A Rough Shaking

By George MacDonald and Michael Phillips

The 19th-century Scottish author delivers a novel of a homeless orphan who finds peace in the company of animals and his own innate goodness.

One of George MacDonald’s realistic novels, A Rough Shaking takes its title from a devastating earthquake that hit along the Italian coast in February of 1887. Though not written in the classic mold of a children’s story, like MacDonald’s Ranald Bannerman’s Boyhood and Gutta Percha Willie, it tells the story of Clare Skymer’s growing up. Orphaned by an earthquake and though seemingly unaware of God, he is a child imbued with goodness and with an unusual empathy for animals. As he wanders the world and is faced with decisions that test his selflessness and compassion, he matures into a man of character and grace. As MacDonald writes, “His soul was in a better home than a sky full of angels, a home better than the dome itself of all the angels, for his home was his father’s heart.”

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Nov 26, 2018
• ISBN: 9780795352058

George MacDonald

George MacDonald (1824 – 1905) was a Scottish-born novelist and poet. He grew up in a religious home influenced by various sects of Christianity. He attended University of Aberdeen, where he graduated with a degree in chemistry and physics. After experiencing a crisis of faith, he began theological training and became minister of Trinity Congregational Church. Later, he gained success as a writer penning fantasy tales such as Lilith, The Light Princess and At the Back of the North Wind. MacDonald became a well-known lecturer and mentor to various creatives including Lewis Carroll who famously wrote, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland fame.

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A Rough Shaking

George MacDonald

Introductory material © 2018 by Michael Phillips

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

Electronic edition published 2018 by RosettaBooks

ISBN (Kindle): 978-0-7953-5205-8

www.RosettaBooks.com

The Cullen Collection of the

Fiction of George MacDonald

1. Phantastes (1858)

2. David Elginbrod (1863)

3. The Portent (1864)

4. Adela Cathcart (1864)

5. Alec Forbes of Howglen (1865)

6. Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood (1867)

7. Robert Falconer (1868)

8. Guild Court (1868)

9. The Seaboard Parish (1868)

10. At the Back of the North Wind (1871)

11. Ranald Bannerman’s Boyhood (1871)

12. The Princess and the Goblin (1872)

13. Wilfrid Cumbermede (1872)

14. The Vicar’s Daughter (1872)

15. Gutta Percha Willie (1873)

16. Malcolm (1875)

17. The Wise Woman (1875)

18. St. George and St. Michael (1876)

19. Thomas Wingfold Curate (1876)

20. The Marquis of Lossie (1877)

21. Paul Faber Surgeon (1879)

22. Sir Gibbie (1879)

23. Mary Marston (1881)

24. Castle Warlock (1881)

25. The Princess and Curdie (1882)

26. Weighed and Wanting (1882)

27. Donal Grant (1883)

28. What’s Mine’s Mine (1886)

29. Home Again (1887)

30. The Elect Lady (1888)

31. A Rough Shaking (1890)

32. There and Back (1891)

33. The Flight of the Shadow (1891)

34. Heather and Snow (1893)

35. Lilith (1895)

36. Salted With Fire (1897)

37. Far Above Rubies (1898)

The introductions to the 37 volumes form a continuous picture of George MacDonald’s literary life, viewed through the prism of the development of his written legacy of works. While each book can of course be read on its own, every introduction picks up where that to the previous volume left off, with special attention to the title under consideration. The introductions together, as a biography of MacDonald’s life as a writer, are compiled in Volume 38.

38. George MacDonald A Writer’s Life

The Cullen Collection

of the Fiction of George MacDonald

New editions of George MacDonald’s classic fiction works updated and introduced by Michael Phillips

CONTENTS

Foreword to The Cullen Collection

Introduction to A Rough Shaking

NOTE: As the introductions to the 37 volumes of The Cullen Collection form a continuous portrait of George MacDonald’s life, and as many of the introductions contain comprehensive and detailed discussion and analysis of the title in question—its plot, themes, and circumstances of writing—some first-time readers may choose to skip ahead to the story itself, saving the introduction for later, so as not to spoil the story.

1. How I Came to Know Clare Skymer

2. With His Parents

3. A Shaking

4. A New Family

5. New Home

6. Clare’s First Smile

7. Clare and His Brothers

8. Clare the Defender

9. The Black Aunt

10. Clare on the Farm

11. Guardian of the Poor

12. The Vagabond

13. A Helper

14. Their First Host

15. On the Tramp

16. The Baker’s Cart

17. The Forge

18. A Short Night

19. The Baby

20. Justifiable Burglary

21. A New Quest

22. Breakfast

23. Treachery

24. The Baker

25. The Draper

26. Shop and Baby

27. Tommy’s Purgatorio

28. The Wages of Honesty

29. The Wages of Innocence

30. The Magistrate

31. The Workhouse

32. Away

33. Maly

34. The Caravans

35. Nimrod

36. Across Country

37. The Menagerie

38. Angel of the Wild Beasts

39. Glum Gunn and the Puma

40. Gunn’s Revenge

41. Miss Tempest

42. The Gardener

43. The Kitchen

44. Strategy

45. Ann Shotover

46. Child Talk

47. Story Walks

48. The Shoe-Black

49. Old Friends, and a New Enemy

50. Enemies Old and New

51. Dome of the Angels

52. The Panther

53. Home

54. The End of Clare Skymer’s Boyhood

Papa seems so quietly happy.

—Louisa MacDonald, May 4, 1872, from Deskford (near Cullen)

Papa does enjoy this place so much.

—Louisa MacDonald, May 6, 1872 from the Seafield Arms Hotel, Cullen

Papa oh! so jolly & bright & happy…Papa was taken for Lord Seafield yesterday.

—Louisa MacDonald, Sept. 2, 1873, from Cullen

Papa is very poorly. He ought to go to Cullen for a week I think.

—Louisa MacDonald, October 5, 1873, from London

FOREWORD

The Cullen Collection

of the Fiction of George MacDonald

The series name for these works of Scotsman George MacDonald (1824-1905) has its origins in the 1830s when the boy MacDonald formed what would be a lifelong affection for the northeast Scottish village of Cullen.

The ocean became young George’s delight. At the age of eleven, writing from Portsoy or Cullen, he announced to his father his intention to go to sea as a sailor—in his words, as soon as possible. The broad white beach of Cullen Bay, the Seatown, the grounds of Cullen House, the temple of Psyche (Temple of the Winds), Cullen Burn, the dwellings along Grant Street, Scarnose, and especially Findlater Castle, all seized the youth’s imagination with a love that never left him. MacDonald continued to visit Huntly and Cullen throughout his life, using his childhood love for his homeland as the backdrop for his richest novels, including what is arguably his greatest work of fiction, Malcolm, published in 1875.

We therefore honor MacDonald’s unique relationship to Cullen with these newly updated editions of his novels. In Cullen, in certain respects more than in any other place, one finds the transcendent spirit of George MacDonald’s life and the ongoing legacy of his work still magically alive after a century and a half. This release of The Cullen Collection of the Fiction of George MacDonald coincides with a memorial bench and plaque established on Cullen’s Castle Hill commemorating MacDonald’s visits to the region.

To those readers familiar with my previous editions of MacDonald’s novels, I should make clear that eighteen of the volumes in this new series are updated and expanded titles from the Bethany House series of the 1980s. Limitations of length dictated much about how those previous volumes were produced. To interest a publisher in the project during those years when MacDonald was a virtual unknown in the publishing world, certain sacrifices had to be made. Cuts to length had to be more severe than I would have preferred. Practicality drove the effort. Imperfect as they were in some respects, I am enormously grateful for those editions. They helped inaugurate a worldwide renaissance of interest in MacDonald. They were wonderful door-openers for many thousands into MacDonald’s world.

Hopefully this new and more comprehensive set of MacDonald’s fiction will take up where they left off. Not constrained by the limitations that dictated production of the former volumes, these new editions, though identical at many points, have been expanded—sometimes significantly. In that sense they reflect MacDonald’s originals somewhat more closely, while still preserving the flavor, pace, and readability of their predecessors.

Nineteen additional titles have been added to the original Bethany House series of novels. The thirteen realistic novels among these (including this one) have been updated according to the same priorities that guided the earlier Bethany House series. That process will be explained in more detail in the introductions to the books of the series. The final six which would more accurately be termed fantasy, have not been edited in any way. They are faithful reproductions of the originals exactly as they were first published. These six—Phantastes, At the Back of the North Wind, The Princess and the Goblin, The Wise Woman, The Princess and Curdie, and Lilith—are so well known and have been published literally in hundreds of editions through the years, that it has seemed best to reproduce them for The Cullen Collection with the same texts by which they are generally known.*

Dedicated followers of all great men and women continually seek hints that reveal their inner being—the true man, the true woman. What were they really like? What made him or her tick? Many biographies and studies attempt to answer such questions. In George MacDonald’s case, however, a panorama of windows exists that reveals far more about his person than the sum-total of everything that has been written about him over the years. Those are the novels that encompass his life’s work. The volumes of this series represent the true spiritual biography of the man, a far more important biography than life’s details can ever tell.

In 1911, six years after his father’s death, George MacDonald’s son Ronald wrote of the man with whom he had spent his life:

"The ideals of his didactic novels were the motive of his own life…a life of literal, and, which is more, imaginative consistency with his doctrine…There has probably never been a writer whose work was a better expression of his personal character. This I am not engaged to prove; but I very positively assert…that in his novels…and allegories…one encounters...the same rich imagination, the same generous lover of God and man, the same consistent practiser of his own preaching, the same tender charity to the sinner with the same uncompromising hostility to the sin, which were known in daily use and by his own people counted upon more surely than sunshine." *

Thirty years after the publication of my one-volume biography George MacDonald Scotland’s Beloved Storyteller, it now gives me great pleasure to present this thirty-seven-volume biography of the man, the Scotsman, the prophetic spiritual voice who is George MacDonald. *

How fitting is the original title in which Ronald MacDonald’s sketch of his father quoted above first appeared, From A Northern Window. For any attempted portrait of the man George MacDonald becomes at once a window into his homeland as well.

Therefore, I invite you to gaze back in time through the northern windows of these volumes. Picture yourself perhaps near the cheerful hearth described in the opening pages of What’s Mine’s Mine, looking out the window to the cold seas and mountains in the distance, where perhaps you get a fleeting glimpse of highlanders Ian and Alister Macruadh.

Or imagine yourself walking up Duke Street in Huntly from MacDonald’s birth home, following in the footsteps of fictional Robert Falconer to the town square.

Or envision yourself on some windswept highland moor with Gibbie or Cosmo Warlock.

Or walk up the circular staircase of Fyvie Castle to Donal Grant’s tiny tower hideaway where he began to unravel the mysteries of that ancient and spooky place.

Or walk from Cullen’s Seatown alongside Malcolm selling the fish in his creel, turning at the Market Cross into Grant Street and continuing past Miss Horn’s house and up the hill to the entrance of the Cullen House grounds.

Or perhaps climb Castle Hill to the George MacDonald memorial bench and gaze across the sweep of Cullen Bay to Scarnose as Malcolm’s story comes to life before your eyes.

From any of these settings, whether real or imaginary, drift back through the years and gaze through the panoramic windows of these stories, and take in with pleasure the drama, relationships, images, characters, settings, and spiritual truths George MacDonald offers us as we are drawn into his world.

Michael Phillips

Cullen, Morayshire

Scotland, 2017

INTRODUCTION

Quest for the Unknown Fatherhood

Many consider A Rough Shaking a children’s novel. But even more than is the case with Ranald Bannerman’s Boyhood and Gutta Percha Willie, that is not an accurate description. *

The fact that the three titles have often been published in uniform bindings contributes to this misapprehension. A Rough Shaking, however, bears far less resemblance to a so-called children’s story than its two predecessors. In the writing of Gutta Percha Willie, and to a lesser degree in Ranald Bannerman’s Boyhood, MacDonald occasionally addresses his readers directly as if telling a story specifically to young people. There is no evidence of this linguistic feature in A Rough Shaking. It neither sounds nor feels like MacDonald’s other children’s stories. This is a story about children. But in language and syntax, as well as length, MacDonald was clearly writing in the stylistic voice of an adult realistic novel.

The first chapter alone—in which a narrator/author (MacDonald himself) encounters a man with unusual spiritual notions who believes in the immortality of animals (also MacDonald ¹)—tells us that MacDonald has something more in mind for this book than a simple children’s tale. The conversation between MacDonald’s two fictional alter egos in the opening scene is fascinating indeed.

I cannot help but to read myself into this chapter, feeling that I was strolling nonchalantly through life when I came upon an intriguing stranger, who was in fact MacDonald himself. MacDonald’s words about Skymer echo my thoughts upon meeting MacDonald!

The man drew me more and more. He had a way of talking about things seldom mentioned except in dull fashion in the pulpit, as if he cared about them. He spoke of familiar things, but made you feel he was looking out of a high window.

There are many who never speak of real things except in a false tone. This man spoke of such in his ordinary voice without an atom of assumed solemnity. They came into his mind as to their home—not as dreams of the night, but as facts of the day.

And though it comes later in the narrative, as MacDonald describes one of his good and noble clergymen, again I find myself thinking that he is describing himself, or at least reflecting himself in the mirror of my own response.

He did what was better—he tried constantly to obey the law of God, whether he found it in the Bible or in his own heart. Thus he was greater in the kingdom of heaven than thousands that knew more, who had better theories about God, and who could discourse more fluently about religion than he. By obeying God he let God teach him.

So his heart was always growing. And where the heart grows, there is no fear of the intellect—it also grows, and with the best kind of growth. He was very good to his people, and not foolishly kind. He tried his best to help them to be what they ought to be, to make them bear their troubles, be true to one another, and govern themselves. He was like a father to them.

Thus, as the fictionalized MacDonald, fascinated with his new acquaintance, is compelled to tell Skymer’s story, here am I, also fascinated with MacDonald after an acquaintance of more than forty-five years, likewise compelled to tell his!

Leaving the first chapter, however, the parallel with MacDonald’s dual persona fades and the unusual exploits of Clare’s childhood begin.

This particular book came at a time in MacDonald’s writing life when his novels were growing shorter and generally (though not exclusively) less sophisticated. At the same time, however, his nonfiction writings were growing more hard-hitting than ever. Reading his non-fiction of this season in his life immediately dispels the suggestion by some that he was losing his mental prowess. The more likely explanation is simply that he was growing weary of the grind of fiction. Its challenge no longer gripped him. On the other hand, the challenge of forcefully articulating his theological perspectives concerning the nature, character, and eternal purposes of God was stronger than ever.

It may be no accident that, less sophisticated as they may appear on some levels, MacDonald’s fiction of this period yet reflects what might be called a more idealized level of spirituality. Without straining too greatly to manufacture themes that aren’t there, Judy and I are fascinated by our observation of a gradual progression in the development of MacDonald’s characters. He seems to begin his career with more realistic and flawed characters, as we see in Hugh Sutherland, Alec Forbes, Ranald Bannerman, and Wilfrid Cumbermede (1863-1872). Then follows a series of noble role models in Robert Falconer, Malcolm, Richard Heywood, Thomas Wingfold, Mary Marston, Cosmo Warlock, Hester Raymount, and Donal Grant (1868-1883). Finally, in the closing third of MacDonald’s career, we are presented with a series of ideal characters, often children who seem too good to be true—Gibbie, Clare Skymer, Molly Wentworth, and Dawtie and Sandy and Andrew of The Elect Lady.

Clearly this progression is fluid and the overlap is obvious. Robert Falconer comes early in MacDonald’s career, just as Paul Faber and James Blatherwick of Salted With Fire are two of MacDonald’s most flawed and imperfect characters and come later, Blatherwick—the very antithesis of an ideal of spirituality—at the end of MacDonald’s writing life. And Alister and Ian of What’s Mine’s Mine are almost impossible to fit in any of the three categories.

The general progression, however, is interesting in light of MacDonald’s increasing attention to deeper non-fiction spiritual themes during the latter years of his career. This trend reaches a thundering climax with his publication of Unspoken Sermons, Third Series immediately prior to A Rough Shaking. It might be said that this volume of sermons rocked the theology of Christendom with an earthquake, a doctrinal rough shaking, whose aftershocks are still being felt more than a hundred years later.

Having exposed the façade of church attendance and the boogieman of forsaking the assembling together in his articulation of the true Church in The Elect Lady, MacDonald now takes on more doctrinal sacred cows of evangelical orthodoxy. In his third volume of unspoken sermons, MacDonald confronts nearly every debated aspect of his theology (hell, the atonement, the vicarious sacrifice) bluntly, forcefully, and even at times angrily, in his longest and surely most controversial written or spoken sermon, entitled simply Justice. ²

Though our focus in The Cullen Collection is the realistic novels of George MacDonald, the three volumes of sermons published in 1885, 1889, and 1893 are worthy of particular note. In a sense, they articulate in direct non-fictional format the truths, principles, priorities, and scriptural interpretations MacDonald has been infusing into his novels throughout his career. The deepest depths of the novels cannot be completely understood without the clarifying light of the sermons shining through the window of his insight into them.

The sermon Justice in Unspoken Sermons, Third Series must be considered MacDonald’s non-fictional and theological magnum opus. It represents George MacDonald unplugged, the gloves off, going for it—giving a rough shaking to the fundamental ideas of Christian doctrine.

The theological development of MacDonald’s idea can be viewed as enclosed by the bookends of The Consuming Fire from his first series of Unspoken Sermons, and Justice from the third series. Both these sermons, indirectly and directly, address the purpose of hell and the boogieman of universalism.

(This is admittedly an incomplete analogy as a fourth book of sermons, The Hope of the Gospel, will come later in 1893 and add yet more to the complete picture of MacDonald’s transformational theology.)

Starting out in his writing career, MacDonald was still refining his views, and was somewhat circumspect in communicating them. (Although it is hard to imagine his being more direct than he was in Robert Falconer.) By the late 1880s, with his life and career winding down and uncertain how much time he has left, MacDonald casts caution to the wind and sets pen to paper with a lengthy and thorough exposition of what punishment means, what is God’s ultimate purpose in punishment, the role of hell in that purpose, how the atonement figures into that eternal purpose, and how the atonement actually functions. His climax is shocking to many when he essentially repudiates the doctrine of the vicarious sacrifice as it is commonly interpreted and explained.

He goes to great lengths to confirm, however, that he believes with all his heart in the atonement and in the power of Christ’s sacrifice on the cross. But he is equally clear to respond to his critics: "I believe in Jesus Christ…In what you call the atonement, in what you mean by the word, what I have already written must make it plain enough I do not believe. God forbid I should, for it would be to believe a lie." ³

The significance of Justice in the MacDonald corpus cannot be overstated. Some will read it and refuse to read another word by MacDonald and will brand him a heretic. For others, Justice will answer many questions and put the writings of MacDonald into an overarching perspective that has perhaps been missing before then. My own editions of this sermon, with full analysis and annotations, are found in the three titles referenced in the footnotes at the end of this introduction.

One would think Justice would fit better in a discussion of Robert Falconer. Yet here Unspoken Sermons, Third Series is, sitting squarely between The Elect Lady and A Rough Shaking in the progression of MacDonald’s writing life. How curious that exactly between two of his lesser known novels comes his crowning non-fiction achievement.

MacDonald may have been tiring of writing stories, but his brain was certainly not tired! And indeed, its placement is fitting, as I say, for the titanic earthquake with which Justice rocks the theological world.

A Rough Shaking takes its title from a devastating earthquake that rumbled through the Italian coast in February of 1887. Many in the area were left homeless. The quake is vividly fictionalized in the novel. Many buildings in Bordighera and the nearby villages crumbled into heaps of stone and brick. The MacDonald’s Casa Coraggio suffered cracks and lost its tower. But it was still able to serve as refuge for some of the families whose homes suddenly had no roofs or were gone entirely. ⁴

Full of affection on all sides in his relationships with his own children, but perhaps somewhat lacking in intimacy in a decidedly Victorian culture—George MacDonald yet possessed unique insight into the world of children. His understanding of spiritual childship gave him a tender child-heart himself. It is no wonder, then, that whenever a young person steps onto the pages of one of his books, this tenderness comes through. As readers we are in for unexpected delights, and possibly some surprises.

While taking exception to my earlier statement that A Rough Shaking was not written in the classic mold of a children’s story, Rolland Hein makes an interesting observation about MacDonald’s work at this stage of his career, also tying it into the third volume of sermons.

"MacDonald affirmed in his sermon ‘The Truth’ that he believed that every fact in nature is a revelation of God…The degree to which this idea is present in the novels since What’s Mine’s Mine attests to the strength with which he held it. The relative sparsity of direct references to God in some of his later works…may well be understood in terms of this principle: Nature was constantly revealing God. ⁵

"In the novel he started after completing Unspoken Sermons, Series Three, he gave this conviction the most complete expression yet…An earthquake, much on his mind since the one that occurred in 1887, becomes the informing metaphor of the story.

"Titling it A Rough Shaking, MacDonald told the story of Clare Skymer’s growing up. Like Ranald Bannerman’s Boyhood and Gutta Percha Willie, it is a book more for children than for adults. Clare is another of MacDonald’s idyllic children…

He is a good boy seemingly unaware of God…Divine Providence, nevertheless, sustains him… ⁶

In one sense, we can view Clare Skymer as another incarnation of the ideal, saintly child—like Diamond and Gibbie, and even Willie Macmichael. Diamond, however, is woven from the threads of fairy-tale and can be accepted on those terms. Clare’s adventures, like Gibbie’s and Willie’s, are presented realistically, and thus many commentators find them more difficult to accept. Nobody can really be that good. Pure goodness, they contend, must be reserved for the world of faerie. MacDonald disagreed. How some analysts, students, and biographers of MacDonald can so entirely miss the true import of certain aspects of his life’s message has been a continual perplexity to me for forty years.

The simple profundity of Clare’s (i.e., MacDonald’s) life-focus, is so succinctly put that I am amazed anyone can consider this book insignificant in MacDonald’s oeuvre:

"He began to see that it is not enough just to mean well, but that he must be sharp and mind what he was about…Meditation and resolve, on the top of honourable habit, brought him to this—that when he saw what was right, he did it—did it without hesitation, question, or struggle. Every man who would be a free man must do the same."

As an interesting aside, pursuant to the question whether MacDonald’s realistic fiction or fantasy represent the deepest expression of his creative persona, when Clare is telling Ann real-life adventures versus fairy stories, MacDonald says she liked the former better. Does this reflect his own view as well, and the higher value he perceived in his realistic novels over his fairy tales?

MacDonald was a master at blending genres with exquisite skill and craft. All the stories mentioned above flow fluidly at times between reality and fantasy. The imaginative was always weaving its way through the realistic in MacDonald’s mind. It makes the realistic fairytale of Sir Gibbie all the more remarkable as a fictional triumph. MacDonald’s purpose in his writings was to illuminate the character of God, and to deepen understanding of God’s eternal purpose in the world—which is to draw his sons and daughters into intimacy with his Father’s heart. He did this using realism and fantasy with exquisite skill, often weaving them together into a single narrative tapestry.

In the specific case of A Rough Shaking, I perceive three major thematic currents running throughout, interweaving with many minor threads, that work toward MacDonald’s ultimate high purpose.

One, MacDonald has given us here a parable of Christlikeness. Is Clare too good to be true? Of course. MacDonald intends him to be. Clare is goodness personified.

I think MacDonald may have had in mind—perhaps indirectly—to paint a fictional portrait of the boy Jesus. Haven’t we all wondered what Jesus was like as a boy, how he treated his fellows, how he treated animals, how he spoke, how he trusted God, how he may have tried to help people in the early years of his incipient saviorhood, how he grew into and came to recognize that he was the Son of God. All these elements can be seen in Clare.

Secondly, Clare’s life quest to find fatherhood parallels the universal human quest to know God, to understand him, and to enter into intimacy with his Fatherhood as his sons and daughters. We discussed this at some length in the introduction to Robert Falconer. MacDonald is revisiting Robert Falconer’s life quest here, a quest which now dons the garb of Clare Skymer’s life experience rather than Robert’s. MacDonald returns often to this theme because it is the quest of life.

This is Everyman’s odyssey—to discover the divine Fatherhood, and enter into daily, interactive, obedient, submissive life with that Fatherhood.

Robert and Clare, both going through life without fathers, have to discover God’s Fatherhood absent the earthly example God intended to point toward the Divine Fatherhood.

(Interestingly, in his search for his father, Clare found a number of mothers along the way—fascinating in that MacDonald himself had his father all along, but not his mother.)

Robert and Clare (and Gibbie in his own way) thus typify that all men and women, orphans, those with good fathers, those with bad fathers, must at some point look above, to the dome of the angels, to discover the infinitely good Fatherhood that lies above, the true home of our hearts. Clare’s years as a vagabond are a parable of the journey, deeper understanding increasing all along the way, toward that Home:

And over an infinitely grander sea than the measureless ocean of worlds, the Father was carrying navies of human