August 16, 2025

⁂ The Belbury Within

Dimble’s steadiness as a chracter can seen a given. He is the wise man in the room, the one who holds firm when others waver. But Lewis lets us glimpse something deeper, and more human. His strength is not effortless. It is born in struggle.

He finds himself asking whether there is a darker motive at work inside him:

“Did you fail to make things clear because you really wanted not to? Just wanted to hurt and humiliate? To enjoy your own self-righteousness? Is there a whole Belbury inside you too?”

That question unsettles him, because it is not about the world outside but about his own heart.

And in his dealings with Mark, we see how hard he works to keep his motives clean. Lewis says,

“In reality his presence was acting on Dimble as a summons to rigid self-control. Dimble was simply trying very hard not to hate, not to despise, above all not to enjoy hating and despising, and he had no idea of the fixed severity which this effort gave to his face.”

Mark sees coldness, but what he is really seeing is restraint — the strain of a man refusing the luxury of contempt.

Even when hope awakens in him — “for charity hopes all things” — it is tempered by caution, and Mark mistakes it for accusation. The truth is that Dimble cannot bring himself to offer easy assurances. When Mark complains, “I see you don’t trust me,” Dimble answers, after a long pause, “No. I don’t quite.” His honesty stings. Yet it is the honesty of one who refuses to pretend, even to soothe another’s feelings.

These pauses, these silences, are not signs of coldness. They are the weight of a man praying with his own motives, refusing to let words serve his pride. It is in this space that Brother Lawrence comes to mind: “Thus I shall always do, whenever You leave me to myself.”

Brother Lawrence, the quiet seventeenth-century lay brother, spoke of finding God in the most ordinary tasks — in kitchens, in courtyards, in washing pots. He taught that presence is not found by great triumphs but by returning, moment by moment, to God.

So too with Dimble. The very places where he falters — his severity, his pauses, his self-distrust — become thresholds of presence. Left to himself, he cannot hold steady. But the very ache of that weakness draws him back to grace.

For those who pray the old words of the church, this will feel familiar. The Collects that confess “there is no health in us.” The Psalms that move from searching the motives of the heart to hoping in God’s mercy. Dimble’s honesty and silence sound like those prayers in human form.

He is not a saint untouched by turmoil. He is a man whose effort not to despise becomes prayer. His honesty is costly. His silence heavy. His sadness new and strange. Yet through it all, grace lingers. Brother Lawrence whispers that even this wrestling is holy ground.

Lewis’s great battle between St Anne’s and Belbury thunders with machinery and ambition. But the truer conflict lies here — in one man’s effort not to indulge in despising. The kingdom of God is carried forward not only in victories against grand enemies but in the quiet refusal of hatred, in the silence that holds both caution and hope.

And here the novel touches our own lives. Who among us has not paused, unsure if our words are clean of pride? Who has not wondered whether our severity comes from truth or from self-righteousness? Dimble’s struggle is ours. His silences remind us that even unease with ourselves can be prayer.

Brother Lawrence teaches us that God is present in the humblest tasks. Dimble shows us that God is present in the humblest motives. And perhaps that is where the mystery lies: in discovering that our faltering, our pauses, even our doubts, may be doorways to grace. Not Belbury’s false enchantment, but the quiet nearness of God, always closer than we think.