On the finding of wisdom

Apparently, everybody who’s anybody has read The Chronicles of Prydain as a small child.

I must confess that I am not anybody.

The advantage to not being anybody (besides a delightful Emily Dickinson poem) is that I got to mildly horrify at least half a dozen friends who are anybody. (It’s rather fun, sometimes, horrifying your friends.) I always figured I would read it eventually, when the time came around.

Well, dear horrified friends, the time has come around.

For those who, like me, are not anybody,1 The Chronicles of Prydain is a five-book fantasy series by Lloyd Alexander. It was published in the sixties, and it’s strongly reminiscent of The Lord of the Rings, though written for a younger audience.2

Prydain is stuffed full of the classics of fantasy (fitting, as it is a classic of fantasy). You’ve got a farm boy dreaming of adventure, a high-spirited princess, a grizzled old wizard, and kings and heroes by the dozen.

What surprised me most about the series, though, is its strong philosophical bent.

After I finished the fifth book, I texted some of the friends who’d cajoled me into being anybody. “There are three main things that stood out to me,” I said.

In case you’re Nobody too,3 here are those three things.

The main character of The Chronicles of Prydain is an assistant pig-keeper named Taran. It is beside him that we learn what victory is. One of the most poignant mentors is an old potter with clay-covered hands, and it is from him that Taran learns the secret to contentment.

Wisdom is not something that is reserved for a specific class of people. Joy and purpose are found in everyday people being faithful in everyday lives.

Yes, there are warriors—yes, there are kings—and this is why! Warriors and kings and heroes exist to protect the everyday people. Everything they do is to allow that central simplicity to go on flourishing.

The center of a culture is always the home. It is in everyday tasks and relationships. Every other institution is meant to protect and guard and govern that center, to allow it to continue, unhindered and unharmed.

The ordinary is the ideal. Virtue is meant to be home-grown.

There is no doubt that it is around the family and the home that all the greatest virtues, the most dominating virtues of human society, are created, strengthened, and maintained.

— Anonymous4

There’s a passage in the fifth book, The High King, where the chief bard addresses our group of heroes. He foretells how each will find wisdom—so-and-so will learn it through working the earth; such-and-such holds wisdom but does not know it yet.

And then he arrives at Taran.

“There are those,” he said gently, “who must first learn loss, despair, and grief. Of all paths to wisdom, this is the cruelest and the longest. Are you one who must follow such a way? This even I cannot know. If you are, take heart nonetheless. Those who reach the end do more than gain wisdom. As rough wool becomes cloth, and crude clay a vessel, so do they change and fashion wisdom for others, and what they give back is greater than what they won.”5

I believe that good can come out of suffering. That idea is a foundational belief of Christianity.

But it’s an easy belief to misconstrue—to phrase it in such a way that suffering becomes a good thing.

And it’s not! Loss, despair, and grief are not good things. Christians are not required to become sadists and enjoy pain. The prophets continually call for the people of God to stop calling what is evil good.

Suffering in and of itself is not good. It does not naturally lead to wisdom. One thing I love about Prydain is that it’s clear about this: suffering is not the only way to gain wisdom. It is one of many paths.

You can find wisdom and goodness in suffering.

But whenever that happens, it’s because something else has entered into that suffering and brought it out for you. This is the mystery and the glory of the incarnation.

God can draw good out of suffering—if you allow it, if you seek for it, if you are attentive to it. But in and of itself, suffering only makes us selfish.

There is wisdom to be found in joy, too. Places of peace can teach us much—the heroes of The Lord of the Rings, the peace-loving hobbits, act so bravely because they love the idyllic home they have left behind. As the bard says, suffering is not the only way to gain wisdom—but those who grow wise through suffering may bless others in ways they cannot imagine.

This, I believe, is the prominent two-fold theme of The Chronicles of Prydain:

First, that a man6 is measured by his actions and choices. Second, that the seeking matters more than the finding, because the finding is not always in our control.

Victory is not always up to us. You can go on a quest and not find what you’re looking for. You can march off to war and not conquer the enemy.

And yet—the fact that you went! That you looked! That you set off to seek and fight and try, that you made a choice—that says immense things about you, whatever the ends.

There’s an idea that the ends justify the means, which is a terrible philosophy on many grounds. But if you believe in providence, one fundamental way that idea crumbles is that the ends are not in our control. You cannot justify the means by an end you have no say over.

How you get there, how you travel, how you walk, how you live, how you make choices: that is what is in your control. That is what you will be held accountable for and that is what shows the measure of your character.

An early reader of The Lord of the Rings wrote Tolkien a letter in 1963. She wanted to know: in the author’s mind, did Frodo fail? He didn’t actually throw the ring in, after all.

The letter is beautiful, and you can read it here. Essentially, Tolkien draws a distinction between a technical failure (yes, Frodo did not throw the ring into Mount Doom) and a moral failure (no, he was not at fault for it). There was no distinction, in Tolkien’s mind, between Frodo being crushed by a falling rock and Frodo’s mind giving way under months of demonic oppression. Both would be technical failures, not moral ones.

The reason I bring this up is that it’s another case of the seeking mattering more than the finding. Frodo set off on his quest out of love for the Shire. He willfully chose mercy throughout his journey. He carried on under strains that you and I cannot imagine.

He gave his all for the seeking, and when his own strength was spent, providence7 took care of the finding.

Sometimes the world may be bleak and barren, but a man who seeks for goodness and courage and compassion—that is a victory, no matter the ends.

And in time, the seeking becomes the finding, because the seeker sows the seeds of his own longing.

There’s an old anecdote of a child who crosses a desert. There are no wells along the desert path, and so the first night, the child kneels in the sand and digs. His hands bleed a bit, but he finds water, drinks it, and goes to sleep.

The next night, his hands are raw—but he still needs water, so he digs another well, wincing as he works. On and on it goes as he journeys across the desert—his hands bleed, scabs reopen, but he has to find water, so he keeps digging wells and crying himself to sleep.

By the time the child reaches the other side of the desert, he’s exhausted and injured. A small hospital takes him in. He drifts through painful dreams for days.

The first morning he starts to regain his strength, another child, one he knew on the other side of the desert, skips into the room. Her hands are full of flowers. “I’ve just finished the journey across the desert!” she says.

“How?” he asks, his voice rasping. He doesn’t understand how she can be so healthy, so happy, so full of life after such a journey.

“Don’t you know?” she says. “Someone dug wells all across the path. The water bubbled up and overflowed, and now there are oasises and flowers to sleep by every night.”

1. Books: I’ve been listening to the audiobook of Rainbow Children in ten-minute increments. It was a favorite of mine growing up, and it’s a delight to revisit. (If you’ve read it, let me know—which of the characters do you relate to most? I fear I am a Walter, in many ways.)

2. Habits: Writing letters! It’s so much fun. I just picked up some new stationary and it’s very pretty.

3. Tea: I had a cup of peach tea while I worked on this article, and it’s rather good. A friend gave me some mint tea a few days ago that I’ve also been enjoying.

4. From the Archives: “Tell me what you see” (the necessity of dignity in compassion)