Remission

Remission (medical): A decrease in or disappearance of signs and symptoms of cancer, signifying a major improvement, but not always a complete cure, as the disease can recur.

In a letter dated December 1957 Lewis wrote: of Joy Davidman's miraculous remission:

My own news continues better than we ever dared to hope. The cancerous bones have rebuilt themselves in a way quite unusual and Joy can now walk: on a stick and with a limp, it is true, but it is a walk–and far less than a year ago it took three people to move her in bed and we often hurt her. Her general health, and spirits, seem excellent. Of course the sword of Damocles hangs over us. Or should I say that circumstances have opened our eyes to see the sword which really hangs always over everyone.

The cure didn't last. She died three years later, a cherished three years together, but none the less three years of remission.

One of the first messages I received about T was in November 2016 and had this heading "Prayer works - keep praying" - T, who was nine at the time, had been admitted to hospital with a dangerously low red blood cells count, leukaemia was diagnosed...  Nine years later, and after so many treatments and hopes, the message I received yesterday read "we are devastated to have to send this message... Sadly, the disease in T's central nervous system overwhelmed his brain and he didn't wake after his procedure yesterday afternoon. We are heartbroken. We said goodbye to him this morning, with the sun shining on his face. It was peaceful and beautiful".

As in that most beautiful of books "I walked up the winding stair, and entered his room. A lovely figure, as white and almost as clear as alabaster, was lying on the bed. I saw at once how it was. They thought he was dead. I knew that he had gone to the back of the north wind".

In 2020 his parents had written: "A new cure for T's cancer (we have already exhausted the existing cures!) offers the only medical chance of life returning to normal for him. The virus isn't gone. His cancer is still there. As far we are concerned we're living with a fragile hope. Hope that we might beat the virus. Hope that God will heal T. Hope that his current treatment could put his cancer in stable remission for long enough so that other curative options might be discovered.  So we keep praying".

Remission. How I hate the word. The word that engenders, fuels, prolongs false hopes. Like playing with and savouring those iconic words "All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well" in full defiance of knowing that the reverse is true.

What am I to conclude? That prayer is, at best, wishful thinking? That I wasted my time hoping, and believing as best as I knew how, for "full and forever" healing? My insides are churning even as I write these words. I could revel, as many do, in vain platitudes but I hate such hypocrisy.  I rest my case.

Is it the end of a chapter? If so then I say that another chapter begins. My relationship with T's parents (who I have never met) is stronger for it. I might weep now but I will not forget the journey. I say that all the suffering was not in vain. Possibly even my own so weak faith in a loving God is strengthened rather than shipwrecked.

Why art thou cast down, O my soul? Hope thou in God (Psalm 42)

Obedience

George MacDonald, fantasy writer par excellence

I said: “Let me walk in the fields.”

He said: “No, walk in the town.”

I said: “There are no flowers there.”

He said: “No flowers, but a crown.”

I said: “But the skies are black;

There is nothing but noise and din.”

And He wept as He sent me back –

“There is more,” He said; “there is sin.”

I said: “But the air is thick,

And fogs are veiling the sun.”

He answered: “Yet souls are sick,

And souls in the dark undone!”

I said: “I shall miss the light,

And friends will miss me, they say.”

He answered: “Choose tonight

If I am to miss you or they.”

I pleaded for time to be given.

He said: “Is it hard to decide?

It will not seem so hard in heaven

To have followed the steps of your Guide.”

I cast one look at the fields,

Then set my face to the town;

He said, “My child, do you yield?

Will you leave the flowers for the crown?”

Then into His hand went mine;

And into my heart came He;

And I walk in a light divine,

The path I had feared to see.

Obedience - George MacDonald

Such gut-wrenching poignant truth in economy of words! How I wish I could encapsulate what I want to convey in a similar manner rather than blather on and on...  (I come from a church background where multiplicity of words is almost a dogma.)

I suppose I was led to MacDonald by Lewis, possibly in his reference:

“Turning to the bookstall, I picked out an Everyman in a dirty jacket, Phantastes, a Faerie Romance, George MacDonald. Then the train came in. I can still remember the voice of the porter calling out the village names Saxon and sweet as a nut—‘Bookham, Effingham, Horsley train.’ That evening I began to read my new book.

“The woodland journeyings in that story, the ghostly enemies, the ladies both good and evil, were close enough to my habitual imagery to lure me on without the perception of a change. It is as if I were carried sleeping across the frontier, or as if I had died in the old country and could never remember how I came alive in the new” (Lewis, Surprised by Joy).

Finding a paper copy of Phantastes took many years - now it is available for free download on the internet. Of his other fantasy stories I suppose I love At the back of the North Wind the best as discussed elsewhere.

Macdonald was not accepted by the Christian status-quo in his time - this alone has tended to attract him to me. Some paint him with the heresy of universalism but this in-depth treatment seems to say otherwise. MacDonald is said to have burst into tears when the concept of predestination was first explained to him. Interestingly I, too, recoiled from the idea as explained to me by someone at college who took a hard, Calvinistic line.

Lewis regarded MacDonald as his mentor as is evident in his The great divorce.  In his preface to "George MacDonald. An Anthology" he says "I have never concealed the fact that I regarded him as my master; indeed I fancy I have never written a book in which I did not quote from him."  And of Phantastes he writes “After this I read Macdonald’s Phantastes over my tea, which I have read many times and which I really believe fills for me the place of a devotional book. It tuned me up to a higher pitch and delighted me.”

I could go on and bore you with my favourite passages from MacDonald's writings. Maybe another time...

The greatest story

My father used to say that the prototypes for all the best stories in the world can be found in the Bible.  I have always considered this a rather far claim - but then I conceived this blog.

I have just finished reading Kim for possibly the third time in my life. In my opinion a blog should be as honest as one can reasonably get in public, so I will say that I love the book.  Or is it Kim that I love?

Kim's gun Zam Zammah in front of the Lahore 'Wonder House'

Right from "He sat, in defiance of municipal orders, astride the gun Zam Zammah on her brick platform opposite the old Ajaib-Gher--the Wonder House, as the natives call the Lahore Museum. Who hold Zam-Zammah, that 'fire-breathing dragon', hold the Punjab, for the great green-bronze piece is always first of the conqueror's loot" I want Kim, fatherless and to all intents motherless and homeless, to succeed in life.  Sorry, that sounds so lame, but I do not know how to express my feeling any better.

The book ends with the lama who "crossed his hands on his lap and smiled, as a man may who has won salvation for himself and his beloved." Though Kim sometimes calls the lama "mad", unlikely a relationship though it may be, each is totally committed to and loves the other.  And, to a lesser degree, it could be said that Colonel Creighton, Babu and Mahbub Ali love Kim. Although Kipling paints a poor picture of the two clergy who want to convert him, the lama never inflicts his religion on Kim and Kim never despises the lama on account of his "mad" beliefs.

I think that Kim is an idealisation of Kipling's son John (Jack) who a few years old when the book was published. The strong love Kipling had for his son, lost in WWI, is well expressed in:

“Have you news of my boy Jack?”
Not this tide.
“When d’you think that he’ll come back?"
Not with this wind blowing, and this tide.

“Has any one else had word of him?”
Not this tide.
For what is sunk will hardly swim,
Not with this wind blowing, and this tide.

“Oh, dear, what comfort can I find?”
None this tide,
Nor any tide,
Except he did not shame his kind —
Not even with that wind blowing, and that tide.

Then hold your head up all the more,
This tide,
And every tide;
Because he was the son you bore,
And gave to that wind blowing and that tide!

Some people seem to want to label any love expressed between men as blatant homosexuality quoting, for example, the powerful and loaded words "it was here, about sunset, that they came across an aged lama... sitting cross-legged above a mysterious chart held down by stones, which he was explaining to a young man, evidently a neophyte, of singular, though unwashen, beauty." I strongly oppose this as far as Kim and my other examples, all beautiful in their own way, are concerned.

We recently watched Australia and of course all fell in love with the boy Nullah (for what it is worth it took me a while to realise that he was not a girl...)

Then there is Le Petit Prince.  Who can fail to appreciate the bond of love between the author and this boy, the strong desire to see the boy succeed, who ends up dying in order to live?

There was nothing but a flash of yellow close to his ankle. 

He remained motionless for an instant. 

He did not cry out. 

He fell as gently as a tree falls. 

There was not even any sound, because of the sand.

Regarding the author you might be interested to check out this and this.

Another favourite of mine is Diamond in At the back of the North Wind who is likewise fragile, but greatly loved, and likewise dies in order to live.

"Fourdays after, I called again at the Mound. The maid who opened the doorlooked grave, but I sus­pected nothing. When I reached the drawing-room, I saw Mrs. Raymond had been crying. "Haven't you heard?" she said, seeing my question­ing looks.

" 'I've heard nothing,' I answered. 'This morning we found our dear little Diamond lying on the floor of the big attic-room, just outside his own door—fast asleep, as we thought. But when we took him up, we did not think he was asleep. We saw that-----' "

"Here the kind-hearted lady broke out crying afresh.

"" May I go and see him?" I asked.

""Yes," she sobbed. "You know your way to the top of the tower."

"I walked up the winding stair, and entered his room. A lovely figure, as white and almost as clear as alabaster, was lying on the bed. I saw at once how it was. They thought he was dead. I knew that he had gone to the back of the north wind."

In all these stories the theme is of a boy, always a boy, who is helped through the perils of the world by great, fatherly love.


Luke 15 has "Now the tax collectors and sinners were all drawing near to hear him. And the Pharisees and the scribes grumbled, saying, 'This man receives sinners and eats with them.'  So he told them..."  three parables, the third being the "Prodigal Son", the point being that the Pharisees were the older son who could not accept his renegade brother being accepted back into the family, but Jesus carefully shifts the emphasis to the younger boy.  Once again we have a boy helped through the perils of the world by the great love of his father.  But we haven't got to the prototype yet.  This parable is one of the most poignant stories to describe the love of God for his sons, a love that reaches down to the depths of man's depravity.  That is the prototype I believe Kipling and Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (possibly unwittingly), MacDonald and others are echoing, and that is why this, the greatest story, continues to touch our heartstrings.