A Severe Mercy: A Story of Faith, Tragedy and Triumph

In the experiences related in the fifth chapter, the author describes his eventual face-to-face meeting with Lewis for the first time when he is invited to dine at the formal hall in Magdalen College, where Lewis taught. The heart of the chapter, however, is the Studio, the name they give to the tiny flat in the middle of Oxford—located on Pusey Lane, right behind Pusey Hall and adjacent to the world-famous Ashmolean museum—where they cultivate a spirit of radical hospitality, opening their home to friends and acquaintances alike at all hours of the day and night. The Studio allowed them to deepen both their faith and their friendships in ways they would never experience in quite the same way again; amid their life in Oxford, they realized that it wouldn’t last forever, and this allowed them to live each day with a sense of finality and appreciation for the present moment without regard to what the future might bring.

What the focus on the Studio does (in addition to relating their life at the time) is to give a sense of place within the narrative. The various places Van and Davy live or find important are all named—Glenmerle, Grey Goose, The Studio, Li’l Dreary, Mole End—and as named, they all take on a particular character, almost inhabiting the narrative as extra characters in the drama of their lives. The Studio is perhaps their most cherished home, even as it was a place where they spent the least amount of time. With the cultivation of hospitality also came the cultivation and reblossoming of their love for one another; not that it had ever really dimmed, but they had experienced an amount of disharmony amid their conversion, and they were now again as one. With Van and Davy on the same page again, so to speak, their ability to live out the ideals of the Shining Barrier was now a reality again. Preparing to leave Oxford at the end of their few short years there, the author describes how their new focus on the future—where Van would be teaching at a college in Virginia—allowed them to rediscover each other anew in the wake of the conversion and newfound lease on life that their faith had sparked in them.

Chapter 6 introduces the couple’s move from Oxford to Virginia, and the descent of Davy’s health into terminal illness, resulting in her eventual death. The most surprising thing they experience upon first arriving at Lynchburg College is the reverse culture shock that takes them completely by surprise. Usually, culture shock happens when one leaves their native country and home for a foreign one, the shock being the result of long-held expectations and assumptions not playing out or existing in the same way in one’s new location. It can be quite jarring to encounter a totally different way of life or worldview that takes time getting used to. Van and Davy experience reverse culture shock, a similar phenomenon, though not as common, that happens when one returns to their native home and finds that they had assimilated so well to their foreign location that coming home feels almost like breaking new ground.

The primary cause of this culture shock was not the dramatically decreased academic ability of the college students compared to Oxford but the very different religious and cultural atmosphere. Oxford not only cultivated their Christianity in an explicit, evangelistic way, but the city itself also been a kind of gospel message that rang in harmony with an expectation of high-culture living in all aspects of life. The author relates how the architecture and the high-society cultural expectations had, for them, gone hand in hand with the faith, and so to bring their faith with them into a community where none of the other cultural markers were present was jarring.

The title of the chapter, “The Barrier Breached,” gives away the central conceit: The Shining Barrier they had erected so long ago and that had done so much to encourage and protect their love was now finally shown to be far less impenetrable than it had seemed previously. This occurs in two ways, the first being the ultimate cause of the second. The first and most fundamental way the barrier proves faulty lies in the fact that the barrier had initially been constructed to protect only two: Van and Davy. Having embraced Christianity, however, their bond now included God, to whom they owed an ever-greater allegiance, devotion, and love than they owed one another. This shift in the relationship dynamic proved to be a tricky one as Davy grew deeper in her relationship with God, while Van felt like he was holding back in various ways, unwilling to dive as deep as Davy.

This new dynamic left Van feeling increasingly lonely, leading to the second breach in the barrier: the presence of Jane. The Appeal to Love that Van and Davy had nurtured for so long didn’t seem to have any power any longer; even if in the past Van would have traveled alongside Davy simply to be with her, regardless of the circumstance, it was not the case now. This leaves an opening for Jane to enter, their dear friend from England who had come to visit for a few weeks. For whatever reason, Jane was able to reignite many long-past feelings and desires that the three of them, along with their other friends in Oxford, had spent so much time talking about and living out. With Davy consumed by her new work and mission with the local parish’s Sunday school programs, Van and Jane spent more time together until Van realized that he and she might be falling in love with one another.

Jane ultimately returns to England, leaving Van and Davy behind, but Van comes to realize that he had begun to feel love for Jane out of his love for someone with the same desires and loves as he possessed—love of God and truth and beauty most of all—but he also realized that Jane represented a kind of nostalgia for their Oxford days. His love, as he admits, was perfectly chaste, and he had not lessened in his devotion to Davy, but this new ability to love others came as a result of the Shining Barrier being torn down by God, opening up new spaces for love and friendship in their lives that simply never would have been possible before. The old Van and Davy would not have entertained the idea of being so close to another besides the one, but now that they had begun cultivating Christian charity, they were working through how to love others in a more genuine and heartfelt way. With the barrier breached, the sixth chapter comes to a close with the threat that the barrier could be dissolved altogether: The doctors had given Davy a diagnosis of terminal liver failure, and she was expected to die within months.