A Severe Mercy
by Sheldon Vanauken
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Book Summary Information
Author: Sheldon VanaukenEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 1987-07-01
ISBN: 0060688246
Number of pages: 240
Publisher: HarperOne
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Book Reviews of A Severe Mercy
Book Review: A love that lives on...
Summary: 5 Stars
Not everyone will share Van and Davy's sentiments. Not everyone loves poetry or piano or nature itself as passionately as they did. You can take them as sentimental and all those negative, sappy things that you associate with springtime and love poetry, but you'd be missing the point. Perhaps your passions are not at like theirs, perhaps you passions are not even discernibly "passionate" compared to theirs, but I guarantee that there is something you love-hunger after even-which if out of it's proper place could become an idol. For Sheldon and Davy, the most beautiful thing they had ever experienced was their love. And the poetry, the music, the flowers, the springtime, became an organic part of this love. In light of the fact that they knew or desired nothing of the Christianity they would come to accept later in life, it is not difficult to understand why their love became their idol. I wonder if the reviewers who dismissed the love between Van and Davy as strange in some way know anything about the human heart. In the human heart there is a void without God, and we will naturally try to fill it in some way. What made the pagan love between Van and Davy so dangerous in a sense was the fact that their idol was in their minds so close to being perfect-though even in the pagan days they were aware (even tortured by the fact) that the earthy paradise they had created could not last forever. It is not surprising or unnatural to me that they worshipped their love the same way it is not strange that some ancient civilizations used to worship the sun. If our souls have not found God, we will try to find something that resembles Him. They started with marriage- the model for the perfect relationship between Christ and the church- and mistook it for the real thing. (A marriage which, Sheldon notes, they had a desire to make official in some kind of `ceremony' despite the fact that their beliefs at the time held that kind of ritual as unnecessary.) But mercifully, they were able to find a greater truth. They were taught that they could not share every thing with each other as they had so desired. They learned, though it was not easy, that the only complete sharing that can take place is the giving over of ones life to God. When God entered their lives, they had the first truly `individual' experiences within their relationship- their conversions. Their love was final knocked if its pedestal and put in it's proper place. Though still very much in love, it was a love no longer guided by the internal principles mapped out in the pagan days of the shining barrier, it was a love guided by a Higher source. And this is the only way a love that would have been rendered meaningless at death lives on.
Summary of A Severe Mercy
Beloved, profoundly moving account of the author's marriage, the couple's search for faith and friendship with C. S. Lewis, and a spiritual strength that sustained Vanauken after his wife's untimely death.A Severe Mercy, by Sheldon Vanauken, is a heart-rending love story described by its author as "the spiritual autobiography of a love rather than of the lovers." Vanauken chronicles the birth of a powerful pagan love borne out of the relationship he shares with his wife, Davy, and describes the growth of their relationship and the dreams that they share. As a symbol of their love, they name their dream schooner the Grey Goose, "for the grey goose, if its mate is killed flies on alone and never takes another."
While studying at Oxford, Sheldon and Davy develop a friendship with C.S. Lewis, under whose influence and with much intellectual scrutiny they accept the Christian doctrine. As their devotion to God intensifies, Sheldon realizes that he is no longer Davy's primary love--God is. Within this discovery begins a brewing jealousy.
Shortly after, Davy acquires a fatal illness. After her death Sheldon embarks on an intense experience of grief, "to find the meaning of it, taste the whole of it ... to learn from sorrow whatever it had to teach." Through painstaking reveries, he comes to discover the meaning of "a mercy as severe as death, a severity as merciful as love." He learns that her death "had these results: It brought me as nothing else could do to know and end my jealously of God. It saved her faith from assault. ...And it saved our love from perishing."
Replete with 18 letters from C.S. Lewis, A Severe Mercy addresses some of the universal questions that surround faith--the existence of God and the reasons behind tragedy. --Jacque Holthusen
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