Letter from the Editor

Lauren Crane

Dear Reader,

We have just left behind the Christmas season, the celebration of the light Christ’s advent brought to a darkened world. Many of the submissions in this issue were intended for our unpublished Advent issue centered on Christ’s light: Brynna Clendenen’s paper detailing the hope and victory found in Mary’s Magnificat, Luke Burgess’s “Song to the Alchemist,” Elyse Burgess’s poem contemplating the “singing of the spheres.” Yet in many of these pieces, there is still an acknowledged darkness. The alchemist searches in vain for a golden treasure he can never find, and the music of the spheres includes the groaning of the earth beneath a “weary, wounded hope.” Despite the dawn of Christ’s light, we live in a world not yet fully redeemed, marked by the contrast between the darkness and the light. This semester’s first issue of Westmarch seeks to explore this tension between suffering and hope, the tension of a life lived somewhere “between the lighthouse and the storm.”

I am reminded of English poet and hymn-writer William Cowper, who knew what it is to live in this tension. Struggling with mental illness throughout his life, Cowper was intimately acquainted with suffering, and he was periodically overwhelmed by waves of grief. Yet in his hymn “Light Shining out of Darkness,” he recognizes One Who “plants his footsteps in the sea, / And rides upon the storm” (lines 3-4). Although life is, to Cowper, fraught with pain, the mysterious unfolding of God’s will reveals His ultimate goodness: “The bud may have a bitter taste, / But sweet will be the flower” (“Light” 19-20). By the end of his life, however, Cowper believed himself to be excluded from the sweetness of God’s grace. In his final poem, “The Castaway,” he writes:

No voice divine the storm allay’d, No light propitious shone; When, snatch’d from all effectual aid, We perish’d, each alone (lines 61-4).

In this final expression of pain, Cowper is abandoned to drown beneath the waves of a fierce storm; no light shines for him in this darkness. As a Christian, I admit I do not quite know what to do with Cowper’s poem. Sometimes grief seems too big for hope. Sometimes God seems too distant for comfort.

And yet, Emma Sawyer’s narrative nonfiction piece “Death Without Darkness” demonstrates the overpowering brilliance of heaven’s light. In this piece, Sawyer ponders the mystery that what is in this world the funeral of a loved one may be in heaven the bridal party of Christ’s beloved. She reminds us that eternal life is more real and true than the present, and, though she feels the full weight of grief, she also feels the hope of Christ’s light. To live the Christian life is to live in the contrast between suffering and hope, darkness and light. My prayer is that this issue of Westmarch is an encouragement to you as you ponder what it means to live “between the lighthouse and the storm.”

Sincerely,
Lauren Crane
Editor-in-Chief

Read more of this author's articles.