left her uncle and took up the life of a harlot in the city. (Like many of us, she fell prey to the demons’ common tactic of luring us into sin and then blaming us for the fall, and finally implanting the thought: “what’s the use, I have already lost everything.”)  St. Abramicus disguised himself as a city dweller and found his niece and convinced her to return to the monastery where she went on to become renowned for her holiness.  But Henchard, like Esau, is not like St. Mary.  And the difference, I think, lies in a humble heart.

There are tears and then there are tears: tears are not all the same.  There are the tears of St. Mary: tears of broken-hearted humility, tears at her own weakness, tears at the pain she has caused others.  And then there are the tears of Esau: tears of anger and frustration when the consequences of his actions are more painful than he expected, tears of embarrassment when the foolishness and sin he had sought to hide is exposed, tears of convenience seeking to move to false compassion those whom he supposes can get him out of the pit he has dug for himself.  No, not all tears are the same.  Not all repentance is repentance.  

Ultimately, only God knows the difference.  However, you don’t have to live too long and you don’t have to observe too closely yourself and others before you notice a pattern in people’s lives.  Godly tears bring a repentance that is not repented of (cf 2 Cor. 7: 10 KJV).  While it may be possible for a man who has only abused everyone weaker than himself for the past twenty years to find genuine repentance--God can do anything--it is certainly the case that genuine repentance will not be brought about by the status quo.  If Michael Henchard is ever to find salvation it will only be by “walking in the light” (cf John 3: 18-21), by looking squarely at the hurt he has caused others through his selfishness and pride, by eating the fruit of the tree he has so carefully planted and watered.

Elizabeth-Jane does the right thing, the loving thing, the thing that in the end brings about the circumstances that make real repentance a possibility for Michael Henchard.   Elizabeth-Jane leaves.  Michael’s repentance is ten minutes too late.

Michael Henchard and A Dog That Kills Chickens

I just chased a stray dog out of my chicken and goose run. It killed my beautiful hybrid rooster from good laying stock and chased all of the hens out over or under the fences onto the street and into the ditch in front of the house. They’ll slowly make their way back as they get hungry, I hope.

I had a hard time chasing off the dog. I felt sorry for it. It was hungry. I considered feeding it, but if you do that, then you own it--and if you own a dog that kills chickens, you can’t keep chickens. So I had to yell at it and chase it away. I think the dog could tell that my yells were half hearted. It showed no signs of being afraid of me. It just looked sad and trotted off. The dog was just being itself, a lot like Michael Henchard.

The main character in The Mayor of Casterbridge acts proudly according to his volcanic impulses, snap judgements, "oppressive generosity," and "mechanical righteousness." Michael Henchard is a lonely man. He wants friendship and family, but not as much as he wants the universe to function according to his own lurching internal rhythm. He will not be changed. He will not have it. He will not stand for it. He is himself and everyone else must conform to him, or they do not exist at all--as far as mechanical righteousness will allow. He is a man who reminds me of that stray dog. Just doing what he does. I pity him.

And yet, no matter how noble a sentiment pity is, a dog that kills chickens must be driven off. And so a man who is not changed by others but always and only insists on their conformity to him, such a man, no matter how much he longs to love and be loved, in the end drives away and withers all who might love him. We pity him, but we also stay away.

Certainly the judgement that falls on Michael Henchard is just. He merely reaps what he sows. But judgement does not end there. We who pity the Henchards in our lives feel a judgement too, nagging within our heart: If only I could, if only I had, if only I were…. But I am not. We wish we could be more. We wish our pity, even full love, could be enough to change him or her, and that perhaps if we could endure just a little bit more, it would be enough to do the trick: to train the dog not to kill chickens any more.

One of the few ditties I remember from childhood goes like this: “If ‘ifs’ and ‘ands’ were pots and pans there’d be no work for tinkers.” Part of knowing myself is knowing my limits. In Christ, my ability to absorb the foolishness, idiocy, or even cruelty of others certainly grows. But only Christ Himself can absorb it all. The time comes, sometimes, when I have to say enough, I have to move away, I have to let my heart silently break as I am unable to reconcile the realities of my existence. Like a dog that kills chickens.

Marriage and Baptism

In the old days, before divorce was a convenient option, it was not uncommon for a couple to be married, perhaps for many years, and yet not to know each other very well. Marriage is a fact of life, knowing one another, however, is a matter growing relationship. What a shame it is for a man and woman to be married for many years and perhaps raise a family together, but still not know each other very well. I wonder if that is what hell is like: to wake up every morning with someone in your bed who you do not know, and worse, do not care to know.

Baptism is like marriage. In baptism, we are betrothed to Christ (the crowning to take place in the Kingdom of Heaven). Some people put a lot of effort into their relationship with Christ and come to know him well before baptism--like a couple who have fallen in love slowly over many years and who (to the relief of their friends and family) finally become engaged. In the scripture, for example, we have the pious Jews who received baptism or Cornelius the generous and compassionate centurion who was the first Gentile to receive baptism.

Others of us are baptized from infancy--like an arranged marriage--we had nothing to say about it. Those who are born into the faith, ideally grow in their knowledge of God as they grow in their knowledge of themselves. However, just as being married is not the same as knowing your spouse, being baptized is not the same as knowing God. Both marriage and baptism define a relationship, a context in which growing knowledge and love can take place. However, whether or not knowledge of one’s spouse or knowledge of God increases depends completely on what one does with the relationship.

In marriage eros plays an important role in growing to know one another. Eros here refers to longing or desire for one another that is experienced on all levels of the relationship. Longing, as every married couple knows, does not sustain itself. A couple must work on loving each other, learning to know, respect, and honor each other, learning to nurture desire for each other, for the one who is your spouse. If a married couple does not work to deepen their relationship, they will grow apart, become bored with each other, longing will wander, and they will become strangers, maybe enemies.

The same thing is true in our relationship with God. If we do not work on that relationship, if we do not nurture longing for God, if we do not take the time to nurture our inner life, then we also grow apart from God. We are still baptized, still joined to Christ, but growing apart we become bored with God, our longing wanders to more exciting possibilities; and if we are not careful, God become a stranger, even an enemy to us. And this, perhaps, is what hell is like: to be joined to God, yet be bored with Him; to go to your own wedding, despising your fiance; to spend eternity knowing that you ignored for a lifetime the God who loves you so much that he allows you even to ignore His love.

So what do you do? What do you do if you find yourself becoming bored in your relationship with God? You do what any married couple does who needs to revitalize their relationship. First, get away with the one you love (even if that love has grown cold) and spend time listening to each other. Perhaps schedule a few days at a monastery, or at least a few hours before an icon saying prayers or reading a spiritual book. Cry with the one you love. Next, make time in your schedule to be with the one you love. Schedule prayer time, reading time and church time. Finally, get counseling. Confess your struggle to someone you respect, who you think can help you in your relationship with God. This might be a priest or a monastic, but it might also be a grandmother or friend who you trust and admire. And if the first person you talk to doesn’t help you, keep looking. Just as a good marriage must be fought for, so must a good relationship with God. It doesn’t just happen because you are baptized any more than a good marriage just happens because you had a wedding. And the longer you have put it off, the more aggressive the fight must be.

The Good News is that God is for us. He is the loving Spouse who wants the relationship to work. God is already turned towards us. All we have to do is fight to turn ourselves to Him.

The Mayor of Casterbridge 1

The Mayor of Caterbridge begins with a man selling his wife and daughter for five guineas.  The man was drunk at the time, and he really didn’t expect that someone would actually buy her.  He was only tormenting his wife, as he occasionally did when he had had too much rum not to speak his wishes out loud.  Michael Henchard had married young, making good wages as a hay trusser; but the strain of married life made it easy for him to imagine that without the expense of a wife and child—his own consumption of rum mysteriously failing to enter into the calculation—he would have saved enough money in the two years since his marriage to better himself in the eyes of the world.  What he hadn’t counted on that night was that Susan Henchard had had her fill of being tormented, and the prospect of being bought by someone who actually wanted her was looking increasingly appealing.  Neither had Michael anticipated a certain sailor to be passing by who would put five guineas down on the table, in front of the whole crowd who had been listening and laughing as he went through the motions of auctioning off his wife.  After a final warning from Susan not to do so, Michael picks up the money, and his wife with the baby walk out on the arm of the sailor.

Now if that beginning doesn’t get you interested in a story, I think nothing will.

I have often thought about this story when I am counseling.  It is very easy to imagine that our problems are someone else’s fault.  True, we suffer a lot in life from the torment, unkindness, neglect and abuse of others.  And certainly there are times when the only apparent remedy is to flee an abusive relationship (and perhaps that was exactly what Susan Henchard was thinking).  However, before relationships become abusive, they often start by being sick--a little relational cold that gets out of hand and turns into pneumonia. One of the common relational viruses that I run into develops in a mind like Michael Henchard’s.  Michael thinks his life is about his life.  Others in Michael’s world exist to encourage, discourage, help or hinder his life.  

Actually the world is full of Michael Henchards.  To get a little more to the point, Michael Henchard lives in me.  Even in my most intimate relationships, it is too easy for me to think almost exclusively about me: How will what she is doing make me look?  How can I do the right thing and yet disturb my plans, goals and dreams as little as possible?   What effect will this or that action have on me?  Michael Henchard is always whispering in my ear.  And if I listen too much to Mr. Henchard, I begin to see even those I love as hinderances in my life rather that as what they really are: my life.  

In the novel, Michael Henchard had failed to find Christ.  By this I do not mean that he failed to have a religious experience--he does have one, actually, after he realizes what a stupid thing he had done (but that’s a topic for another blog).  What I mean is that he had failed to let others into his heart—the Christ in his brother, his sister, his wife.  Mr. Henchard’s relationships with others were merely contractual, outside himself, something to be negotiated to his best advantage. And thus, when a relationship is not working to his advantage (as he imagines it), the relationship should be terminated.

However, when we hold others in our hearts, then they are ourselves.  There is no either me or them, there is only us: me and them.  Negotiating us is still a pretty stiff task, but it is possible; and, most importantly, it is Christian.  Negotiating us requires flexible and occasionally permeable boundaries (never no boundaries).  In a mystery, I become us without ceasing to be I.  When my brother or sister is in my heart, then I can believe that  however my plans, circumstances or dreams change with the requirements of that relationship, love and contentment will be the result.  Ironically, the path to getting what you wanted all along often lies in graciously accepting the guidance and even limitations put on you by those around you.

Grandkids and Thomas Hardy (Not Related)

May you see your children’s children (Psa. 127:6).  As some of you know, I have been busy this week with my children’s children. It has been a wonderful and busy week.  The week started out with two of my daughters and grandchildren joining me for Saturday morning matins.  We began matins by running back and forth across the church nave: “One, two, three, go!”  The room was cold and this both warmed up the kids and us, and coincidentally, got the wiggles out of the two older boys.  Next they took turns “censing” the church with a cold censer and wearing extra skuffia (Greek style priest hats) that I had on hand while I lit the lampadas.  Then we prayed matins with the girls taking turns chanting and the kids wandering around the nave.  The oldest, six year old David, wore his mother’s sweater with it’s long belt over his shoulder like an orarion.  He spent the service before the icons pretending to be the deacon.  I loved it.  It was so natural.  The kids were just kids, the moms were just moms, and we prayed together.

Again on Wednesday night everyone came for vespers.  It was perhaps a little distracting for the single adults who generally come to midweek vespers, but the chanting was heavenly.  My three girls used to chant together before they all got married and went off with their respective husbands to various corners of North America.  After vespers we just sat in the nave singing the Pascha and Christmas canons and other hymns from memory.  It was heavenly.  

Somehow in the midst of the week I was able to complete and get off my next podcast for “Speaking of Books” on Ancient Faith Radio.  I don’t know if what I have to say about these great books is of any interest to anyone.  Certainly there are people out there who are actually qualified to speak about them (who have actually studied 19^th century British Literature); but until one of them steps up to the plate, I guess I will do to get the ball rolling.  

I really do enjoy reading novels of this period.  Today, the best creative minds are more likely to be making films rather than writing novels (notice I said likely--yes there are also good novelists today, but 150 years ago novels were the “movies”).  

For my next podcast I am thinking about Thomas Hardy’s The Mayor of Casterbridge.  It about the humbling of an arrogant man and reaping what you sow.  Hardy’s novels are about hard life in rural 19^th century England.  Because Hardy’s first love is poetry, his writing style is amazingly beautiful.  His sentences often roll through your mind like the sheep-speckled hills of a an English country setting on a warm autumn day.  The clauses of his long sentences just seem to fit together.  After six weeks of Dickens, it will be a vacation.  Hardy does have a penchant  for unusual words, country idioms and local dialect, so you have to keep your guessing wits (and a dictionary) about you.

Our Mutual Friend (Podcast Transcript)

I was eager to reread Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens; I remembered it as being my favorite Dickens novel.  However, 100 pages into this 800 page story, I was having a hard time remembering why I liked this novel so much.  

Our Mutual Friend is not one of Dickens’ popular novels, and certainly it is not one of his best.  It is his last full novel, completed in 1865.  Like most of his novels, Our Mutual Friend was published as a series of monthly installments, the subscription for this publication decreased dramatically during its run. The story was just too dark for most readers.

The novel opens in the boat of Jesse Hexam, a river scavenger, rowed by his daughter Lizzie, and carrying a dead man whose pockets Hexam has rifled for cash.  Soon Hexam is confronted by Roger Riderhood, his former partner, who had been accused of picking the pocket of a living sailor and so Hexam refuses any longer to be called his partner.  In the course of the conversation about the difference between stealing from a living man and a dead one (which is technically not stealing--how can a dead man own anything, argues Hexam), Riderhood insinuates that Hexam’s luck in finding so many dead bodies in the river is based on more than his skill as a dredger.  

Chapter two contrasts the cold, dirty, thieving, and perhaps murderous world of the waterfront with that of Mr. and Mrs. Veneering, of the newly rich, whose deepest and longest friendships have nothing to do with time of acquaintance and everything to do with perceived wealth and social status.  The subplots relating to the Veneering crowd really have little to do with the main plots of the novel.  They act as a kind of Greek Chorus, but not a very good one in my opinion.  However the Veneering society’s shallow relationships and mercenary behavior and complete ignorance (and ignoring) of anything in the world below their sphere does act as a comic satire on the dark reality of those who squeeze pennies and shillings out of the waste and sewage of the higher classes.

Dickens’ novels often take a couple hundred pages to captivate the reader.  Our Mutual Friend requires the reader to push through a good half of the novel to finally piece together a main plot, or I should say plots.  The abundance of characters, subplots and hidden identities is enough to make any but the most determined reader put down the book before the midpoint.  However, if you hang in there, you are rewarded with what is my favorite story of repentance in 19^th century British Literature. If you keep reading, eventually two love stories emerge.  Both involve repentance and both are wonderfully complicated.

The main plot involves John Harmon who having spent most of his life abroad, is about to come home to inherit the fortune of his father.  However, in a peevish move, his father in his will requires his son, in order to inherit the fortune, to marry a woman he has never met, whom even the father only met once when the girl was a child.  However, since the dead body found in the river in chapter one is supposed to be that of the returning John Harmon,  the fortune is given instead to his father’s faithful servants, Mr. and Mrs. Boffin. This leaves Bella, now grown into a beautiful and a little spoiled young woman, without a dime.

The Boffins being good natured people and feeling guilty for inheriting the entire fortune, decide to invite the Bella to live with them and share the wealth that she grew up expecting.  Mysteriously, a John Rokesmith shows up and offers his services to Mr. Boffen as secretary.  This John Rokesmith looks amazingly like John Harmon, whom the Boffins haven’t seen since he was a child.  Rokesmith watches Bella closely and comes to admire her; however, being even more spoiled by her new wealth and station in life, Bella becomes mercenary and can only imagine marrying for money.  So when Rokesmith proposes marriage, Bella cruelly rejects and insults him because of his apparent poverty.

The other love story involves the daughter of the river scavenger, Lizzie Hexam.  Living in the deepest poverty and knowing that her father may be involved in criminal activity, Lizzie does all she can to influence him for the better.  At the same time, Lizzie secretly uses all of the money she can squeeze out of her muddy life to put her younger brother through a cheap schooling program so that he can learn to read.  Eventually, the brother shows himself adept at learning and goes off to better himself in a school where he can support himself teaching younger boys.  Lizzie stays behind in order to support her father.

After the supposed murder of John Harmon, two lawyers visit Lizzie’s home to talk to her father.  One of the lawyers, Eugene Wrayburn, notices Lizzie sitting by the fire and is captivated by her beauty.  Wrayburn, although a Lawyer by training, takes no cases.  He lives off a small income from his father and spends all of his time perfecting the art of being bored.  Seeing Lizzie puts a spark of interest in him, a spark that motivates him to continue looking in on her; and after her father’s drowning, the same spark motivates him to help her better herself by provider for her and her friend, a crippled doll’s dress maker, a tutor who will teach them to read.  What is clear about Wrayburn’s relationship with Lizzie is that she is growing to like him, but the social distance between them is such that the only romantic relationship possible between them is either one bringing degradation to Lizzie, or marriage which would destroy Wrayburn’s social standing.

Now back to the first love story.  Even as Bella struggles with greed, she sees wealth change Mr. Boffin.  Wealth is corrupting him.  Wealth turns a happy, generous man in to a cruel miser.  And seeing this change in Mr. Boffin, and particularly his ungenerous treatment of John Rokesmith his secretary, Bella repents,  or rather, begins to repent.  Like many of us, changing Bella’s mind and heart is a process that takes months, maybe years.  Very few of us are granted instant conversions.  Bella is confused.  She recognizes her selfish impulses and confesses them unabashedly to her father, yet she is unsure.  She calls herself mercenary, and even tries it on like an expensive silk dress to see if she can wear it, but it just won’t fit.  Yet she cannot deny the selfish greed she knows is in her breast.  Who is she?  Who is she to become?  Who am I?  Who am I to become?  These are the questions of a soul beginning to repent.

Light shines in her darkness in the person of John Rokesmith.   Although Bella has rejected his proposal of marriage, he continues to interest her.  Over the next several months, she watches Rokesmith humbly and faithfully serve the Boffin family in spite her own despicable treatment of him and now Mr. Boffin’s increasingly demeaning and insulting behavior toward him.  Not only is Bella frightened by the change in Mr. Boffin, but her heart is also drawn more and more to this man whom she rejected, a man who continues to serve with faithful integrity even as he is treated with increasing contempt.

Over several months Bella not only grows to respect Rokesmith, but respect blossoms into love--a love that has been smoldering for a long time deep in her heart but had been smothered by the silken layers of mercenary greed.  Love, then, or the light of Rokesmith’s faithful integrity, becomes the force that finally helps Bella choose to forsake wealth as a means to happiness.  

Wrayburn, on the other hand, is finding himself drawn more and more to Lizzie in spite of her brother’s and her brother’s school master’s protestation.  Bradley Headstone, the school master, himself hopes to marry Lizzie and sees Wrayburn as both a rival and as a potential destroyer of what little social integrity Lizzie has.  However, Headstone is an angry man laking self control and he merely frightens Lizzie by his attempts to protect her and fully terrifies her by his attempt to propose to her.  Headstone blames Wrayburn for Lizzie’s rejection and threatens to kill him.  After this, as Lizzie walks home alone and in tears, she bumps in to Wrayburn who tries to find out the cause of her sadness so that he might further help her, but fearing what Headstone may do to him and fearing the love she is beginning to feel for Wrayburn--a love which could only lead to scandal--Lizzie flees to the countryside where, with the help of her Jewish tutor, she finds honorable employment in a paper mill.

Wrayburn is confused.  He is captivated by Lizzie and senses that she loves him, but he is unwilling to sacrifice his social position by marrying her.  Using underhanded methods, he discovers Lizzie’s whereabouts and meets her at the paper mill.  Unknown to him, Headstone had followed him into the country.  That evening, Wrayburn pressures Lizzie into a private interview outside of town.  There, Lizzie makes it clear that she loves him, but that she will always flee from him, urging him to leave her alone--if he cares for her at all—because nothing but shame can come of anything else. He lets her go for the evening, but ponders in his own confusion what he will do next.  Walking along the river he decides not to offer marriage but to continue pursuing Lizzie to see where it will lead.  Suddenly he is attacked from behind by Headstone, beaten senseless,  and thrown into the river.  Lizzie hears the shouting and returns to find Wrayburn floating in the river barely alive.

Lizzie, with her old river scavenging skills, saves Wrayburn from drowning and as he is slowly nursed back to health, Lizzie’s love and his own suffering bring about a change in his heart.  Wrayburn in his pecarious wavering between life and death, asks his best friend to beg Lizzie to marry him.  This change of heart may seem rather abrupt, but in my experience, sudden, sharp suffering often acts as a catalyst to spur on long ignored  good behavior.  Wrayburn is knocked, quite literally, out of his comfort zone, out of his realm of indolent boredom, and off of the self-satisfied perch from which he could contemplated the pros and cons of destroying the integrity of someone he is coming to love.  

While Wrayburn is brought to repentance by sharp suffering, Bella finds a change of heart under the influence of the unselfish and faithful love of John Rokesmith.  And If I am not stretching things too much, I would like to suggest that in Bella’s life, Rokesmish (who is really John Harmon) is a kind of Christ, and that the struggle Bella has to find herself is the same struggle common to all of us.  All is not well in Bella’s world and she imagines that wealth gained at any cost will right the wrongs that oppress her.  But when she pursues what she hopes will be her salvation, she finds the same or worse demons following her.  She is confused.  She doesn’t know how to become herself.  Then love breaks through.  Someone loves her enough to be rejected by her and continue to serve and love in integrity.  Love breaks through by enduring humiliation and insult without retaliation.  Love breaks through by not demanding what is his own or his right, but by granting complete freedom to the object of his love.  A love breaks through that can inspire the heart of a confused young woman to repentance, to finally take off the ill-fitting silk dress and putting back on the comfortable, modest cotton frock that her father had bought her.  Love breaks through.

Our Mutual Friend is an inspiring story, or set of interwoven stories, if one can get through the first half of the novel and the many tertiary characters and sub plots.  During Dickens’ day, many could not get through, so the work was both a popular and critical failure.  However, the novel has experienced somewhat of a revival in recent years.  Most contemporary critics praise it as an intelligent, complex novel based on the themes of poverty and wealth, hiddenness and openness, and both pious and impious uses of deception; however, I recommend Our Mutual Friend largely as a story of repentance.  As story of how bad behaving people are not always as bad as they appear to be.  A story that shows that repentance, a change of heart, is always possible.

Love Is The Best Teacher (Dickens Rabbit Trail)

“Love is in all things a most wonderful teacher.”  Bella is now knitting baby clothes, and Dickens comments on how well she is adapting to sewing and knitting small things.  Her love for her husband and the baby in her womb is the most wonderful teacher.  

If you will permit me to take this line out of context, I think this would make a good motto for everyone who teaches.  When people--especially children--feel loved and cared about, they can more easily reciprocate with a kind of love for their teacher which will help them learn.  I certainly have learned most from teachers whom I felt cared about me and whom, consequently, I actually respected or even loved.

However, those who love whom they teach must be grounded in something (Someone) that can sustain the repeated treading on their hearts.  To love is to open one’s heart, and an open heart is a vulnerable heart.  When we love broadly we are often hurt by those who are hurt, or are careless, or are clueless.  To love our students we have ourselves to be loved, to know we are loved.  When my heart is safe in the Heart of God, I can learn to open my heart.  I can learn to share in the treaded heart of God, the sufferings of Christ, the death of Christ, and then the Resurrection of Christ.  With the bigness of God's heart in my heart, I can love. When I love those I teach--even if they seem to reject or ignore my love--love grows in them, love teaches them.  And “Love is in all things a most wonderful teacher.”

God's Mercy

Just as an abundantly flowing fountain is not blocked by a handful of dust, so the Maker's mercy is not overcome by the wickedness of those whom He has created.  --St. Isaac the Syrian

Our Mutual Friend part 2: Bella and Love Breaks Through

As I am rereading Our Mutual Friend, I realize that part of the reason why I remember this novel so fondly is that I relate deeply to two characters. The two characters are Bella and her father, the “Cherub.” I relate to Bella because I understand her struggles with the unfairness of the world, the pull of greed and the confusion of not knowing herself. And like Bella, love made the difference in my life. But first, a little bit about Bella.

As a little girl, Bella is willed to marry a stranger in exchange for a rich inheritance. Her meek, adoring and poor father provides her family with just enough money to stay above abject poverty, but not enough not to have to rent out the nicer portion of their rented house, not enough to buy one new set of clothing all together--only a hat this year, a coat next and new trousers the following year. Bella is poor with an expectation of being rich, if she sells her soul to the unknown man who will inherit a fortune if he marries her. Being poor is not that bad, but poverty with expectations is grinding.

Bella’s family is a mess. Her mother is a nut case who has coped with her “diminished circumstances” by exaggerated good manners, imposing her oracular pronouncements on proper etiquette to all within earshot. Bella’s sister copes by being uncompromisingly selfish and mean in her speech, peevishly contradicting and insulting whoever does not immediately cater to her. Bella and her father have the only healthy relationship in the family; however, the stress at home is such that he often copes by just being absent. In this sick family, Bella imagines that money will be her ticket out.

I relate a great deal to Bella. There was a time in my life when I too imagined that wealth would be a ticket to a better life. Like Bella, I was confused by a sick family, confused by the unfairness of life, and confused by my own inability to make sense of what I saw and felt. Society (and in my case TV) portrays the wealthy as always happy in their bright carriages and brand new, beautiful clothes. It’s an easy myth to foster and believe--wealth will save me--until you actually get to know some wealthy people; or, as it was in my case, pay attention to what actually makes you happy.

Bella is adopted (as a young woman) by the newly wealthy, happy, quirky, and basically normal Boffins. But Bella sees wealth change Mr. Boffin. Wealth corrupts. Wealth turns a happy, generous man in to a cruel miser. And seeing this change, Bella repents, or rather, begins to repent. Like many of us, changing Bella’s mind and heart is a process that takes months, maybe years. Very few of us are granted instant conversions. Bella is confused. She recognizes her selfish impulses and confesses them unabashedly to her father, yet she is unsure. She calls herself mercenary, and even tries it on like an expensive silk dress to see if it fits: she looks beautiful, but is never comfortable. Yet she cannot deny the selfish greed she knows is in her breast. Who is she? Who is she to become? Who am I? Who am I to become? These are the questions of a soul beginning to repent.

Light shines into her darkness in the person of the Boffin’s secretary, John Rokesmith (who is really John Harmon, the heir she had been willed away to marry). Although he intrigues her, Bella early on rejects his proposal of marriage because of his (apparent) lack of wealth. However, over the next several months, she watches Rokesmith humbly and faithfully serve the Boffin family in spite of her own initially despicable treatment of him and Mr. Boffin’s increasingly demeaning and insulting behavior toward him. Not only is Bella frightened by the change she sees wealth produce in Mr. Boffin, but her heart is also drawn more and more to this man whom she rejected, a man who continues to serve with faithful integrity and quiet dignity even as he is treated with increasing contempt.

Bella not only grows to respect Rokesmith, but respect blossoms into love--a love that has been smoldering for a long time deep in her heart but had been smothered by the heavy silk dress of mercenary greed. Love, then, or the light of Rokesmith’s faithful integrity, becomes the force that finally helps Bella choose to forsake wealth as a means to happiness.

If I am not stretching things too much, I would like to suggest that in Bella’s life, Rokesmith is a kind of Christ, and that Bella's struggle to find herself is the same struggle common to all of us. Bella knows all is not well and imagines that wealth gained at any cost will somehow right the wrongs that oppress her. But when she pursues what she hopes will be her salvation, she finds the same or worse demons following her. She is confused. She doesn’t know how to become herself. Then love breaks through. Someone loves her enough to be rejected by her and continue to serve and love in integrity. Love breaks through by enduring humiliation and insult without retaliation. Love breaks through by not demanding what is his own or his right, but by granting complete freedom to the object of his love. A love breaks through that can inspire the heart of a confused young woman to repentance, to finally take off the ill-fitting silk dress and put back on the comfortable, modest cotton frock that her father had bought her. Love breaks through.

Gentleness

St. Paul towards the end of his letter to the Philippians urges two women to get along with each other. These two women had “struggled beside [him] in the work of the Gospel” along with St. Clement. How is it that two people who had worked with a saint, two saints, in preaching the Gospel, how is it that they could fall into such a contention that St. Paul a) would hear about it in prison and b) feel that a public rebuke was necessary to attempt to reconcile them? We who do not come into contact with saints very often seem to disagree all the time. I think we imagine that if we were surrounded by really holy people we would get along better. However, I don’t think that is the case. Even coworkers of St. Paul and St. Clement had to be exhorted—and publicly at that—to have the “same mind in the Lord.”

How do we have the same mind in the Lord?

I think St. Paul answers this questing as soon as he brings up the problem. In the next two paragraphs (Phil. 4: 4-9), he gives specific instructions which, if applied, will allow us to be of the same mind “in the Lord.”

The first command is to rejoice in the Lord always--twice! When our joy is in anything other than the Lord, we are sure both to be disappointed and to fight over getting, keeping and getting more of whatever makes us happy. Because we all have different gifts, needs and callings; we will all find ourselves emphasizing different aspects of our life in Christ. Each will find joy in his or her ministry. One will find peace in singing, another joy in serving (cooking, cleaning, sewing, repairing, building) another excitement in teaching and study, another glory in prayer, another satisfaction in creating beauty. If we are not careful, our service to Christ and the Church can become an end in itself. Rejoicing in the Lord (at all times) keeps our focus where it belongs. It keeps our focus on the Lord, not on what we are doing or on what we think is important. When we rejoice in the Lord—that is, make our relationship with God the source of our joy—then what we or others do or don’t do becomes much less important, much less something worth fighting over. When our joy is in the Lord, then we can be at peace even when things in the Church are not run the way we think they should be run, even when those who are supposed to know better don’t, and even when people who don’t like us are making the decisions.

But here’s the clincher, the point that really surprises me. “Let your gentleness be known to all.” St. Paul the great evangelist does not say “Let your Gospel be known to all” or “Let your holiness be known to all,” or even “Let your orthodoxy be know to all,” he says “Let your gentleness be known to all.”

I wonder how many disagreements in the Church would be avoided if we were more concerned about our gentleness being known to all than our righteousness or orthodoxy? We falsely imagine that the nearness of a saint would make us get along, would bring clarity and end all dispute by the presences of the great “rightness” of the holy one. But the advice of “God’s chosen vessel” is rather to let our gentleness be known by all--for the Lord is near. The nearness of the Lord may be a reference to His soon coming in glory, but it may also be (and I think it is) a reference to the presence of the Lord in every aspect of our lives, and particularly in our relationships with one another, and particularly with those who disagree with us.

“Salvation is of the Lord,” the Scripture repeatedly says. God is near. God can handle it. You just let your gentleness be known. This is the advice of St. Paul. And “don’t worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be known to God.” Don’t worry about anything? But in everything...? Does he really mean this? Perhaps the Saint doesn’t realize who I’m dealing with. Perhaps he doesn’t realize how badly they would mess things up if I didn’t fight. Surely St. Paul can’t be referring to me and my situation and the people I have to deal with.

Or maybe he does mean it.

Maybe if I stop fighting and pray, maybe if I let my gentleness be know, maybe then I will experience the peace of God that surpasses knowledge, maybe this peace will guard my heart and mind in Christ, maybe then I can be of one mind with the Lord. Maybe God can handle the situation after all.

And then, to keep the peace, I must watch what I think about. Even if I hear bad reports or slander or just plain rotten ideas being put forward--these are not the things I think about. Whatever things are true, that’s what I think about. Whatever things are noble, that’s what I think about. Whatever is pure, lovely, of a good report, if it has virtue, if it is praiseworthy, this is what I think about. And then the God of peace will be with us. And if the God of peace is with us, what do we have to fight about?

Our Mutual Friend part 1

I am rereading Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens.  I read it about ten years ago, and I remembered it as one of my favorite, if not my favorite Dickens novel.  However, when I said I would review it for Ancient Faith Radio’s “Speaking of Books” podcast, I had to read it again.  Boy was I disappointed.  The impression in my memory was quite different from my impression as I was rereading it--at least for the first half.  

I always have to tell myself that with most of Dickens’ novels that it takes a good third to half of the novel to get into it.  In this last of Dickens’ novels--the last one he completed--this dictum holds particularly true.  There are so many characters and sub plots that it does take about half the novel before one starts to see how things hold together.

It’s a dark novel, much darker than his earlier works.  The novel opens in the boat of Jesse Hexam, a river scavenger, rowed by his daughter, and carrying a dead man whose pockets Hexam has rifled for cash.  Soon Hexam is confronted by Roger Riderhood, his former partner, who had been accused of picking the pocket of a living sailor and so Hexam refuses any longer to be called his partner.  In the course of the conversation about the difference between stealing from a living man and a dead one (which is not stealing--how can a dead man own anything, argues Hexam), Riderhood insinuates that Hexam’s luck in finding so many dead bodies in the river is based on more than his skill as a dredger.  

Chapter two contrasts the cold, dirty, thieving, and perhaps murderous world of the waterfront with that of Mr. and Mrs. Veneering, of the newly rich, whose deepest and longest friendships have nothing to do with time of acquaintance and everything to do with perceived wealth and social status.  The subplots relating to the Veneering crowd really have nothing to do with the main plot of the novel.  They act as a kind of Greek Chorus, but not a very good one in my opinion.  However their shallow relationships and mercenary behavior and complete ignorance (and ignoring) of anything in the world below their sphere does act as a comic satire on the dark reality of those who squeeze pennies and shillings out of the waste of others.

And money from waste is one of themes of the novel: how people on the bottom of the social heap pull a living out of the dust (rubbish), sewage, and amputated body parts of those further up the ladder.  And for those in the right place, a lot of money can be pulled out.  John Harmon Sr. held the dust trade for London and over his lifetime accumulated mountains of rubbish, which when sifted by the lowest wage workers in London, resulted in quite a profit for Mr. Harmon in used stuffs that could be resold.  But Mr. Harmon was a harsh man and drove away his only daughter and son.  As a cruel joke, he stipulated in his will that for his son to inherit his fortune, he must first marry a woman whom he had chosen for him: a woman whom he had met only once, a child throwing a temper tantrum in a park.  The son had spent most of his life abroad, and upon the death of his father returns to England with a plan to spy out this young woman he is supposed to marry.

But from the dank morgue near the river, a message is sent to the Veneerings “dear” friend and Harmon’s lawyer, Mortimer Lightwood, that the dead body found in the river that morning is none other than the young John Harmon.

[To Be Continued]