Reflections on Lilith

 

            Lilith is the last fantasy novel that our father among the saints George MacDonald ever wrote and also his most theologically adventurous. It was published just 10 years before his death and one can see that he had been thinking a lot of what would come next after he died when he wrote this book, and the result is rather lovely. I first read this book several years ago when I first learned of George MacDonald. I read his Unspoken Sermons first and was amazed at the power, vitality, and truth within those pages, so I started picking up his fiction and Lilith was the first one I’d read. I will be the first to say that, even though he considered himself a poet, he was a much better preacher than a writer of fiction or poetry. He isn’t terrible, but he isn’t subtle, and I’ll just say that one doesn’t really read his books for the plot or characters. He is very heavy-handed and moralizes a lot and uses rather clunky allegories, which is good when preaching, but not so good in a work that is supposed to be entertaining. In this book he does something strange I haven’t seen him do elsewhere-- at particularly solemn moments, he switches from vernacular English to the thees and thous of 16^th century English, which was quite jarring and unnecessary. I also didn’t like the weird baby talk and one dimensionality of characters like the little ones who are absolutely perfect and adorable, etc. I can’t say why, but I was really put off by the part when they were acting like birds in trees. At times, the plot was difficult for me to follow, and I had to reread and go back several times to figure out what was going on – it is not smoothly written.

            All that being said, this book is still a treasure of mysteries, imagination, and if one does heed what MacDonald is trying to teach here it will enrich their life and possibly change it for the better. The protagonist is Mr. Vane, who has come into possession of his family’s house and their massive library where he begins seeing an old ghost who turns into a raven and times and is also called Mr. Raven. He follows the ghost into a strange new world through a mirror similar to what Alice does in Through the Looking Glass. This world is well detailed, and I definitely got a sense of its eeriness and horror like setting. Despite being very on the nose and rather forced, I like what the raven was teaching Mr. Vane. Some highlights are when he teaches him that the best way to pray is in our own silent hearts and that the way to understand ourselves and our world better is, counterintuitively, through trying to understand another’s first. This reminds me of Paul Evdokimov’s constant refrain that we can only save ourselves by saving others. Mr. Vane learns this firsthand when he sees the gruesome dance of the dead in the evil forest.

“What a hell of horror, to wander alone, a bare existence never going out of itself, never widening its life in another life, but bound with the cords of its poor peculiarities, lying an eternal prisoner in the dungeon of its own being! I began to learn that it was impossible to live for oneself even, save in the presence of others” (114)

George MacDonald also does something here that I love, he chastises me to the core of my being. Mr. Vane learns that he had preferred the company of books and pens to that of people and comes to find that “Any man is more than the greatest of books.” This is a problem I often have. Don’t get me wrong, I think people don’t read enough in our digital age, myself included. But I can also read so much at times and be so focused that I ignore people. I guess the goal is to find a good balance here, which I still have yet to do. May God help me to do so.

            Another prevalent theme in the book deals with the state of humanity’s ignorance and how we are to go about becoming wise. I need to read Macdonald’s biography again because I am certain that he must have read Plato. His answer comes straight from Socrates’ lips in the dialogues – “the business of the universe is to make such a fool of you that you will know yourself for one, and so begin to be wise!” (32). To admit you know less that you do can be very difficult, indeed, “Most people take more than a lifetime to learn that they have learned nothing and done less!” (196). We are unwise because we are unwilling to see how ignorant we are and due to that ignorance “what you call riddles are truths and seem riddles because you are not true.” It is our work to answer these riddles because “they will go on asking themselves until you understand yourself” (60) and no one can teach this to us but ourselves – each of us is, in a way, a monk before God. This is why St. Isaac the Syrian said that this life was given to us for repentance – this doesn’t just mean feeling bad for being a sinner – it means finding out who you are and loving yourself and others as yourself so that you can finally understand why you were made. As Mr. Vane learns “to understand is not more wonderful than to love” (77). We must be careful, however, not to cleave understanding from love. As Lilith teaches Mr. Vane, “There are things I cannot explain until you have become capable of understanding them – which can only be when love is grown perfect” (181). Love comes first, but not at the expense of understanding, understanding flows forth from loving action. The spiritual journey is fraught with pitfalls, however, and we must remain vigilant to not fall into them and so the first step in loving others is not even actively engaging in love towards them, because this can be contorted; it is in not doing them evil, by pulling the beam out of our own eyes, and this is hard enough (97). I’ve been stuck on this step for years.

            The last theme I will cover in this post struck me most powerfully on my first reading of this book and has stuck with me. This last part makes all of the inadequacies I mentioned at the beginning worth toiling through. It is stated softly at first as the idea that we are not yet individuals but must become so and also that we do not yet have wills, but hopefully one day will have free will (24). In between my first and second readings of this book, I encountered the thought of St. Maximus the Confessor in a course given by Dr. Jordan Daniel Wood and the parallels here are striking. St. Maximus taught that the world has not yet been created, that the process of creation is still going on and will only be considered created once God is all in all as St. Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 15. This doctrine is very big in the Eastern Orthodox Church. Bishop Kallistos Ware oft quotes the maxim that we must become who we are. I find it quite amazing to see such similarities when I’m almost certain MacDonald had no knowledge of Maximus’ writings or the Eastern Church. The final part of the book is MacDonald’s most in-depth look at how a terrible, evil sinner can be converted to a saint and is breathtaking in its moral intelligence, depth, and beauty. We find out that the raven is actually Adam and that before Eve, he had a wife who was evil named Lilith and she goes around killing children to prolong her life. She has a disfigured hand which is symbolic of her inability to let go of what she has done.

            Adam begins to teach Lilith that she doesn’t need to hold onto the guilt and everything else. A flood of hope washed over me when I read his words: “Good and not Evil is the Universe. The battle between them may last for countless ages, but it must end” (209). To those who think that evil can be conquered by either completely getting rid of it or by sectioning it off by itself in a place called Hell, MacDonald says that is not good enough. “Annihilation itself is no death to evil. Only good where evil was, is evil dead. An evil thing must live with its evil until it chooses to be good. That alone is the slaying of evil” (215). This is reminiscent of a quote I love in his Unspoken Sermons – “The only vengeance worth having on sin is to make the sinner himself its executioner.” MacDonald is very similar to the patristic universalists in this regard – all will be saved, but it isn’t some automatic salvation that is done extrinsic to our wills. We must learn to cooperate and repent, and this work can only be done by us, through the saving power of God’s salvific will and His providence will see us through it. We all will reach the top of the mountain, some will just go by much thornier, longer, and more dangerous paths. “The sooner one begins to do what has to be done, the better!” (28).

How exactly is this salvation accomplished in the most hardened of hearts? Much like St. Maximus, MacDonald seems to also believe that we have the power to create false versions of ourselves and that God can compel us to see what we have made of ourselves in relation to what he intended us to be. This isn’t some extrinsic compulsion though, which Adam tells Lilith would be worthless. Rather it is, “a light that goes deeper than the will, a light that lights up the darkness behind it: that light can change your will, can make it truly yours and not another’s – not the Shadow’s… there is no slave but the creature that wills against its creator” (282). We may have made ourselves into something evil, but God will remake us, not in the sense of changing us fundamentally, but in restoring what we were, by setting right what went wrong, not inventing something new and calling it us, when it isn’t. Eventually, after we see the horror and evil, we have created, MacDonald is convinced that repentance isn’t far off, but he isn’t romantic about it. It is serious work and isn’t done all at once by magic, it is done slowly, gradually, piecemeal over time with starts and stutters along the way. You can tell he has walked this path himself. To move forward we must let go and this means we must die into new life. Before resurrection is the passion and the death. To get to heaven we must go through hell. But we must not be afraid because “death cannot hurt her who dies doing the work given her to do” (299). This will happen to all of us, as Adam says – “Every creature must one night yield himself and lie down. He was made for liberty and must not be left a slave!” But after we are clothed with Death which is but the radiant garment of life, all dying will be done and death will be no more (336). For those who resist, “they die many times, die constantly, keep dying deep, never have done dying” (337). It behooves you to start on this process ASAP. If this life is not as real as the one that comes after, does that mean that it is just a dream? Before I conclude, I want to say that I’ve left much out and I highly encourage others to read this book to get the full picture. I’ll conclude this reflection with the beautiful words of Novalis that MacDonald ended this story with, “Our life is no dream, but it should and will perhaps become one” (356).