Melancholy and Certainty

When I was younger, great art seemed to me that which was most shrouded in melancholy. My favorite word was "tenebrous," because it evoked the essence of my preoccupation, the darkness and the desolate chill I felt all good stories must impart. The word Gothic had more power to excite me than any other. I constructed a dark dwelling and sat in it, hunched, because there is no other way to live beneath a roof made only of gloom and shadows.

There is something tantalizing about the nighttime, some mysterion of the dark that calls our attention and demands our gaze. Objects become indistinct, and though familiar in sunlight, in the murk they turn traitor and shapeshift, obscuring what we thought we knew. That is the true delight of the melancholic, to be in a constant state of flux, to be perpetually uncertain, to ask questions at all times.

As I got older, I saw that much of my melancholia was a mere construction, built to house a childish understanding of creativity. I turned against it, the way a fond but sarcastic son turns against his father, always poking fun, always mocking, always denying kinship. Eventually I even made fun of myself, reading poems I'd written years ago in front of other people, deriding that former version of myself whose vocabulary was limited to words like "autumn," "death," and "despondent."

Eventually even the mockery faded, all melancholy dropped by a littered roadside, where everyone must get rid of their burdens or be dragged with them into quicksand. I learned to have no fear of the dark, but also to have no great love for it, to traverse a blank landscape by feel for no other reason than to obliterate the mystery. We don't live in a world of perpetual glee and kindness, and to pretend we do is as wrong as to pretend we live in a world of mild weeping and eternal twilight.

We simply live in the world. The world is in constant cosmic tension: created by God for the purpose of being good, and diverted from that purpose by the ubiquitous presence of sin. The proper response to such a dire situation is not to pen weeping poems with tear-diluted ink. The proper response is not to revel in the darkness. The proper response is not to bury ourselves in angst, the heaviest earth of the human soul, no matter how synthetic one's particular angst may be.

Christ's people have no need for the comfort of uncertainty. The enemies of God relish unknowing, finding a gleam of hope in the perceived fact that "no one can know anything." If they die, they reason, there's a chance something good will happen, rather than the utter misery of Hell and its godless fleshliness. They cling to shadows. They love melancholy and angst, the purposelessness of fear, the nihilism of knowledge.

We ought to know better. To know Christ is to revel in certainty—the certainty of our own sin, the certainty of the Cross, the certainty of Yahweh's dominion over death and evil, the certainty of life forever with Him. We have no need of the shadows; in fact, the truth we carry close to our hearts is the truth that dispels all gloom, that blanches the darkness, that turns what is hidden into brilliant blinding light.

Of course we aren't without sadness. Sorrow dogs each of us as long as we make our home here, the real Hell-hound so many have feared. We can't outrun sorrow, and we mustn't try to diminish its power by making it less horrible, by softening the harsh black into the sepia tones of maudlin melancholy and misplaced sentiment. To do so is to eschew not only the truth, but the certainty of light we have in Jesus Christ our Lord.

God is very near.

I see a field of barley swaying to its own musicality, augmented by a diminished sea wind coming off the hills. The sun is round but gentle, the breeze enough to keep things cool, the deep sky a lesson in prayer. Birds don't need to fly on such a day; they simply unfurl their little sail-like wings and move to the rhythms of the air. There is no one in the field.

I see a green meadow with daisies like daytime stars, and there are two rabbits in it, eating. But I don't look at the rabbits, I see the way the two hills converge to form a V, and the way the bottom of the dell is like a manger I want to sleep in, pocketed from evil and turmoil. Then I do watch the rabbits, running through the grass and flowers, but not for fear.

I see an abandoned house at the edge of woods, the doorframe wreathed in wisteria (or maybe lilac) with asters where the footpath should be, and foxglove shaking their deadly bells inside on the dirt floor. It is wholly quiet, with no music of animals, men or wind, a place guarded by beauty and ancient power over the living. When I go there, I step lightly in reverence for old ghosts.

I see the greenest river in the world. It's not green from scum or filth, but from trees and bushes reflecting off the surface in the daylight. The fish are not afraid, knowing fishermen will find noisier waters to do their killing, knowing the hand of God rests on the surface, hiding behind vines and leaf-heavy branches. The water flows almost without sound, but with enough sound to lull you to sleep.

I see a mountain like a ram's head jutting out of the earth, locking horns with the sky to see which can successfully throw the other. Every revolution of the globe gives a false impression, and mountain and sky both feel strong and without equal. They have no equal. Instead, their Better sits aloof and watches the frightful combat from clouds of dissolving fire.

I see an ocean too wide to be loved. Men love the thought of the sea more than the sea itself, but it uses them like a fierce maiden, sucks blood from their veins and replaces it with salt, turns gentle men into ruthless figureheads of rust and beaten wood. The sea crashes at my feet, and I know in time it will take me, too.

I see Jesus in everything good. He is rubbing grain between His palms in the grain field; laying on His back in the meadow; tending the flowers on a worn-out path; parting the green river waters; riding the clouds like a chariot; walking on the furious waves. He is not the thing itself but its master, the Lord of Heaven, and the God of Earth, friend of the meek and scourge of the proud.