For some reason, I thought the book was written by Dorothy Sayers and it was connected to C.S. Lewis in some way. I was obviously wrong about the first part but right about the second. The beauty of the Lewis connection is that Sheldon was friends with Lewis and includes multiple correspondences throughout the book. One need not wonder how Lewis would respond to the trial and travails of the couple, we get his responses in real time.
The book details the love story of the "pagan" Sheldon and Jean, usually called Van and Davy. Their love began with great intensity and they quickly dedicated their lives to the building of a "Shining Barrier" which would protect and maintain their "inloveness." When conflict arose, they would make an "Appeal to Love." This appeal asked what course would best protect and maintain that love.
I will admit that initially this dedications to "inloveness" left me feeling like a failure in my own marriage. We have no "Shining Barrier." We make no "Appeal to Love" on a regular basis. Neither to we do regular check-ups on our love as did Van and Davy. We just live. Although I did have a vague sense that maybe this dedication was problematic, especially when they pledges suicide should one die before the other. Additionally they decided not to have children so that nothing would come between them. At that point, it became clear that while love and dedication to it is admirable, it can become its own form of idolatry.
Apparently God agreed. We find out early on that Davy died ten years into the marriage. Exactly how is not specified and so with each circumstance that could possibly result in her death we are left to wonder, "Is this it?" Yet she doesn't die until the end and we are definitely prepared. At one point, although physically healthy, she senses an impending death. She begs God for one more year, which He grants, to the day. She trades her life for Van's salvation.
Initially not only skeptical of Christianity but openly hostile to its "folly," Van and Davy are perfectly happy worshipping beauty, especially as embodied in their love. They eventually find their way to Oxford, and it is here they develop friendships with serious and respectable Christians. Both had earlier felt a strange sense that they should give Christianity a serious look and this seems the opportunity. After diving in, starting with Lewis' Mere Christianity, both eventually accept it as true. Davy first. Van, however, struggles with making the leap of faith. Finally, he realizes he has come to far to go back. In his letters with Lewis, he realizes that before, knowing nothing about Christianity or its claims, he could dismiss it as myths and fairy tales for the ignorant. Now he know better. He knows Christ offers the answers he is looking for. He feels himself on a precipice. The gulf behind, that is to go back, is too large. He knows too much. The gulf ahead, that is to believe Jesus is God, is comparatively smaller. He prays, "I believe. Help my unbelief." And makes the leap.
Yet Davy, who embraced Christ with her whole being as her Lord and Savior, quickly outpaces him on the spiritual journey. He finds himself uncomfortable with her newfound Love. God has breached the Shining Barrier. All Appeals to Love must include Him, first and foremost. Appeals to Love no longer means their love, it means their love for God. He watches, as an outsider, her increasing devotion. For a time, a friend who is much like Davy used to be, committed to beauty and poetry and nature, becomes a temptation. Loathe to admit it, he feels himself falling in love with her because she represents a return to the way things used to be.
Then Davy gets sick. All thoughts of the "other" are abandoned as he pledges his life for hers. He dedicates himself to bearing her burden and doing all he can to save her. God takes her anyway.
In the deep contemplation Van goes through after her death, accompanied as always by Lewis' input, he eventually comes to the conclusion that her death was a "severe mercy." He realizes that had Davy survived one of three things would have happened: 1. He would have joined her in the total commitment she demonstrated. But probably not. 2. He would have tried to subtly nudged her away from her devotion and would probably have succeeded. 3. He would have allowed his (unacknowledged until this point) jealousy of God to overwhelm him, and he would have hated her or God or both. Number three seemed the likeliest option. He realized that God, in His mercy, allowed Davy to die, thereby preserving their love in Heaven, so that their love on earth would not die. This realization takes years and a lot of struggle, but in the end he is grateful for that mercy most severe.
Along the way we experience, along with Van, the beauty God is lavishing on them. After Lewis points out that at the end of our lives, we can see that our life was always a glimpse of Heaven or a glimpse of Hell, Van looks for, and finds, those glimpses of Heaven. He begins the book with his first encounter with beauty. Speaking initially in third person, he says,
And of course beauty: the beauty that was for him the link between the ships and the woods and the poems. He remembered as though it were but a few days ago that winter night, himself too young even to know the meaning of beauty, when he had looked up at a delicate tracery of bare black branches against the icy glittering stars: suddenly something that was, all at once, pain and longing for and adoring had welled up in him, almost choking him. He had wanted to tell someone, but he had no words, inarticulate in the pain and glory. It was long afterwards that he realised that it had been his first aesthetic experience, That nameless something that had stopped his heart was Beauty. Even now, for him, "bare branches against the stars" was a synonym for beauty.
He later comes to realize this desire for beauty and timelessness is nothing more than the desire for eternity. God was calling.
Another fascinating part of the book is the theological discussions happening along the way. At one point, Davy and Van are able to describe the Trinity in a way that's quite revealing. Van begins by likening God the Father to God the Incarnate Son as an author to writing himself as a character into his novel. So while the author remains distinct from himself in the novel, nevertheless they are the same person. In the same way, any characters written into the novel also embody parts of the author. Davy compares this to the Holy Spirit. Just as the spirit of the author pervades the book, so does the Holy Spirit pervade God's people. This was a particularly powerful way to demonstrate a concept that is, quite frankly, beyond our reach.
Overall, I loved the book. His insights are bought at the highest price. I love that C. S. Lewis is looking over Van's shoulder through the whole adventure. Beauty, eternity, love.
