Yesterday I read Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness. I grabbed it as we were leaving the house at 4am on Friday, an afterthought of nostalgia.
The copy I have still contained within it the notes I made in November 1976 when studying the text in my first term at university on a course called 'European Literature and Thought'. My handwriting has not improved.
Conrad's character sails into the heart of darkness – the Belgian Congo as it was only being discovered, but already being exploited – and encounters the darkness of the human heart. And, meeting Kurtz, he observes:
Everything belonged to him – but that was a trifle. The thing was to know what he belonged to, how many powers of darkness claimed him for their own. (p.70)
That's always the big question, isn't it? Not what I have grasped, but what has grasped me. Not what I think I have possessed, but what has possessed me.
And it doesn't only apply to the dark stuff. It is the same with grace and love and mercy and generosity. Is my grasp of them more or less important than their grasp of me? Or us?
It was this ultimate clarity that caused Kurtz to utter his final words: “The horror! The horror!” But, it doesn't have to end like that.
Anyway, that was yesterday. Today I read John Williams's novel Stoner. Highly hyped, it is the sort of thing I would usually avoid. But, it is beautiful and sad and true. Here we encounter a life lived in relative obscurity, but it is a life ordinarily lived. And, again, it speaks of loss and love and a beautifully expressed account of an inability to articulate what matters when it really matters. Life disappoints, relationships imprison and illusions are maintained.
It doesn't have to be this way; but, it often is. And anyone who engages in pastoral ministry knows it all too well.
(I don't just read miserable books on holiday. Next up is Alan Johnson's This Boy. Please tell me it is cheerful…)