Deeper Still

I spent a good part of this year immersed in a project about the relationship between C.S. Lewis and T.S. Eliot.  In case you don’t know, and few people do, the two maintained a close relationship for decades – the majority of which was more than unfriendly, and almost all of the coldness was, contrary to the expectations of many, initiated by Lewis. 

When one compares the creative works of these two writers, the tone, mood, and subject matter of Eliot’s poems put him in the same camp as the modern poets whose graphic descriptions of despair and decay would make my stomach turn.  I remember so well the modern poetry segment in English classes in high school.  My face would contort as I skimmed the pages, lips folded inward between my front teeth, brow wrinkled, eyes intently focused.  I don’t remember exactly which poems made me feel this way – probably Ted Hughes and his talk of crows and abortions, DH Lawrence and his weirdness, and, among the most startling, Eliot himself with his sick insistence in “The Hollow Men” that “This is the way the world ends./ Not with a bang but a whimper.”

The word “sick” is probably my best descriptor here.  The world these moderns described resembled the one I knew and loved, and yet it seemed diseased, as if someone had taken a ghastly syringe and withdrawn the marrow from the bones of our collective life here.  The word “apocalypse” comes to mind Eliot taunts in “The Waste Land,” “I will show you fear in a handful of dust.”  It’s about the end.  Death.  The one toward which we're all racing. 

I once heard a lecturer compare the death of Socrates to the death of Jesus.  Their deaths are similar in circumstance, for they were both sentenced to death by powerful governments for feeding rebellious ideas to society.  Interestingly, the ideas were about humility, which, one would think, would make a people easier to govern.  When he drinks the poison ordered upon him, Socrates eases into eternal sleep completely at peace, believing that this was indeed the right time for his life to end and that he would be better off dead.  Jesus, on the other hand, writhes in agony on a cross for three hours, pleading with God, “Father, Father, why have you forsaken me?” even though he knew he fulfilled a prophesy that had been ordained for millennia.  Now, it’s hard to compare drinking a cup of poison in perfect comfort to the physical torture Jesus endured for days, but I believe there is still room to compare their two reactions to the final moments. 

I raise this issue because I believe we are prone to withdraw from circumstances, literary or actual, that do not bear the emblems of our creeds.  I want my faith in Jesus to surround me with a force that keeps evil and death far away from me.  At an Easter service this Sunday, I sang in “Christ the Lord is Risen Today” (a favorite hymn) the line, “Where, oh death, is now thy sting? Alleluia!” 

I’ll show you were thy sting is, oh death. 

It’s here.  It’s all around.  Recently I had a conversation with a Christian who fully expected death for believers to be sweet and easy, much like the death of Socrates, and was undone by the savagery of a body falling apart when a relative died.  That’s a sting. 

Eliot’s early poems jump right into this deep pit and throw it all on paper.  Then Eliot became a Christian.  And while the redemption of his soul is apparent in some writings, despair was still there.  There was a misty solution to the sorrow, a center point was found, and peace was blissfully within his reach, but much of his writing still depicted bleakness. 

In The Hiding Place Corrie Boom writes, “There is no pit so deep that God's love is not deeper still.”

No pit so deep that God’s love is not deeper still.  Not, “There is no deep pit in God’s love.”  Not, “Be saved from the deepest pit by embracing God’s love.”  There is no pit so deep that God’s love is not deeper still. 

C.S. Lewis knew well that Eliot was a Christian, and in spite of the acknowledgment that their common ground was vastly greater than their conflict, Lewis frequently criticized and mocked Eliot in public and in print.  Lewis’ disapprove of Eliot began with the opening stanza of his first big poem in the lines, “Let us go then, you and I,/ When the evening is spread out against the sky/ Like a patient etherized on a table.”  Lewis was horrified that one would dare describe something as lovely as twilight in such a grotesque manner. 

And yet it was Eliot who responded to Lewis’ harshness with love.  Not with retaliation.  Eliot never teased Lewis because he was the more popular writer, certainly the better poet.  The two were finally reconciled when they were both asked to assist the Church of England in a project to update the translation of the Psalms.  Surprisingly enough, Lewis wanted to rephrase the beautiful classic verses and Eliot fought to keep them as they were.  In one of the very few recorded instances of Eliot’s feelings for Lewis, Eliot exclaims, “I believe I may have just been the savior of the twenty-third Psalm!

I suppose I conclude this: there is no idea, no subject matter, no question that we must hold in reserve.  I like things that are sweet, pleasant, and holy.  But might holiness gain more power if we refuse to exclude anything from it?  There is no pit so deep that God’s love is not deeper still.