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November 2009 
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"The grave of Charles Williams in an Oxford churchyard (Holywell*) is marked by a stone bearing his name and the terse description: Poet, followed by the words, Under the Mercy.
"Under the Mercy is a phrase that appears frequently in his writings, as it did in his conversation. He liked to refer to the Divinity by Its Attributes: the Mercy, the Protection, the Omnipotence. In his personal life he seemed always to be clinging to the faith that, balanced as he was upon the knife-edge of his Christian allegiance in the world of myth and magic that his passion-inflamed imagination had conjured up, he would find at last, in death if by no other route, the stillness of the Love of God. It was his wife, Michal, in one of those sudden flashes of crystal-clear insight of which she was not infrequently capable, who chose the inscription on the stone. Nothing could have been more appropriate."
There is another phrase that appears in his book Many Dimensions (1931), which "involves the reappearance of a long-lost talisman, this time the Stone of Solomon, which turns out to have extraordinary powers over space and time (but using the latter has unexpected results!), as well as powers of healing. The book's climax is a kind of judicial hearing by the Lord Chief Justice on what should be done with this thing; justice and law are prominent themes in the book - which is also both a thriller and at times a satire, as various parties try to get their hands on the Stone." This phrase is Under the Submission. Williams seemed to understand deeply the spirit of Islam and how powerful and freeing submission to Allah could be.
Just a heads-up, as I think I will be using these phrases to sign off again, as I did for years as a younger woman. Now you know part of the context. The rest of the context is found for me right now in my relationship with my beloved and others I love, the joyful and mutual self-giving enfolded in divine Grace.
