How is that for a teaser? So, if you up for it, not just a good read, but an adventure, consider this book. The time is around the year 2000. The setting is in a small town in rural Ontario, then Oxford, and onto St. Petersburg, Moscow and a small village in Siberia. The plot follows the journey of a man named Alex Graham, a father on a search-and-rescue mission for a wayward son. The leitmotifs are: the passions, dreams, foibles, regrets, and hopes that bind family and friends; consolation and desolation in the life of faith; and the providence of God. O'Brien's prose is direct, succinct and clear; it moves at a smooth, unhurried clip. It always has a destination. A once in a century storyteller, he creates a tale accessible to anyone who can read.

This is lengthy preface. I write it to give thanks for a great novel and recommend it. I also write it because of one particular sentence in the last chapter of the book that captures one of the reasons the Church observes the season of Lent. The line is this: "Alex would try to explain that his journey had shattered forever his longing for a safe refuge from the radical insecurity of human existence." These words read with pungency if you have raced and sloughed your way through the novel. Yet, even out of context, it is a word of wisdom. It refers to the deepening conversion of the follower of Jesus which the liturgies and Scriptures, prayers and disciplines of Lent signify and animate in those of us foolish enough to get serious with God.3

Let's approach it piecemeal. First off, what on earth is "the radical insecurity of human existence?" Casual observation tells me most of us, most of the time, do not relish noting this insecurity, discussing it, let alone staring it in the face. If you have ridden the Underground in London, you have heard the recorded voice over the PA politely warn the riders exiting and entering the car at a stop when the doors slide open, "Mind the Gap, please. Mind the Gap." The pleasant male voice, almost avuncular, cautions you to step over the eight or so inches of engineered space between the car and the platform. Over the course of a lifetime, we encounter numerous gaps that reveal "the radical insecurity of human existence." Call them existential cracks, spiritual ruptures, tragic distances; these are moments, periods and even seasons of intensified angst and uncertainty. The brute fact rears its ugly head and yawns like a Tolkenian beast, screeching "You are not in control." Forces far more powerful than our sunny reliance upon confident plans, self-validating ideologies, lifestyle choices, facile texting and silly tweets are at work, and awry. Our lives are not our own. Happenstance claims us. The gap appears and experience full bore "the radical insecurity of human existence." A scene in a novel by John Irving captures the experience in a gentle and sympathetic manner. A mother on a summer beach in Massachusetts calls to her son playing in the roaring surf, "Be careful of the undertow. Be careful." The boy hears the word as "the under-toad."4 It is an aural malapropism that reveals more than it correct original. Here the gap is tidal and even oceanic. We know the interior experience, the downward tug of the heart; a sickening of the stomach; a watery mouth as the room we are in may telescope or swirl. It seems a Teutonic plate is shifting and re-settling in the world and our soul. Perhaps the following illustrations evoke gaps in your own life.

The frightening verse, "Or as, when an underground train, in the tube, stops too long between stations / And the conversation rises and slowly fades into silence / And you see behind every face the mental emptiness deepen / Leaving the growing terror of nothing to think about:"

The wait in the Emergency Room between the time when the ambulance transported and arrived our loved one stricken with severe chest pain or stroke symptoms and the attending physician tells us what is going on.

The period of surreal disorientation between the moment a loved one dies and the Requiem Eucharist, and the burial of the body in the cemetery only after which we can breathe and consider facing a long season grief, a controlled psychosis.

The love and history that binds husband and wife, parent and child and siblings is pockmarked by occasions when the following four facts emerge in conflict: what is intended, what is thought, what is said, what is done... all seem to belong to different languages. Babble.

The hour-long commute by car, train or bus from the workplace to our home the day we are fired, laid-off, downsized as we search for the words to speak it aloud to our family.

The discrepancy between belief and behavior (a symbiotic virus), we so easily note and accuse in other people yet not ourselves. "For I do not do the good I want but the evil I do not want is what I do (Romans 7:19)."

Emptiness fills our home or apartment-like a too quickly returning layer of dust- the afternoon our cherished friend, aging parent, or adult child leaves after a too brief, too brisk visit.

The "nowhere land" of insomnia during the event popular psychology calls "the midlife crisis" sometimes described as "the old age of youth and the youth of old age."

The intentional and unintentional words, acts and habits of racial, ethnic or class condemnation of neighbor which divide our communities and embitter our souls with anger and hatred, envy and despair.

T. S. Eliot is correct, "Human kind cannot bear very much reality."5 It is not comfortable to examine too closely this gap manifesting "the radical insecurity of human existence." By definition, it is forced upon us and opens as the course of life arrives at its station.6

O'Brien narrates that we contend with the gap by "longing to find a safe refuge." This is a good desire. It can be the restlessness that motivates our search for meaning and God, as Augustine prays.7 It is what some spiritual writers of recent decades quaintly, mistakenly call "the God-shaped hole." It is primarily a human fault, and problem not of God.

Seeking a safe refuge, we can jump over the gap. We can leapfrog over others to avoid it. We can overlay it with the plywoods of busyness, addiction, occupation, responsibility, even virtue. Yet it is still there firmly entrenched as surely as the other consequences of our expulsion from the Garden.8 The gap is a quicksand of our postlapsarian existence.

In the 1982 Hymnal of the Episcopal Church number 665 sings poetically and plaintively of our faith in God that contends with the gap. The tune is by the great English composer Herbert Howells (1892-1983) who wrote it in the aftermath of the death of his son, Michael, at age nine, from polio. Hence, the tune is called Michael. Read or sing it right now.

All my hope on God is founded; he doth still my trust renew, me through change and chance he guideth, only good and only true.

God unknown, he alone calls my heart to be his own.

Pride of man and earthly glory, sword and crown betray his trust; what with care and toil he buildeth, tower and temple fall to dust.

But God's power, hour by hour, is my temple and my tower. God's great goodness aye endureth, deep his wisdom, passing thought: splendor, light and life attend him, beauty springeth out of naught. Evermore from his store newborn worlds rise and adore. Daily doth the almighty Giver bounteous gifts on us bestow; his desire our soul delighteth, pleasure leads us where we go.

Love doth stand at his hand; joy doth wait on his command. Still from man to God eternal sacrifice of praise be done, high above all praises praising for the gift of Christ, his Son. Christ doth call one and all: ye who follow shall not fall.9

This hymn speaks of our faith in God in spite of these gaps that disclose the "radical insecurity of human existence." The words exhort that our "longing for a safe refuge from the radical insecurity of human existence" is part of the desire to seek God. And, we must admit, confess really, however indignant we feel, that our various "safe refuges" are as vulnerable to decay, entropy, and sin as our own flesh and blood.

Lent is, among many things, the season we "mind the gap." In the light of truth, we face soberly the ways we fall into the gap by thought, word and deed. And, how we intentionally inflict "the radical insecurity of human existence "on family and friends, neighbors, strangers and enemies. By prayer, fasting and confession, by reading God's Word and doing works of mercy and service, by our honest suffering and ongoing conversion, we praise God who is the only Refuge. By grace, we stand in the gap. Our liturgical and sacramental life glorifies God. The fruit is the real presence of the Lord Christ. He destroys the bottomless pit of radical insecurity by filling it to overflowing with his joy, his love, his person. During Lent we prepare to celebrate Easter and embrace the one who pours himself empty on the cross and vacates the 4 tomb leaving beyond the dying, defeated world. And, thereby fills the cups of our souls to running over, now and at the hour death until" God is all in all."10

I make one last comment. O'Brien's novel tells the journey of Alex Graham that "had shattered forever his longing for a safe refuge from the radical insecurity of human existence." What is it to have "shattered forever this longing?" Does this imply a state of the soul in which God has removed this thorn in the heart, this persistent, chronic longing? Is this a grace given only in the fire of suffering at the hand of our suffering God? Is this redemption completely realized in the soul, a rare blessedness given within this mortal life? Can such surrender, acceptance and peace be available to all? Is this an ascetical illusion of a religious Romantic, a novelist no less?

Any credible answer to these questions is found in the solitude of one's own struggle and life. It is an answer only sensible through the classical and biblical way of perception and knowledge. Here is a singular revelation for each person, a once and future gift, suffused with understanding and participation.

1 Visit www.studiobrien.com for books, articles, artwork by O'Brien 2In the interests of full disclosure, Father Fessio is founder and editor of Ignatius Press, which publishes O'Brien's novels.
3 I Corinthians 1:18-2:16. 4
The World according to Garp, John Irving.
5 part one, "Burnt Norton", The Four Quartets by T.S. Eliot.
6 We can also recall part three, "East Coker", in Eliot's The Four Quartets.
7. "O God, you have made us for yourself and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in You." Confessions.
8. Genesis 2-3.
9. Words: Robert Bridges (1844-1930); based on the German on Joachim Neander (1650-1680) Music: Michael, Hebert Howells (1892-1983).
10. I Corinthians 15:28.

Fr. K. Brewster Hastings is the rector of Saint Anne's Church in Abington, PA. He can be reached at KBHastings@verizon.net