Welcome to Chasing the Wind. This is an essay series engaging with Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows, chapter by chapter, from the viewpoint of an unabashed admirer (me). Here’s the preface explaining why I’m doing this. Also, here’s a playlist of songs to enjoy while reading; I’ll be adding five or so songs per chapter as we go. Okay. Onward.
I crave grace.
I know I need grace, but I also just want it. I want it like a pile of Wisconsin cheese curds set lovingly beside a New Glarus Spotted Cow (if you know, you know). I want it like a slow bowl of pipe tobacco on a foggy evening. I want it like a sunny day after a long Midwestern winter. My body and soul, my mind and spirit — everything within me leans toward unmerited, unconditional, lavish favor.
I am also lazy and prone to indulgence, traits which I have cultivated over many years and which have made me “innovative,” as the businessy people say. I will sniff out the path of least resistance and follow it straightaway to the nearest highly-rated taco joint. I love finding new things to take my attention away from the difficulties of life and distract me from Very Important Things. And any time the rules get run over by some sort of hilarity or chaos, a very primal part of me rejoices.
So when the very first character we meet in the Willowverse is one Mole, who happens to be hanging spring cleaning, my dirty old sinner’s heart sings.
“Spring was moving in the air above and in the earth below and around him, penetrating even his dark and lowly little house with its spirit of divine discontent and longing.”
I know I should get this housecleaning done, but hang it all, someone colossal and necessary just pinged me. I’ve got to take this call.
Kenneth augments this total release by making our first introduction to the little things he loves be subterranean; we enter his world by way of one who must scrape and scratch and scrabble and scrooge to even take in the sun and air. Mole’s dark dwelling, in his introduction, is nothing more than a place to escape from — the tired and cramped winter quarters, full of weariness and obligation. Later we will see the coziness in it and the comfort of familiarity. Not today. Today is about freshness, fancy, fullness of joy. It is spring, and we must be about springy things.
Kenneth succeeds in capturing a feeling here that we all know, but perhaps know little of — that carefree moment when all has been accomplished (or dropped unceremoniously) and we have nothing holding us back from enjoying something good. This is a state that busy 21st century people do not usually inhabit. Mole has chosen, with total freedom of conscience, to pursue delight over diligence.
How often do we allow ourselves to experience unfettered, untinged delight?
Have we so surrounded ourselves with the cumulative despair of the world, consuming it through our feeds and podcasts and docudramas that the prospect of feeling happy and free for a minute only makes us more guilty that we would dare feel that way?
Have we been so infected with the work-worshiping zeitgeist? Are we so piously pumped up by our purpose-driven lives, so animated by mission-centered, moralistic mania that we would never dream of stopping and smelling some roses for fear of losing our place in the line for salvation?
But back to Mole. This burrows-to-barging epiphany is not enough grace for Kenneth. No, Mole needs more.
Thus Mole’s collision with the “full-fed” River itself:
“Never in his life had he seen a river before – this sleek, sinuous, full-bodied animal, chasing and chuckling, gripping things with a gurgle and leaving them with a laugh, to fling itself on fresh playmates that shook themselves free, and were caught and held again.”
The River is alive, and it tells stories, and Mole is “bewitched, entranced, fascinated” by it. He is re-enchanted. He is charmed.
The word “charming” is subversive. It is often used, much like the words “whimsical” or “quaint,” to shrink something down to a cute, manageable thing that has little value except for momentary amusement. But charms are not cute. A charm is something that holds power beyond its perceived size or value.
Even in modern days, an ordinary horseshoe or a four-leaf clover (or perhaps a lucky pair of socks) is thought to bring good fortune to the bearer. Ancient Egyptians painstakingly fashioned amulets after prescribed rules in order to wield the power of various gods. Medieval knights wore protective charms into battle. More recently, a few choice words were considered capable of summoning a Patronus to dispel a horde of Dementors, or of making something float (if pronounced correctly, of course). Charms are entry points of sorts, ordinary things and phrases that usher wild and powerful magic into our worlds.
Whatever our evolved superstitions today, we forget too easily that there is actual magic in that which delights us — in that which is unexpectedly beautiful and true. We don't expect to see a river and find it alive with laughter, not in our darkening worlds. It’s just a river, after all. And yet, sometimes, we suddenly open our eyes to it and realize we are encountering something ancient and profound. The layers of the world peel back and we can see the true nature of things behind the veil. And the charm of a river, or a tree, or a smile is what transported us there.
Here, the River is a companion and a storyteller, and the stories it tells are “the best stories in the world, sent from the heart of the earth to be told at last to the insatiable sea.” It is a force of good, completely outside of Mole’s experience, powerful beyond his reckoning, and it welcomes him into a new world.
But access to this new power is still not enough grace for Kenneth. Mole needs even more.
And thus, out of another dark hole, twinkling like a tiny star, comes (winking) a worthy guide and friend for Mole: the Water Rat. Here is not just an impersonal force that would as easily drown him as tell him a story, but a personal, immediate creature clad in fur like his who will pull him out of deep water and teach him to boat and to swim.
Not only is Rat personalizing Mole’s delight, he does so in the most genial way possible. He offers Mole the gift of silent companionship. He offers patience and gentle correction when Mole asks silly questions. He offers polite information and warnings about the other creatures we will eventually meet in the course of our travels. He offers an overwhelming lunch. He ultimately offers Mole hospitality without any limits to it. He is not without his flaws, by any means, but he is that highest of graces to our Mole: a good friend.
It is Rat who introduces Mole to a singular symbol of the freedom and delight Mole has thus far experienced: messing about in boats.
“Nothing seems to really matter, that’s the charm of it. Whether you get away, or whether you don’t; whether you arrive at your destination or whether you reach somewhere else, or whether you never get anywhere at all, you’re always busy, and you never do anything in particular; and when you’ve done it there’s always something else to do, and you can do it if you like, but you’d much rather not.”
Again, the sheer lack of obligation or responsibility here is staggering to my modern mind. It feels like a long sigh of relief. I read this and think, “wouldn’t that be wonderful?” and for a moment or two, between these pages, I let myself live in that feeling.
It reminds me, oddly, of Ecclesiastes 2:24-25:
“There is nothing better for a person than that he should eat and drink and find enjoyment in his toil. This also, I saw, is from the hand of God, for apart from him who can eat or who can have enjoyment?”
There is relief here. There are obligations behind it, but they are taken up freely and set down freely. It reduces the whole of human purpose to an ultimately small sphere of influence — but it is the sphere of influence we can realistically expect to impact.
We have become so god-like in our estimation of our influence on the world around us. We must know all things, do all things, be all things, express all things, communicate all things. There is no time in this big-headed space to pay attention to small things or small ways. We must always stretch ourselves beyond our limits, pressurize ourselves in order to make diamonds. Our survival depends on our density, the hardness of the walls we form. What are we running after? What are we running away from?
But here’s Solomon and the Water Rat, reminding us to go boating and have a picnic with a friend, and to enjoy it, guilt-free.
For as long as I have been free to choose for myself what I would imbibe in art and culture, I have gravitated to gritty portrayals of darkness in the heart of man. These stories resonate with me for their unflinching truth. They have expanded my empathy and opened my eyes and heart in ways I do not regret. They make me all the more susceptible to the grace of one person just being nice to another.
I know some of the depths of darkness in my own soul. But I also know the aspirations I have to rise above those things, and the grace I need to accept in order to give grace to others, and that by grace I have been saved and I am being saved. So I crave portrayals of this grace. I want to see good friends being loyal and true, not cynical. I don’t want to grow accustomed to disappointment. I want to be filled with hope. Rat and Mole, as simple as their afternoon on the River is, fill me with hope.
“This day was only the first of many similar ones for the emancipated Mole, each of them longer and fuller of interest as the ripening summer moved onward. He learnt to swim and to row, and entered into the joy of running water; and with his ear to the reed-stems he caught, at intervals, something of what the wind went whispering so constantly among them.”
From the beginning of his story, Mole is discovering that the world is wider and more wonderful than he ever imagined. He is also discovering that it is saturated with unforeseen, unearned grace.
Take this whispering of grace you hear in the pages of this book, dear friends, as proof of something greater and more powerful than the darkness and despair of our days. The God of all grace does not require of us anything but to feel our need of Him, to accept the grace He offers. He is Life, and Light, and Living Water, and Friend. He is ultimate grace, hope, and delight. Enter into His joy.
No AI was used in the making of this essay. Cover art by Ernest Shepard, as captured by Bibliodyssey. I offer all current essays here for free, but you can always go paid to dig into the archives and support my writing habit.
Hello Chris, sounds like a great project! "The layers of the world peel back and we can see the true nature of things behind the veil. And the charm of a river, or a tree, or a smile is what transported us there." And that sounds like Proust! Good writing. Uncle Rick.
I love how you acknowledge and accept who you are and then go even further into the joy that grace gives.