The Light from Within

I've developed something of a Christmas tradition, on this blog, of quoting one of my favourite passages from G.K. Chesterton. It's a meditation on the nativity scene, and it comes from his great work of Catholic apologetics The Everlasting Man. (What a wonderful title that is, incidentally!)

've had a curious experience regarding this passage. Actually, I've had the same curious experience twice. On two occasions, after reading this passage aloud, somebody has told me either that they literally didn't know what Chesterton was talking about, or that the passage didn't move them at all. On both occasions, it was at a Chesterton-themed event in the Central Catholic Library. (But two different people, obviously.)

Well, everybody has different tastes, and I've often been left cold by various experiences that are supposed to be universally enthralling (like listening to Mozart, sadly for me). But I think this passage will appeal to many people.

Here it is:

No other story, no pagan legend or philosophical anecdote or historical event, does in fact affect any of us with that peculiar and even poignant impression produced on us by the word Bethlehem. No other birth of a god or childhood of a sage seems to us to be Christmas or anything like Christmas. It is either too cold or too frivolous, or too formal and classical, or too simple and savage, or too occult and complicated. Not one of us, whatever his opinions, would ever go to such a scene with the sense that he was going home. He might admire it because it was poetical, or because it was philosophical or any number of other things in separation; but not because it was itself. The truth is that there is a quite peculiar and individual character about the hold of this story on human nature; it is not in its psychological substance at all like a mere legend or the life of a great man.

It does not exactly in the ordinary sense turn our minds to greatness; to those extensions and exaggerations of humanity which are turned into gods and heroes, even by the healthiest sort of hero worship. It does not exactly work outwards, adventurously to the wonders to be found at the ends of the earth. It is rather something that surprises us from behind, from the hidden and personal part of our being; like that which can sometimes take us off our guard in the pathos of small objects or the blind pieties of the poor. It is rather as if a man had found an inner room in the very heart of his own house, which he had never suspected; and seen a light from within. It is if he found something at the back of his own heart that betrayed him into good. It is not made of what the world would call strong materials; or rather it is made of materials whose strength is in that winged levity with which they brush and pass. It is all that is in us but a brief tenderness that there made eternal; all that means no more than a momentary softening that is in some strange fashion become strengthening and a repose; it is the broken speech and the lost word that are made positive and suspended unbroken; as the strange kings fade into a far country and the mountains resound no more with the feet of the shepherds; and only the night and the cavern lie in fold upon fold over something more human than humanity.

Before I say what I love about this passage, here's one thing I don't like, and that takes away from my pleasure in it a little bit: the last few lines. Why mention the Magi and the shepherds leaving? To me, it adds an unpleasant touch of melancholy, since the "classic" assembly has broken up. (Yes, I realize the Magi may not have actually arrived until long after the birth.)

But that's a small detail, compared to what's wonderful about it.

I've long been of the belief that "home" is the most powerful word in the English language. At least, it's the word that I find most powerful; more powerful than "love", "we", "yes", or even "God".

It's a powerful word, but it's not a simple word. We all know that you can live in a place for ten years, or any amount of  years, without it ever becoming "home". Similarly, you can come to a place for the first time and suddenly feel you're home. Like in the John Denver lyric:

He was born in the summer of his twenty-seventh year

Coming home to a place he'd never been before.

The idea that the Christmas nativity scene is a place where "all men are at home" is a powerful one, and is also explored in Chesterton's great poem "The House of Christmas". It hardly needs any commentary; I think we all feel it instinctively. But it's quite strange and wonderful, to think that this imaginative reconstruction of something that happened long, long ago, in a culture that is totally foreign to us, can have such a sense of homecoming about it.

One phrase that especially delights me in this passage is: "It is the broken speech and the lost word that are made positive and suspended unbroken". It makes think of those evocative words from Scripture: "A bruised weed shall he not break, and a smoking flax shall he not quench". It puts into words an impression I've had all my life: that, although money talks and political power does indeed grow out of the barrel of a gun, the things that ultimately move the world the most are the most airy and insubstantial.

But my favourite part of the passage is this part, which excites me beyond all words: "It is rather as if a man had found an inner room in the very heart of his own house, which he had never suspected; and seen a light from within."

Reader, how can I express how deeply this stirs the depths of my soul? But perhaps I don't have to. Perhaps everybody, or at least many people, feel the same thing. Why else is that moment in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, where Lucy gropes her way through the fur coats into another world, so memorable? Or why else has The Secret Garden enthralled the imagination of so many generations?

Personally, I've had literal dreams about finding "an inner room in the very heart of his own house"; although often it's much more than a room. Similarly, every since I was a child, stories of hidden panels, trap doors, secret passages, and things found in the attic have not only thrilled me, but thrilled me in a particular way different from any other. It's the idea that there are horizons to be discovered, not at the other end of the world, but right where you are; or perhaps, even within your own self.