Imagine we are a small tribe living in a woodland clearing near the end of the last ice age. The long frozen dark is slowly cracking, melting in bits and puddles, flecks of light playing here and there on crocus tips. We drink from those tiny pools, frigid fresh water that tastes like life. Sometimes we forget the still-dark parts of the wood, the hidden predators, the rumors of other people living in cold, dank caves without fresh water. Sometimes we wander deep into the brambles, chasing after tales of richer lakes hidden in the dark, finding ourselves scratched and snagged.
Most nights we gather near the hearth and tell stories. Our best stories are about the end of winter. The storyteller holds a polished stone, etched with the image of a verdant shore flowing with game into a vast water extending, it seems, forever. We can see ourselves, dimly, reflected in the stone, ghosts with a scene of eternity etched on our hearts. We lack words to capture everything this means to us.
We are like so many other stories from so many other lands.
“‘When Aslan said you could never go back to Narnia, he meant the Narnia you were thinking of. But that was not the real Narnia. That had a beginning and an end. It was only a shadow or a copy of the real Narnia which has always been there and always will be there: just as our own world, England and all, is only a shadow or copy of something in Aslan’s real world. You need not mourn over Narnia, Lucy. All of the old Narnia that mattered, all the dear creatures, have been drawn into the real Narnia through the Door. And of course it is different; as different as a real thing is from a shadow or as waking life is from a dream.'” (from The Last Battle, 1956)
Through a Glass Darkly is about living in the shadow, the copy, the reflection in a polished stone. It is the “already / not yet,” the “Alpha and Omega,” the “was, and is, and is to come.” It is the part of the story we know and the part still to be written. It is the pilgrimage, the journey, the waiting, the hope. It is a small, broken man writing a letter to his friends in an ancient tongue:
βλέπομεν γὰρ ἄρτι δι’ ἐσόπτρου ἐν αἰνίγματι τότε δὲ πρόσωπον πρὸς πρόσωπον ἄρτι γινώσκω ἐκ μέρους τότε δὲ ἐπιγνώσομαι καθὼς καὶ ἐπεγνώσθην — “For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.” 1 Cor. 13:12 (KJV).