Broken Swords
The trenchant blade, Toledo trusty,
For want of fighting was grown rusty,
And ate into itself, for lack
Of somebody to hew and hack.
...Samuel Butler, Hudibras
There is an old fable about a soldier in battle who broke his sword and looked at it a moment in horror and unbelief — then threw it to the ground and fled in panic to the edge of the battle where he could hide. Then along came the prince, who had lost his sword, and seeing the broken sword on the ground, he scooped it up and went on to lead the army to victory.
I approach the subject of handicaps humbly, for I have never known the terror of a broken sword, and many a handicapped person would laugh me to scorn for trafficking in a territory in which I've never had to test my metal. I am sorry for that soldier; I am not at all sure that I would not have fled in panic too. The world is full of people who have.
But I want to talk about some people who did not flee, but scooped up the broken pieces and went on to victory. I cannot tell you what I would do. But I can tell you what they did, for they crossed my path and left me ashamed that with a whole sword I had not shown greater valor in the battle.
One was a student at a Christian college. His name was Lefty. He called on me when I first moved there — just to welcome me and let me know he'd be glad to take the boys to the park any time and while away an hour or two; he often went over there to study. His speech was slightly slurred and his sight was poor, and when he walked
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away I noticed his gait was unsteady, too. But his brief visit had somehow left us all feeling better. We had never seen such an abundance of enthusiasm and good humor packed into one person. He had a completely artless charm about him; he was contagious — there is no other word for it. You "caught" him like the measles. My boys adored him.
And then I discovered that everyone else on the campus adored him, too. Not from pity because he was handicapped, but because he was such good company — because he was utterly without guile — and I suppose because he could laugh at himself. He was above pity — he was too happy.
One day Lefty went down to the City Hall to see the mayor because a huge banquet was in the offing for the dedication of a new auditorium, and Lefty thought the mayor might like to come. It never occurred to Lefty that the mayor might not like to come; he was just being neighborly and didn't want to leave the mayor out of such an important event. Now everybody knows that nobody can get in to see a mayor just because he takes it into his head to do so; but Lefty charmed his way past all the red tape and saw the mayor with no trouble at all. You can see the boy was practically hypnotic. "We thought you might like to go to that banquet, your honor," he said cheerfully. "You ought to get acquainted with us and see what we're doing. If you'd go to that ban-
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quet and say a few words to us, you'd make seven hundred students awfully happy. We'd be so proud to have you to ourselves for an evening."
And although the mayor was of a different faith, he was so startled he accepted at once. Everybody was amazed at what Lefty had managed to accomplish, but he took the acclaim matter-of-factly, in fact in mild surprise, as if students invited mayors to banquets every day. He was one person in a thousand who could do something like that without being presumptuous. Much of his charm was his unmitigated cheerfulness. It wasn't a pose. He was cheerful from the bottom of his soul up and it was completely irresistible.
I met him years later at a rally. He came up from the audience to speak to me. Or rather his wife came up to say hello for both of them. Lefty didn't have the strength to walk that far and get out to the car, too — so I went down to the back of the auditorium to say hello to him. He held out his hand and grinned from ear to ear, and not a whit of the old effervescence was gone and he never mentioned that the disease that plagued him was getting progressively worse. That was no news anyhow; he had known from the first that it would. But it hadn't kept him from college. Or from looking for folk to talk to about God. Or from making plans to work for as long as he could. He was fighting like mad with that broken sword — and his sheer unadulterated joy and good humor
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made everybody whose path he crossed fight harder with their good ones.
There was another boy at that college. His name was Merle and he had a whole sword and blessings to spare. He had music in him right down to his toes. We had a radio program together and he would sit at the organ without music and without any idea of what I was going to do. I didn't either, for we had no script, but we had a set of signals and I would signal him for bridges and he had a sixth sense for backgrounds and comments. He could make that organ sing and laugh and cry and wring the heart out of you with the sweetest music this side of heaven. After the program was over we would shriek with glee because it all came off well and we had ended, ad-libbing, at a proper spot.
Merle had a great future.
I met him a few years later at a place where I was about to do some stories. When I heard he was there I looked him up and asked him to play for me for old time's sake. While we were rehearsing I saw that his right arm was paralyzed and he had to pick up his hand and lift it to the keyboard. It was polio, he said simply, with no bid for pity. As he played he lifted that hand from the lower keyboard to the upper one and back again with such facility it was hard to realize that anything was wrong at all. But I knew he was settling for less in life than he'd originally hoped
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for, because every dream that boy had ever had was embodied in his music. His sword was not the keen one he'd started out with, but somewhere along the line, within his soul, he had made the decision to accept it as it was with quiet dignity and go on fighting.
There were others who crossed my path ever so briefly, but even a glimpse of them spurred me on to greater effort.
The young man whom polio doomed to a wheel chair for the rest of his life, and who could have rotted there, but he decided to write a book instead. I have an autographed copy of it; it's a brilliant book and for all I know he's already at work on another one.
And the man who is tops in the field of dubbing orchestral bridges and backgrounds into dramatic shows. It is an art that requires not only precision but great creative ability and a sixth sense for both music and drama. When we went to see him about the orchestration for a record album, we found him lying flat in a bed ingeniously rigged with an elaborate array of pulleys and gadgets — and completely surrounded with an unbelievable amount of equipment. He was brilliant, utterly charming and vitally alive — and almost totally paralyzed. The sword he'd picked up was a shattered one, but he was wielding it with skill as if it were whole.
And a woman I met ever so briefly who was left
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not only paralyzed but with no particular compensatory talents. By human standards there was absolutely no way she could stay in the battle at all. But stay she did. She brandished her sword in intercessory prayer, and the account of her victories, for all we know, may be one of the most glorious ones on the records in heaven.
And then there is my mother, who never for a moment thought of anything but staying in the battle. Whenever I've faltered in despondency and fear, I've thought of her and been too embarrassed to quit.
And then there was the woman who inspired the script in this chapter. When I met her she was a Sunday school teacher and — but if I tell any more now I'll spoil the story. She is Ellen in the script, and you can see for yourself what a fight she put up with her broken sword. The character of Millie is fictitious.
* * * * *
THE BROKEN SWORD
I'll never forget the funny feeling that came over me when I went into the hospital room and saw Millie lying there. She looked so little
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in that high white hospital bed, and her hands and arms were all bandaged. I'd dreaded going — I hate hospitals anyhow — and I hated seeing Millie and facing her 'cause I knew what I was in for. I'd talked to young Tom, and I knew she was bitter. Awfully bitter.
I didn't really know Millie well enough to talk to her when she was bitter. I knew her only in the superficial way you know people when things are going well. Our firm had done her grandfather's accounting and then her father's. And though the old man was dead and I'd been retired for years, I'd formed the habit of dropping into the store occasionally to keep in touch.
I knew her as a little girl, wide-eyed and credulous, eager for stories. I saw her leap into the tomboy stage overnight. Some little girls miss it, unfolding like flowers, but Millie didn't. She met it head on and swaggered through it with aplomb that was both terrible and splendid. And then I saw her from afar as she retreated, shy and tremendous, as if to her, becoming a woman was a very private affair. Then she emerged laughing, half the old tomboy and the rest all secrets and mystery. And from then on, though she still called me "Unk," things were never the same with us. There was high school and boys. And then nurses' training. And boys. And then there was
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Tom. I had just talked with him before I'd left for the hospital.
From the time I'd asked downstairs at the desk where her room was, and started for the elevators — I'd been trying to make up what I was going to say — but the elevators go up to her floor awfully quick — and before I knew it — a little half-pint-size nurse had whisked me down the hall without making a sound, and pushed open a door — and there I was. Alone with Millie. And feeling awkward.
Her face was turned away from me, and she didn't even bother to turn it toward me when she spoke.
"I don't want to see anyone. Go way."
"No Millie —" I stood there turning my hat in my hand and feeling like a fool and wishing I knew what to say. I've never been much of a hand talking to folks. "I just want to be with you for a few minutes, Millie — let you know I'm standing by. I won't talk if you don't want me to."
"Oh it's you, Unk." She still didn't turn her head. "Thanks. Then you won't be saying the routine things. 'Keep your chin up it could be worse they're doing wonderful things with plastic surgery these days.' You can spare me that." It was a canned speech as though she'd had it ready. Then she said, "Tom sent you up, didn't he?"
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"Yup. He did, Millie. But you know I would have come anyway."
"Yes — you would have. Unk —" She drew a deep breath and let it out and it came out all wavy as if the sobs were right behind it. "I love you. You've always been my friend ever since we moved here. But let's get this straight. I don't want to talk about me. My hands are burned. My arms are burned. They tell me I might not use them again — partial use at best. That's that and I don't want to talk any more about it. I won't marry Tom and I don't want to be drooled over and comforted and I don't want to hear about God and I won't make the best of it and I won't —"
"Wait a minute, Millie. You hadn't ought to get excited."
"I don't talk with my hands!" She shouted it. I waited for her to go on but she didn't. And then I tried a different tack.
"But Tom —" I started. And then I stopped. She'd turned her face to look at me and what I saw in her eyes stopped me short.
"Tom's being noble, wants to marry me anyhow. Isn't that wonderful?" she said. I wished she'd cry. But she didn't. Her voice got quiet instead. And deliberately reasonable. "Oh what's the use. We can't help talking about it, can we, Unk? There's nothing else to talk about. Go ahead, talk. You can't make it
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any worse. I'm — sorry I was so ugly. You just don't understand. You just don't know —"
"Maybe," I said. "Maybe not. But I do know Tom loves you, Millie. He wants to marry you because he loves you. Because he can't imagine life without you. And God loves you, too."
"No, not that. Don't give me that." She spoke to me as if I were a well-mannered, well-meaning child. "God doesn't love me. Look at me. Millie Barker, registered nurse. Owe no man anything and wouldn't harm a flea. But I run into a boiling cauldron and I'm burned to a crisp. I'd succumb to a real corny bromide and asks, 'Why does He allow these things to happen?' — but you'd try to answer and I know all the answers — they go around in circles."
"Speaking of the love of God," I said, "reminds me of a girl — for a minute you looked like her." I cleared my throat and plunged on. "She was a girl who dared. She had the soul of an adventurer." I didn't mean to say all that but it was out.
"Oh no," she moaned softly and turned her face back to the wall.
"Well, 'The Love of God' was her favorite hymn, that's all. That's why I mentioned it. 'The love of God is greater far — than tongue or pen can ever tell. It reaches to the highest star —' " I knew I'd been dismissed. But some-
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how I couldn't go. "Well. Anyhow. This girl — her name was Ellen — had everything. Health — strength — beauty and brains, you might say. She was a young school teacher. That is, she was all set to be a school teacher. All set to be married, too. There were parties and — what d'you call 'em —"
"Showers?"
"Showers." I followed up my advantage quickly. "Yup. Clothes, plans, all the rest of it. And just before the wedding a few cases of polio broke out. She — she was one of them."
There was the clatter of dinner trays in the hall just then and it shattered the effect of what I'd said. It was like a sandbag dropping onto the stage just as you were about to disclose the first really important development in the play. I felt frustrated and foolish. I'd lost Millie's attention before I'd really gotten it. I muttered something like well, well, what was that, the dinner trays? And that I didn't know it was that late. And that I guessed I'd better be going.
"You're not going to finish the story?" she said, but without any real interest.
"Well, maybe it wasn't such a good idea to start it. I — I'll see you again, Millie."
She didn't answer, so I just backed out. Next thing I knew, I was in the elevator again,
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feeling like she hadn't really listened and I hadn't got anywhere.
But I'd underestimated the spell — yep, that's it — the spell a story can have over you.
Next day when I dropped in — I sat down, more at home this time, and Millie said —
"Well?"
"Well what?"
"Well — are you going on with the story? Did she get married?"
I paused and cleared my throat as if it were a new thought and I hadn't been thinking about it practically every minute since I'd seen her.
"Oh that. Well, not right away. The polio lasted a long time — months — and left her with one arm useless and the other with only partial use. But she got married."
"Why?" Millie said, and there was more incredulity behind it than if she'd made a speech.
"She knew John really loved her, wanted her. She dared. She dared face life as it was, asking no quarter. Took courage."
"I don't see how that took courage — being waited on —"
But I stopped her. "Hold on there. She didn't aim to be waited on. Any more than she could help it. John's first idea was to just take care of her, but she had other ideas —"
And I thought of Ellen and her other ideas.
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"She was buzzing with determination all the while she was in the hospital and John was bringing pictures of the house they were building. But it wasn't until she was out of the hospital and on her feet that she took stock of her assets and the ideas began to take shape.
"It was spring when he first took her to the new house. It had the smell of new lumber and shaving and the air of excitement and promise that new houses have. They had walked into it from a warm spring rain outside. Ellen's hair was flat when she took her head scarf off and her face was rain-freshened and her eyes —
" 'Ohhh, John, it's a wonderful house,' she said, and she pushed her hair up with her good hand. 'A wonderful house.'
'And the kitchen.' John said. 'Watch out for the sawhorse. Here. Let me help you. How do you like it?' He liked to hear her say it again and again.
'It's wonderful,' she said. 'You can see for miles from these windows. I love it. And look — in the ravine. The violets are out.'
'They came out overnight. It's the warm rain.'
'I love the view from the kitchen.'
'It won't matter much, the kitchen. You won't be out here much.'
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"What do you mean — won't be out here much.'
'Well, just to plan meals —'
'Plan meals? I'm going to get meals?'
'Ellen, let's get this straight. You're just going to —'
'I'm just going to stop living. Well, I won't. I can do — most things. I can't bend my arm or lift it but I can use my one hand.'
'Ellen —'
'So I can do things at arm's length. John — I've been thinking and thinking about it all. Look. If — if I could have a worktable built low — about like this — and things where I could reach them — there are so many things I can do. I can learn to do them my way! And don't look so alarmed!' She stopped, out of breath. She let out a loud grunt like an expletive, in mock exasperation and they both laughed. Then she said, 'John, try to understand. I want to live as if this —had just never happened. It isn't life as I wanted it. But it's life as it is. And that's the way I've got to live it. As it is.'
"She took a deep breath and said it matter-of-factly to cover the trembling in her voice. Ellen was all fight. He slopped his arm around her and she put her good arm around his waist and he took her paralyzed arm and drew it around his waist and held it there.
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"They were married that spring.
"Ellen was all fight, all woman. She wasn't saintly or noble. John was glad. He watched her through the summer and then the winter months — her struggle in spite of the low counters, her wry and explosive exasperation with the incorrigible arm, her frustration in having a hand that would obey on the end of an arm that would not, that seemed not to be there. With Ellen, it sometimes even had a sense of the ridiculous. They found they could even laugh about it.
"Spring came suddenly the next year. It seemed to come overnight after a week of gentle warm rain. The blossoms were like dowagers at a flower show, fussing and chattering and pushing their way into the already crowded clusters.
"John's mother came to stay awhile and she was there when he brought Ellen home with the baby. He handed the child to his mother and helped Ellen through the house.
"She was ecstatic. 'John!' she said, You made me another low table. And all the baby's things where I can reach them!' They went into the living room. Almost everything.'
'Of course you can,' John's mother said quickly. 'We can share the work. Here, Ellen. Sit down. Put your feet on the rung of this
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chair. So. Now hold your bad hand with your good hand — make a cradle. Now you can hold your son. There.'
"Ellen sat down in the rocker carefully, getting the feel of her new slender body, and with a look of unconcealed triumph — like a child who had won out against great odds — cradled her son in her arms. 'Look, Son,' she whispered, in conspiracy. 'The violets are out. And I saw a robin this morning. We're going to have a terrific life together. I've got lots to show you and tell you. It's a great life —'
'Spring's out all over,' John said.
'I know,' she said. 'It just exploded. It isn't even decent!'
"It was a wonderful spring to usher a baby in. Flamboyant and extravagant and full of promises.
"In the next three years Ellen learned to cope with more and more things. She could jerk the offending arm into any position and she did so without self-consciousness. She treated it with polite respect but without pampering. She neither resented nor pitied it. It was just there to hang her hand on and she circumvented it — physically and emotionally.
"In the third year her body was heavy again and she could not kneel with her son
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to pray. She would sit on the edge of his bed, lowering herself carefully. And the child would pray.
" 'Amen. Oh. And, Father, please help me get dressed in half the time tomorrow —' she had given him the same matter-of-fact relationship that she had always had with God — 'and forgive me for taking twice the time today — but you know, Lord, that was an emergency on account of my suspenders. Amen.'
"She laughed softly. 'In Jesus' name, amen.'
'In Jesus name, amen. Why? Why do I always have to say that?'
'Because He died for you. And because you've accepted that gift of salvation. If you leave out Jesus you leave out the one who gives you the right to talk to God in the first place.'
'Oh.'
'You're right about wanting to dress quickly. You have to learn to do things for yourself now. You're going to help me take care of baby brother.'
'Oh, sure. I want to do that.' And then, 'I liked the story about Samson tonight. He was a strong guy, all right.'
'Yes — holding her arm. 'He had a strong body and great gifts. But he was a failure. He missed the best God had for him.'
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'What's tomorrow's story?'
'Tomorrow I'll tell you about a woman who hid two enemy spies and cast her lot with God —'
"And so it would go. She would kiss him goodnight at last. They had good times together.
"Spring was late that year. The cold rains kept beating it back. And then there was an April snow. So when Ellen came home with her second son only the crocuses were up, poking through. The other blossoms were held back tight and shivering. And the violets were hidden down in the ravine, waiting. So when spring finally came it was cautious and wary and then, belated and flustered, it scurried through the briefest possible token gestures and hurried into summer almost overnight.
"The years went by and the springs came inexorably; it was only how they came that was unpredictable. Sometimes in perfect order. And sometimes like a first-night performance, after many false starts and muffled groans and abortive curtain-risings.
"And the offending arm became less and less an issue. It had nothing to do with their love, Ellen's and John's.
" 'I've been asked to teach Sunday school,' she told John one night. They were standing
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in the kitchen. She was holding a stack of towels in her good arm.
'I know better than to ask if you said yes.'
'Sure I said yes. The boys are in school. I have hours to myself. Will you scratch my nose?'
"He did.
" 'It's a women's class,' she said. 'I've a list here somewhere. I can pray for each one of them. It'll be a good class, John. It'll make me dig.'
'Uh huh.'
'I need to dig.'
'Yes.'
'And, John?'
'Yes?'
'It's a wonderful life.'
"He took the towels, put them on the counter.
'I love you,' he said.
'I love you. I'm so glad I talked you into marrying me.' There was laughter in her voice. But lots of years went into the way she said it."
I thought of Ellen and the way she said "I love you." I stopped talking, thinking about it.
"You made it sound wonderful," said Millie. Her voice startled me.
"Yes — it was a wonderful life," I said. "All the way through. She made it wonderful. Right up until she left it. The letters she wrote the
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boys while they were at school — ah — nobody else ever wrote such letters. The class she taught, the lives she touched — somehow, with her, even death wasn't horrible. You knew she had just crossed over."
"She died?"
"People like Ellen never really die, Millie. She just — crossed over, like Christian did in Pilgrim's Progress — she was always talking to the boys about Christian. She crossed over and saw the one who had given her that burden — and knew at last why He'd given it. And there, she had two strong arms at last. But she'd done pretty well without 'em. I think He said, 'Well done, thou good and faithful servant.' "
"Yeah —"
"Her life reached out and blessed everybody it touched, everywhere — her influence made something special out of ordinary things."
"You must have known her pretty well."
"Yes — I knew her very well." And then I told Millie what I was sure she had guessed all along. "You see — I was John."
But incredibly she hadn't guessed. Whether in the colossal egotism of youth she couldn't imagine that an old man like myself could have loved a woman I don't know. But she hadn't guessed.
"Oh. And I thought you didn't understand," she said and all her defenses crumpled as she
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said it and her face got very vulnerable, like a little girl's. "Unk, I've known you so long. But I've never really known you." Then desperately, "Her life did count, didn't it? It did count?"
"There are many who think so. Some she taught in Sunday school have gone on to Christian work. Her two sons grew up in the knowledge of God — one is a Christian businessman — the other is a preacher. And their sons — my grandsons — one's a missionary and the other one is being ordained next month. I'm going to the ordination. Gonna sit right in the front row. He promised to wink at me."
"Ohhhh, Unk."
"You see, Millie — the life she dared to live is still going on. Do you think it was worth living? Do you think it counted?"
She sniffed unashamedly. "That hymn — her hymn. What was it Unk?"
"I never finished it, did I? 'The love of God — is greater far — than tongue or pen — can ever tell — it reaches to the highest star —' It reaches to the lowest hell, Millie. It was as if she had a broken sword to fight the battle with. Not a nice new shiny one. But she aimed to fight anyway. With the broken one."
I got a tissue from her table and wiped her nose while I was talking. She let me do it, not taking her eyes off me.
"I don't know why God gave her a broken
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sword," I said. "I don't aim to try to explain those things. I only know that God's love was there — in her life — just shining all through."
She crumpled then all over and turned her face away and began to cry softly to herself. There's all kinds of crying and ordinarily I would have worried but I saw that this was good. And then I saw that young Tom had slipped into the room and was standing there behind me. I turned and we just nodded in a kind of unspoken conspiracy. And then I left.
Going down the elevator I felt Ellen's presence so strongly I reached up and patted my shoulder where her hand seemed to be resting.
All the sadness came suddenly with the cold rain outside. Spring would be late this year. I felt empty. But as I rounded the corner by the parking lot I stopped in a sudden gust of wind, my head down. And there they were, huddled in some leaves shivering. Violets. I stooped and picked a couple. In the car I put them in my buttonhole.
I started the car and turned on the windshield wipers. They swept clean arcs and through the arcs I saw the world washed and the buds waiting and some of the sadness left me. Spring would be late, but it would come.
Like I said, I'm not much good at talking to people. And I don't know if I really got to Millie. Or if she'll marry young Tom.
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But if she does — why there's another life that Ellen has reached out and touched.
I thought as I drove out of the parking lot — there just doesn't seem to be any end to it.
* * * * *
Now I must get academic for a moment and confess that I've tampered with facts a bit, but only for dramatic value. I made "Unk" an old man, for instance, because that way it was more feasible that Millie would not know about his distant past. It also lessened the possibility that the listener would guess who he was until the proper time to disclose it. He was given the unidentifiable name of "Unk" for the same reason.
John's real name is not John at all, but Carl — and Ellen's real name is Luella, and the happiest confession I have to make is that she is really still alive and still teaching Sunday school in upper New York State.
As you've probably guessed, she was my Sunday school teacher, and the first one I had, as an adult. I'd stayed away from Sunday school for years, but now Gary was old enough to go and Steve seemed content in a basket in the corner so
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I decided to give it a try.
I first noticed with what dexterity she manipulated her notes and her Bible with only one good hand and a paralyzed arm. The other arm and hand were completely useless. Then I noticed her eyes. They were brown, and "sparkling eyes" is an expression so overworked it has lost its meaning, but when Luella looked at you with hers, there were no other words for them. They had one sparkle for enthusiasm and one for warmth and a special gentle one for tenderness. And I never saw her when she didn't have one of them turned on. Then I noticed her smile. Ah, that was a good one, that smile. It was one to make you glad you were alive.
But perhaps the most revealing thing I can say about her is that after a while I didn't notice Luella any more as she taught. I saw only God.
They are still living there in Burnt Hills — "Ellen" and "John" — and their farm is a show place that has been photographed and written about — and it does your heart good to be with them and see the wonderfully full life they've both worked out — with a broken sword.
The world is full of people with broken swords. Some of them have, like the soldier in the fable, fled to the edge of the battle where they could hide. And there are some who have thought they were going to have broken swords and bore it nobly, but the sword did not break after all. And they've had a sneaking feeling of pride ever since
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about how well they behaved and how completely they gave it to God — when perhaps the only reason God did not go ahead and break the sword was because He could not trust them with such a responsibility, for they were not really up to it after all.
The nearest I ever came to a broken sword was after a spinal fusion when for several days there was a question as to whether the partially atrophied muscles in one of my legs would be restored. A steel brace perhaps, or crutches. Or at best, a limp. I lay in the hospital thinking about it — numb. Too terrified even to rebel. Then I began methodically to die again to everything I could possibly think of that meant anything to me — to give it all to God. For a while I found I could give Him everything but that. Well, all right, I would settle for a limp. And then one night as I was going down the list for the hundredth time I suddenly laughed aloud at the absurdity of my struggle. If I was completely in His hands — then I was — steel brace, limp and all I gave to Him — and slept like a baby.
Well, it turned out that in a week or so I could wiggle my toes. In a year I couldn't have told you which leg had been the culprit. So I can't feel noble about it because I never really had the broken sword. I never really chafed under the steel brace or suffered the crutches or even limped. Anyone can give himself in a sudden moment of
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abandonment. But who is to say I would not have wavered and finally fled in panic, after I'd settled down to the reality of it?
The ones who have decided to stay in the battle had to stop brooding about what they didn't have and concentrate on what they did have — and sharpen it and polish it until it was a weapon to reckon with. Some of them discovered potentialities they never knew were there when they were busy bustling about. And all of them realized a great truth, whether or not they put it into words. They knew that though they were limited physically — some of them forced into complete physical idleness — the part of them that counted was still intact.
It is the idleness of the mind that leaves us floating like aimless debris, getting nowhere. It is the idleness of the soul that makes us deadweight. For it is when we are mentally and spiritually idle that we pick up the attitudes and habits that set us drifting and in the end drag us down: The sloths of despondency, clinging to the dark branches of our minds. The minor chords of complaining, reverberating down endless corridors in dull monotony. The chisel of criticism, chipping off the good and leaving ragged edges. The dreary treadmills of destructive habits, refusing to let us off. And anger. And hate. And bitterness...
These things are there, in all of us, all the time, clamoring for attention. And it is when we
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are mentally and spiritually idle that they get it.
In The Holy War, it was when the inhabitants of Mansoul began to court Mr. Carnal-Security and forgot to go to the palace for the feasts that Prince Emmanuel had spread for them, that these "Diabolonians" came out of hiding. They'd been sweating it out in cracks and cellars for years, awaiting their opportunity. They sneaked out into the side streets, a bit cautiously at first, but no one paid them any heed, and so they began to stay out openly in the market square. It was while Mansoul was spiritually idle that they struck. It's the part that counts that we must keep intact. "My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness" is as true today as when He first said it.
God did not intend that anyone flee in panic to the side of the battle and hide. And some of the swords that have won the most glorious victories — have been the broken ones. It is the ones who are fighting with broken swords who spur the rest of us on....
