Looking For Overland

Looking for Overland

It is a wise professor who, after assigning her class The Portable Atheist by Christopher Hitchens, follows that literary millstone with The Silver Chair. C. S. Lewis is an apt remedy for too much darkness. My favorite bit of monologue from The Silver Chair comes from a Marsh-wiggle named Puddleglum. He’s odd and slimy and sometimes rude, but he has a very brave heart. He and his traveling companions are trapped in a place called Underland—a dark place. The queen of Underland hopes to trick them into believing that Underland is all there is, and even though they’ve seen light before, she comes this close to succeeding. Then Puddleglum pushes hard against her spell and makes the claim that rallies my own heart against the darkness every time I read it:

One word, Ma’am. . . . One word. All you’ve been saying is quite right, I shouldn’t wonder. I’m a chap who always liked to know the worst and then put the best face I can on it. So I won’t deny any of what you said. But there’s one more thing to be said, even so. Suppose we have only dreamed, or made up, all those things—trees and grass and sun and moon and stars and Aslan himself. Suppose we have. Then all I can say is that, in that case, the made-up things seem a good deal more important than the real ones. Suppose this black pit of a kingdom of yours is the only world. Well, it strikes me as a pretty poor one. . . . So, thanking you kindly for our supper, if these two gentlemen and the young lady are ready, we’re leaving your court at once and setting out in the dark to spend our lives looking for Overland.^a

I’m no fool. I see the darkness. I smell the fear and hate and evil. But even so, I remember something different. Something beautiful and true and full of light. Better to set out in the dark in its direction than to deny it ever was, and is, and will be. I’m looking for Overland. Aren’t you?

My soul yearns for you in the night; my spirit within me earnestly seeks you.

Isaiah 26:9, ESV

^a C. S. Lewis, The Silver Chair (New York: Macmillan, 1953), 154–155.