Boundaries in Pleasant Places
Boundaries in Pleasant Places
Alicia Pollard
In C.S. Lewis’s That Hideous Strength, the two main characters, Mark and Jane Studdock, each have a ruling fear or dominant desire that shapes their thoughts and behavior. Mark longs to be “in”—in the Inner Ring, the circle of friends and conspirators, the exclusive class that holds power and the pretense of fellowship (though not true friendship). He fears being left out, ignored and downtrodden. Jane’s fear is the opposite: she longs for independence and respect, her own life formed by her own rules. She fears being “drawn in,” entangled and controlled.
*
Sitting on a grassy bank on the cliffs of Scotland, watching seagulls wheel over the turquoise currents in the royal blue North Sea, I put words to a realization that stirred in me. I have a ruling fear and dominant desire, too: fear of being trapped and the desire to be free.
“I’m so afraid,” I told a close friend in college, years ago, while searching for a writing or editing internship to get me through the summer. “I don’t want to get stuck in a strange city, all alone.” I had a murky mental picture of being the English major who failed to get a job anywhere but a gray metropolis full of honking horns and choking smog.
Ironically, I did end up doing a summer job in a strange city all alone: a writing internship in Dallas. It was fine. God overshadowed me with protection and sweet, surprising gifts. He provided a beautiful house among oak trees to stay in for free, a car loan and loving family friends nearby. But that fear remained. Through college,
I was haunted by images of getting stuck, trapped, imprisoned, smothered, with no way out—by poverty, by boredom, by loneliness, or worst of all, by apathy.
*
When I graduated from college, I found an editing job in a corner of corporate America inexplicably tucked in green New Hampshire farm country. It was a honeycomb of high, gray cubicle walls; silence only interrupted by sneezes, tapping keyboards and whispered gossip; white computer screens; fluorescent lights. The work was composed of the dullest, simplest tasks, just enough to tax the detailoriented area of my mind without stimulating my reason or imagination. I felt trapped by the walls of my cubicle, my lack of work experience, my small paycheck and my long commute.
And yet... even in that hemmed-in time, I was hemmed in by treasures in hidden places. Mist unfurled from rivers beside the highways in autumn mornings. The woods beside the road were thick with bittersweet vines that caught the amber afternoon sunlight. At lunchtime, I would read G.K. Chesterton essays to cheer myself up and Robert Frost’s poetry to remind myself of the beauty outside the office walls. I found kind friends to walk with during morning and afternoon breaks.
*
My entire young adult life has been an attempt to break free and avoid being trapped. I have worked hard to find jobs I enjoy, plan trips to art conferences and beauty spots and build a good life with freedom and independence. Working towards a year of grad school in Scotland was the pinnacle of my plans, to break free of a 9-5 office existence for a year, see some of the world and delve into the artistic and theological studies that had been the work of my evenings and weekends.
The COVID-19 pandemic hit, trapping me in one household for months. When I left for Scotland in September 2020, I hoped a vaccine in January would give us normal second and third semesters with in-person classes and travel. Instead, I found that rising infection rates took our freedoms away one by one. In February, I was trapped in a freezing flat by brutal cold and driving sleet, unable to go to the library or a coffee shop to study, meet with friends, or even just escape the frigid north winds, which stole all the heat from my room.
I will never forget the tension of those weeks. I shivered under three layers of clothing. We baked brownies and chocolate-chip pumpkin bread and pretty much anything to warm up the kitchen. I called friends and family every day, trying to distract myself by any means possible. While I wasn’t technically imprisoned, it was the closest I’d come to finding myself in that ruling fear of being caught, stuck and immobilized.
Marta Mannuzzi
Now the spring thaw has sprinkled the ground with nodding bluebells and the air is warm enough for walks in the greening woods, I am unwinding, beginning to breathe again. With that relief comes a realization that my fear of being trapped is tangled in two lies: the lie that God does not love me, and the lie that my life is about pursuing my own happiness.
I could chase my desire to avoid entrapment and be free, adventurous, purposeful and loved my entire life. I could save up for exotic vacations, fill up my schedule to bursting and sacrifice rest and ministry to pursue fulfillment in escape. But if I’m honest, the times when I have been stuck have also been some of the sweetest in my life, boundary lines within which God has created abundant gardens and lavish feasts. Psalm 16:6—The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; surely I have a delightful inheritance.
Mind-numbing hours of copyediting gave me a hunger for stories and adventures. Long commutes and traffic gave me time to soak in podcasts and audiobooks, a hundred voices of inspiration and wisdom. A lack of financial resources taught me to be more creative. Lonely evenings made me want to design spaces where people could find fellowship. Every entrapment has made me fiercer in pursuing what I love and more courageous in facing what I fear.
In That Hideous Strength, Mark and Jane learn to surrender their fears to the living God and find their heart’s desires in the very things they avoided. Mark rejects the power-hunger and treachery of the Inner Ring of the N.I.C.E. to renew his relationship with his wife. Jane enters the true love and fellowship of the circle at St. Anne’s and turns back into a healed and restored marriage with Mark. God does more than simply banish their fears; He redeems their desires.
Through the spring, Scotland was a country of closed borders and rigid boundaries; each county was locked down. The school asked us not to leave town or mingle outside of our households. When I walked the beaches in the pink twilights, I saw lights glittering across the bay in towns we could not visit and snow glowing on mountains we could not reach. I was enclosed—but inside the globe of a graduate school community, blossoming woods and gardens, thundering waves and enough friendly darkness to reveal the stars at night. I knew, then, that I wasn’t trapped. I never have been. I’m held.
Alicia Pollard
Writer & Student
Alicia has been published in Peacock Journal, An Unexpected Journal, & Transpositions
Photography by Marta Mannuzzi