Confessions

If you're expecting me to break down now and tell you everything, you're going to be disappointed (although I'm not short of failures). This week I read most of St Augustine's 'Confessions' for my early church history subject, a copy that had been sitting on my shelves untouched for twelve years. It is an extraordinary book, written around 400 AD, recounting the story of his journey to becoming a Christian in his 30s: analytical, emotional, philosophical, psychological and searingly honest. For the first time in this course I had a sense of being touched by a writer from that period.

One poignant aspect was Augustine's experience of grief when a close friend dies. I was moved by an opening remark:

How can I understand what you did at that time, my God? How can I plumb the unfathomable depths of your judgement? 

Even the great theologian, looking back twenty years later, does not claim to know how his friend's death made sense in God's purposes. In view of the rest of the book, one might expect him to see the death as an event used explicitly by God in the process of Augustine's conversion, but he refrains from claiming that perspective. So I would rather say that I don't know the purpose of Jen's death, than try to find some shreds of good as a justification.

The impact of that grief still echoes across the intervening 1600 years.

My heart grew sombre with grief, and wherever I looked I saw only death. My own country became a torment and my own home a grotesque misery. All that we had done together was now a grim ordeal without him. My eyes searched everywhere for him, but he was not there to be seen. I hated all the places we had known together, because he was not in them and they could no longer whisper to me 'Here he comes!' as they would have done had he been alive but absent for a while.....  Tears alone were sweet to me, for in my heart's desire they had taken the place of my friend.

Further on he adds

I lived in a fever, convulsed with tears and sighs that allowed me neither rest nor peace of mind. My soul was a burden, bruised and bleeding. It was tired of the man who carried it, but I found no place to set it down to rest. Neither the charms of the countryside nor the sweet scents of a garden could soothe it. It found no peace in song or laughter, none in the company of friends at table or the pleasures of love, none even in books or poetry. Everything that was not what my friend had been was dull and distasteful. I had heart only for sighs and tears, for in them alone I found some shred of consolation. But if I tried to stem my tears, a heavy load of misery weighed me down. I knew, Lord, that I ought to offer it up to you, for you would heal it. But this I would not do, not could I, especially as I did not think of you as anything real or substantial.

There is eventual recovery:

Time never stands still, nor does it idly pass without effect upon our feelings or fail to work its wonders on the mind. It came and went, day after day, and as it passed it filled me with fresh hope and new thoughts to remember. Little by little it pieced me together again by means of the old pleasures which I had once enjoyed. But it was replaced, if not by sorrow of another kind, by things which held the germ of sorrow still to come. For the grief I felt for the loss of my friend had struck so easily into my inmost heart because I had poured out my soul upon him, like water upon sand, loving a man who was mortal as though he were never to die. 

It's notable in the Confessions that Augustine elevates friendship, and sees romantic and sexual love as a pollution of friendship. He has a long relationship with a mistress, with whom he has a son, but her name is never mentioned. I'm reminded of the ending of Umberto Eco's book 'The Name of the Rose' - 'I can't even remember her name'. Jen was easily my closest friend, both intellectually and emotionally, as well as being my wife. Perhaps Augustine's time did not allow him such a kind of love, or perhaps (as my lecturer suggested) he was too broken to be able to experience it. I'm extremely grateful for the extraordinary friends I do have, and the help they have been, but even as I slowly make more friends I am reminded of the gap left by Jen.

 I am comforted though by the reflections that follow:

Blessed are those who love you, O God, and love their friends in you and their enemies for your sake. They alone will never lose those who are dear to them, for they love them in one who is never lost, in God, our God who made heaven and earth and fills them with his presence, because by filling them he made them. No one can lose you, my God, unless he forsakes you.

 I know that I have not ultimately lost Jen, and I rejoice in that, while still knowing that there are years we will never get back.