“All great stories are about longing,” a friend recently said to me. I immediately thought of The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame, the classic book about the adventures of four animal friends: Mole, Rat, Badger, and Toad. Grahame’s tale is beautifully wrought, not only in richness of language, but in calling forth what it describes, longing, which pervades and indeed begins the story. As Mole is busy with spring-cleaning his little underground home, he feels an imperious call: “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.” He quickly makes his way to the upper world where he rejoices in the air and the sun.

The Longing for the Other

Mole’s wanderings take him at last to a river bank. He is captivated; the gurgles and gleams hold him spell-bound, murmuring rumors of a larger world. The extent of the alteration he has already undergone is apparent in his daydreaming about setting up residence there, adopting an existence so different from what he has known. Indeed he does precisely that, though not on his own: he will have a guide into this new life, the Water Rat. But Mole’s transformation is not complete; his longings have not yet been satisfied: “…with his ear to the reed-stems he caught, at intervals, something of what the wind went whispering so constantly among them.”

For his part, Rat feels no desire to experience anything else: he believes there is no better life to be had. When Mole asks if it is true that he really lives along the river, he sermonizes on its sufficiency: “‘By it and with it and on it and in it,’ said the Rat. ‘It’s brother and sister to me, and aunts, and company, and food and drink, and (naturally) washing. It’s my world, and I don’t want any other. What it hasn’t got is not worth having, and what it doesn’t know is not worth knowing.’” He cautions Mole against fanciful longing. When his friend wishes to know what lies beyond, Rat tries to dissuade his interest by hinting at the dangers of the Wild Wood. But when Mole persists, he becomes firmer: “‘Beyond the Wild Wood comes the Wide World,’ said the Rat. `And that’s something that doesn’t matter, either to you or me. I’ve never been there, and I’m never going, nor you either, if you’ve got any sense at all. Don’t ever refer to it again, please.’”

But Mole’s curiosity is not so easily quelled. He desires to see more. He wants to meet Mr. Badger, about whom he has heard so much. But Rat continually puts him off. Finally, impatient with Rat’s cautiousness and stay-at-home contentment, Mole undertakes the journey to the Wild Wood on his own. He gets into a great deal of trouble from which good-hearted Rat endeavors to extract him.

Mole also wished to be introduced to the famous Mr. Toad, the character most driven by a longing for the other. They find Toad full of exuberance over his current fitful obsession: a canary-colored caravan cart. “‘There’s real life for you, embodied in that little cart,” he expounds. “‘Here to-day, up and off to somewhere else to-morrow! Travel, change, interest, excitement!” Rat is disgusted by this latest fixture of Toad’s cycle of infatuation and abandonment, but he knows that it will not take long for this fad to change. When the cart is thrown into a ditch by a speeding car, Toad, far from being angry, is immediately entranced by this new, motorized vision. His mania will lead him to theft, imprisonment, disgrace, and the near-loss of his ancestral home.

The Longing for Home

The yearning for the new and undiscovered is balanced in the story by the powerful draw homeward. When the new becomes fatiguing or frightening, the familiar comforts of home begin to beckon. After their adventure in the Wild Wood, both Rat and Mole are more than ready to return to snug security.

As they return, Mole meditates on belonging: “Mole saw clearly that he was an animal of tilled field and hedge-row… he must be wise, must keep to the pleasant places in which his lines were laid and which held adventure enough, in their way, to last for a lifetime.” This realization is followed swiftly by a summons home as commanding as that which had originally called him away. He is following Rat across the darkening fields, led by “that small inquiring something which all animals carry inside them, saying unmistakably, ‘Yes, quite right; this leads home!’” when he feels a pull. But this is not now the same voice that speaks to Rat: it is Mole’s old home pleading for his return. Mole experiences all the warmth of familiarity, but his love of home is now tempered by larger perspective. Its sanctuary is more desirable because it exists in the context of a larger world. Neither the one nor the other can fully satisfy on its own. Mole can never now relapse into insular contentment, but neither will he, like Toad, be led astray by the siren calls of novelty. He has found a harmony between the two: he is pulled, but not torn.

The Longing for God

But Rat and Mole will be struck with a longing that infinitely exceeds anything they have known in their normal lives. They are out searching for the son of their friend Otter, Little Portly, who has been missing for several days. Just as dawn is rising, Rat becomes mesmerized by a sound impinging upon the edge of his consciousness. He attempts to describe it to Mole: “‘O Mole! the beauty of it!….Such music I never dreamed of, and the call in it is stronger even than the music is sweet! Row on, Mole, row! For the music and the call must be for us.’” They are led to a small island in the river, which they approach with awe: “‘Here, in this holy place, here if anywhere, surely we shall find Him!’” Indeed, they look into the very eyes of “the Friend and Helper,” then bowing their heads in worship. We need not be troubled by the pagan associations of Pan. How should the Lord of Creation appear to animals? Rat and Mole encounter God as the embodiment and source of nature; they encounter Him who is undeniably other and, at the same time, undeniably the anchorage of their existence.

The Wind in the Willows evokes much of what C.S. Lewis wrote about Sehnsucht—longing. Born from the vision of distant hills and awakening a desire for otherworldly joy, this longing, Lewis eventually realized, pointed to Christ. Indeed, it is in God that the longing for the other and longing for home meet. God is our origin and our end, our home and our destination. We long for the otherworldly, yet we often mistake the good things of this world for what shines through them, and so we chase after what cannot satisfy, we drink from wells that will never quench our thirst. As Lewis wrote in The Weight of Glory, “These things…are good images of what we desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshippers.” We are told to set our minds on things above rather than earthly things (Colossians 3:2). But in doing so, we come to truly and fully enjoy the earthly gifts of a gracious God. We can cross the fields of life awake to the upward call that tells us “Yes, quite right; this leads home!”