The Great Divorce: Read It. August 26, 2009

I just finished reading The Great Divorce by C.S. Lewis.  I feel like such a ridiculous cliche raving about how much I love C.S. Lewis, but there it is.  (And at least I’m not so ridiculous as to call him “Jack” – who does that?)  I remember that the first time I read the book, it was just after I graduated high school.  Hmm.  I only remembered snippets, and mostly those that are oft-quoted elsewhere.  So I was pleasantly surprised when, on my second reading, I was blown away by this book.  I seriously was writing down like page-long quotes.  The Great Divorce stirs the intellect, the imagination, and the soul – please read it, and know that it’s best read in a couple of large chunks.  Don’t worry if you have to re-read some of the weighty paragraphs…everyone does.  If they say they don’t, they’re either lying or not actually understanding the information.  Or they’ve got some Good Will Hunting thing going on.

Shall I leave you with a sampling?

For the intellect, a conversation between the narrator and the Spirit of George MacDonald on the impending death of Pity:

“What some people say on Earth is that the final loss of one soul gives the lie to all the joy of those who are saved.”

“Ye see it does not.”

“I feel in a way that it ought to.”

“That sounds very merciful: but see what lurks behind it.”

“What?”

“The demand of the loveless and the self-imprisoned that they should be allowed to blackmail the universe: that till they consent to be happy (on their own terms) no one else shall taste joy: that theirs should be the final power; that Hell should be able to veto Heaven.”

“I don’t know what I want, Sir.”

“Son, son, it must be one way or the other. Either the day must come when joy prevails and all the makers of misery are no longer able to infect it: or else for ever and ever the makers of misery can destroy in others the happiness they reject for themselves. I know it has a grand sound to say ye’ll accept no salvation which leaves even one creature in the dark outside. But watch that sophistry or ye’ll make a Dog in a Manger the tyrant of the universe.”

For the soul:

The Happy Trinity is her home: nothing can trouble her joy./ She is the bird that evades every net: the wild deer that leaps every pitfall./ Like the mother bird to its chickens or a shield to the arm’d knight: so is the Lord to her mind, in His unchanging lucidity./ […] He fills her brim-full with immensity of life: he leads her to see the world’s desire.

For the imagination:

For a moment there was silence under the cedar trees and then – pad, pad, pad – it was broken.  Two velvet-footed lions came bouncing into the open space, their eyes fixed upon each other, and started playing some solemn romp.  Their manes looked as though they had just been dipped in the river whose noise I could hear close at hand, though the tree hid it.  Not greatly liking my company, I moved away to find that river, and after passing some thick flowering bushes, I succeed.

Quotable Friday Vol. 32 (Monday Edition) August 24, 2009

Ask for the Morning Star and take (thrown in)

your earthy love…

C.S. Lewis, “Five Sonnets”

Oh man, how much does that one line make you want to read C.S. Lewis’s book of poetry (aptly titled Poems)?  I’m re-reading The Great Divorce right now.  The last time I read it I was fresh out of high school…I’m interested to see how I react to it this time around, being 7 years older and with much more life experience to speak of.

It’s weird: as much as I love C.S. Lewis, I kind of can’t stand the thought of books written about his work.  I mean, yawnsville, right?  Case in point: The Way Into Narnia, A Reader’s Guide.  Seriously?  I think that robs the reader the experience of discovering the land of Narnia on her own; it’s like writing a book on how to enjoy your birthday or something.  I’d so much rather figure it out alonethan have someone spoonfeed me his opinions of what C.S. Lewis meant in the third paragraph of the fourth chapter of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, you know?

Wayfarers All August 6, 2009

 

Sometimes I wish I had days, literally days, to just think and to lose myself in my imagination.  In Surprised By Joy C.S. Lewis speaks of his weekends in school, when he would lose himself in his books and get taken up with the wild lands of the far North.  When I read the chapter “Wayfarers All” from The Wind In The Willows, I feel like my imagination, and my heart, have enough to sink into for hours.  The Sea Rat’s final monologue touches deep places in my heart and leaves me stirred and yearning and frustrated with my insatiable greed for life.  In this scene a little homebody Rat meets a wanderlust Rat, and the traveler tries to entice the homebody with colorful tales of his wanderings and adventures:

 

And you, you will come too, young brother; for the days pass, and never return, and the South still waits for you.  Take the adventure, heed the call, now ere the irrevocable moment passes!  ‘Tis but a banging of the door behind you, a blithesome step forward, and you are out of the old life and into the new!  Then some day, some day long hence, jog home here if you will, when the cup has been drained and the play has been played, and sit down by your quiet river with a store of goodly memories for company.  You can easily overtake me on the road, for you are young, and I am ageing and go softly.  I will linger, and look back; and at last I will surely see you coming, with all the South in your face!

 

What is it about that banging of the door behind me?  It’s as if I’m addicted to it: the passing out of the old life and into the new.  Sometimes I see it as a little weed sprouting out of my sin nature: wanting to get away from the demands and the drudgery of familiar day-to-day life.  Other times I wonder if these longings can be seen as glimmers of spiritual longing; I’m longing for the new because I worship the God who makes all things new, the God who promises rebirth and a new and glorious body one day.  As is often the case, I’m sure it’s a muddy mixture of both.

 

Donald Miller shares the sentiment of the wayfaring Sea Rat in his yet-to-be published book, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years.  He says that maybe our purpose in life is to just be here, in the story God is writing around us, to “take the adventure and heed the call” and to enjoy it with Him and relish it together for eternity afterward. He writes:

 

I wonder if that’s what we’ll do with God when we are through with all this, if He’ll show us around heaven, all the beauty and light coming in through windows a thousand miles away, all the fields sweeping down to a couple of chairs under a tree, and we’ll sit and tell Him our stories and He’ll smile and tell us what they mean.

 

But some people, like Oswald Chambers, like to talk about drudgery.  They like to talk about living as a disciple in the day to day, when you’ve come down from the mountain and it’s not fun anymore but somebody’s got to do it.  I think about half of the entries in My Utmost For His Highest are about the drudgery of the life of a disciple.  Now, this is a bit of a comfort for me because instead of wanting to shoot myself every day I sit in an air-conditioned, fluorescent lit office I only want to shoot myself every other day.  Once in a while Chambers alludes to the pure, raw adventure and ecstasy of oneness with Christ, but it’s rare. 

 

I wonder if Chambers, in his curmudgeonly way, has got it right while the pagan author of The Wind in the Willows and postmodern, sentimental Donald Miller are off base.  Miller talks of heaven as a place where we rehash our experiences with God and receive insight about them, perhaps turning that into a deeper knowledge of the Author of our story and hence a deeper sense of gratitude and richer worship of Him.  Grahame mentions sitting by a quiet river with a stock of fantastic memories to keep us company. But Chambers says that the adventure isn’t now – that it starts when we get to heaven.  There are definitely a lot of material from the Scriptures to back up this idea…the first to come to mind is the passage in Hebrews about the heroes of the faith,

 

“ 13 All these people died still believing what God had promised them. They did not receive what was promised, but they saw it all from a distance and welcomed it. They agreed that they were foreigners and nomads here on earth. 14 Obviously people who say such things are looking forward to a country they can call their own. […] 16 But they were looking for a better place, a heavenly homeland. That is why God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them.”

 

In his recent podcast, “Embracing the Pain,” Greg Boyd shared this view when he reminded his listeners that this life ain’t a vacation, so stop expecting it to be!  Instead of the oft-used pilgrim analogy, he used the war metaphor…we are rebels living behind enemy lines, trying to tell as many people as we can about the Good King and the future He promises before He comes riding in and establishes His Kingdom again.  So then, while we ought not to expect comforts, luxury, and leisure in this life, I suppose we can still expect adventures – the raw kind that come with war, like secret night missions and recapturing hostages and blowing up enemy bridges. 

 

Again I find myself turning to C.S. Lewis.  You know the end of the last book in the Chronicles of Narnia, The Last Battle?  The children finally get to Aslan’s country, or heaven, if you will.  And C.S. Lewis wraps it up as only he can,

 

But for them it was only the beginning of the real story.  All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read:  which goes on for ever:  in which every chapter is better than the one before.

 

So life here in the Shadowlands – is it more about biding our time in the brokenness until the real adventure starts? Should we insist on a beautiful life here and now, so we can laugh and raise our glasses in a toast to it at the Wedding Feast of the Lamb?  Should we as pilgrims seek adventure in this foreign land or is merely residing here adventure enough…in its own way?

 

I throw one last thought in there.  Despite his eloquence depicting the adventuresome life, later in that same chapter of The Wind in the Willows Grahame shows us another side of the same coin, highlighting the wonder of the day-to-day.  When Mole tries to shake Rat out of his bewitched wanderlust state, he tries to talk about the magic of where they are rather than where they could be — the slow but sure change of the seasons and the domestic delights around every corner of normal life.

 

[Rat] seemed to have lost all interest for the time in things that went to make up his daily life, as well as in all pleasant forecastings of the altered days and doings that the changing season was surely bringing.  Casually, then, and with seeming indifference, the Mole turned his talk to the harvest that was being gathered in, the towering wagons and their straining teams, the growing ricks, and the large moon rising over bare acres dotted with sheaves.  He talked of the reddening apples around, of the browning nuts, of jams and preserves and the distilling of cordials; till by easy stages such as these he reached mid-winter, its hearty joys and home life, and then he became simply lyrical.

 

So can we have our cake and eat it too?  I think it’s possible.  As a stranger in a strange land, one can still exult in the majesty of a sunrise, can still become intoxicated with the fragrance of wild jasmine, can still savor the taste of a ripe strawberry.  A soldier wandering behind enemy lines can still wonder at the exquisite detail of a wildflower and revel in the refreshment of a cool stream.  I like the idea of having something to look forward to, though.  Because if you’re sitting in Donald Miller’s chairs talking over your story with God, or at the banks of the Sea Rat’s river with a “store of goodly memories for company” you’ll eventually run out of things to say, and those memories will fade a little too much.  And that’s when Aslan might twitch His tail and call out, “Further up and further in, children!  A new adventure awaits!”

 

I apologize for this uber long, stream of consciousness post.  But if Donald Miller can do it, can’t I?  I might end up cleaning up the typos and awkward bits and adding links…we’ll see.  Until then, deal and Google.

 

It would be great if you wanted to discuss these matters…ahem…leave comments.  But if not, just let the ideas roll around and bump into each other in your head and see what you come up with!

Fish Out of Water July 17, 2009

There’s a lovely passage near the beginning of A Severe Mercy, when Vanauken is telling the story of the early days of his and Davy’s love:

The walks, especially as the sun got up and began to warm us, were leisurely, full of pauses to talk to a farmer or farmwife.  Sometimes they would have us in for a glass of fresh milk.  Or sometimes we would stop and sit on a wall, eating a sun-warmed tomato, talking or peacefully silent.  Often we talked of the sad and somehow outrageous fact that in most lives, perhaps our own before long, there isn’t time for long walks and sitting on walls.  We quoted a poem by W.H. Davies to the effect that it is a poor life if we have no time “to stop and stare” as sheep and cows do.  We agreed.  Nor were we cheered by the prospect of an occasional day off from an office, for with only one day there would be a sense of time at one’s back, a time too limited to “waste” sitting on walls.  How were we to contrive a life full of time—a timeful life—where we could be quiet and leisurely, where we could stop and stare?

 For days after I read that passage, I kept going back to it in my mind.  That’s the dream, isn’t it?  As much as I love adventure, I love those landing places, when you can be fully present and fully alive.  When that sun-warmed tomato is the best damn tomato you’ve ever eaten in your life.  Van and Davy ended up learning to sail, and taking a yacht out in the Florida Keys, wading knee deep in water, getting “brown as nuts” and spearing lobster for their dinner.  They had, for a little while, that timeful life.

But I have a feeling that this life isn’t meant to be “timeful.”  Time, by nature, is not abundant but scarce.  Time never multiplies, it only decreases.  Every day our time is running out – sometimes one grain of sand at a time but for some of us, the whole hourglass is kicked over and time comes rushing out over the shattered glass. 

C.S. Lewis describes humans’ tense relationship with time, and hints at the idea in Romans of humanity and all of creation groaning and longing for their redemption and a coming into ourselves:

“Do fish complain of the sea being wet?  Or if they did, would not that fact itself not strongly suggest that they had had not always been, or [would] not always be, purely aquatic creatures?  Notice how we are always perpetually surprised at Time.  (“How time flies!  Fancy John being grown up and married!  I can hardly believe it!”) In heaven’s name, why?  Unless, indeed, there is something in us which is not temporal.”

I first read the passage from A Severe Mercy last week, and I tucked those words into a corner of my mind like Charlie and his prized chocolate bar – often going to the corner, slowly peeling back the wrapper, then the foil, allowing myself a little nibble and tasting the melting sweetness of that idea all over again – the idea of a timeful life; of taking long walks outdoors and eating fresh foods and delighting in the company of my companion.  That was last week, when I was working a steady job Monday through Thursday and figured I would do that until I started at Fuller, where I would work and go to school every day and somehow survive until the next busy season, whatever that would be.

But now, suddenly, I’m quasi-unemployed.  I still have my subbing job but I don’t have the regular work.  Last week I was stressing about money and hoarding for the future and dreaming of a timeful life – this week I’m overwhelmed with free time, and also with the knowledge that I lack nothing; it’s now clear the stress and the hoarding were a waste of my energy.  So what’s the moral of this story?  Did I get a timeful life just for the wishing of it?

No, I don’t think that’s what happened.  And I still think that time’s nature does not allow itself to be abundant – for long.  But sometimes the Creator of Time does some fancy footwork and creates these little pockets, these little hollows in time where we get to camp out and rest a while, before going back to the normal state of things, i.e. swimming around and wondering why we’re getting wet and why we can’t take a deep breath under here.

It’s only a matter of time, so to speak, before we’re back on land and there’s no more Sea and no more Time and we can just be, and that will be better even than what we think we’re groaning for now.

There’s More to the Internet Than Facebook February 1, 2009

So you know how I’ve quoted Anne Lamott like, a hundred times on this site?  I didn’t bring any of her books with me on this trip, because when you can only bring two pieces of baggage for 8 months, you have to be a little selective about the reading material you bring.  So anyway, lately I’ve been craving Anne Lamott’s writing (as well as a quick jaunt into Narnia) and yesterday I made a fabulous discovery: on a whim, I typed “Anne Lamott online” into Google, and I found this.  An archive of essays she wrote for Salon Magazine.  Yessss.  If I didn’t have an important date with my journal, my Bible, and a cafe I would have sat there for hours reading all of the essays in one gulp.  

Okay, the point of this post: read some of these essays.  You will laugh, you might cry, you might shake your fist, you might be moved, and you might want to burn Anne Lamott at the stake for heresy.  That’s totally up to you.  But I know I’m not leaving you with much new content lately (dude, I’m on outreach)…so just take the time you would normally use for our dear lil Eeper and head on over here.  That will get you started.  Let me know your thoughts.

Quotable Friday, Vol. 30 November 28, 2008

From Surprised By Joy by C.S. Lewis:

“[...] the very nature of Joy makes nonsense of our common distinction between having and wanting.  There, to have is to want and to want is to have.  Thus, the very moment when I longed to be so stabbed again, was itself again such a stabbing.”

And when God and His Joy didn’t show up the way Lewis expected:

“[...] being an idolator and a formalist, I insisted that He ought to appear in the temple I had built Him, not knowing that He cares only for temples building and not at all for temples built.”

How often do I do this?  God does something, draws near in a certain way, and…Joy!  But almost immediately I begin to build a temple for the experience, desperately wanting it to come again, in just the same way (but maybe stronger).  I often make the “first and deadly error”, as Lewis puts it, of turning from the object to the state of mind that the object brings; from God to the thrill of His nearness.  I try to build an ark or a tabernacle so He will stay there, so I can somehow tether his presence like a kite, anchor it like a ship.

But Lewis points out that this is in vain; He’s only interested in the “temple building.”  He’s moved on again, so quickly, leaped over to the next cold statue to breathe life into it.  Staying behind and trying to find Him where He was is fruitless – it’s attempting to find warmth from a fire that is now merely ashes.  Once He leaves and moves on, there is no longer anything special about that place; it’s cold and dead.  Lewis compares it to the women seeking the risen Jesus at the tomb.  The angel says to them, “Why do you seek the living among the dead?  He is not here, He is risen.”  And that’s how it is with God – we have to keep chasing Him, moving where and when He moves.  It’s like the Israelites in the wilderness, always at the ready to break up camp the moment Yahweh advanced.  We must realize that He doesn’t fly on to the next place without us or to get away from us, but to keep us moving…there’s so much to do and so much to see; we’re always going further up and further in!

Surprised By Joy September 21, 2008

I just finished the book Surprised By Joy: The Shape of My Early Life, by C.S. Lewis.  I’ve been chewing on that thing for a month now.  So you have a better idea of what it’s about, the tag line on the back cover is “The intensely intimate and sincere autobiography of a man who thought his way to God.”  

I’ve pretty much been beating myself up over how long it’s taken me to finish this book, but now that I think about it, I don’t really care that much.  Because I HAVE been super busy, you know, like moving to another country and adjusting and preparing for the DTS and all that.  But even more than that, this book is just not a quick read.  It’s not chick lit, friends.  I could read one page and then digest it for the rest of the day.  

Quotable Friday, Vol. 25 July 18, 2008

“I am not the only person to seek his fortune far from home, and certainly I am not the first. Still there are times I am bewildered by each mile I have traveled, each meal I have eaten, each person I have known, each room in which I have slept. As ordinary as it all appears, there are times when it is beyond my imagination.”

Jhumpa Lahiri

“The Third and Final Continent”

Interpreter of Maladies

I can’t say much to go along with this quote, except that I deeply identify with it.  The “fortune” I have sought far from home does not align with the traditional connotation of the word; piles of cash or vaults full of gold or even stacks of accomplishments.  But in my short few years of travel I have become rich with experiences, interactions, sensations, and insights that these foreign places have lavished on me.  It is bewildering, at times, and even more so when I speculate about how my riches will multiply when I’ve been traveling for 6 years instead of 3, 20 instead of 6, 50 instead of 20.

Embryo or Jew: Which Bleeds More? June 10, 2008

“I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions [...]? If you prick us do we not bleed? If you tickle us do we not laugh? If you poison us do we not die?”

I came across a really interesting section in Brennan Manning’s The Wisdom of Tenderness today.  He expounds on the idea that reverence for God, the Father of all Creation must result in a reverence for life.  Which, of course, brings up the abortion debate.  When I saw it coming, I almost wanted to skip ahead in the book.  I feel like I’ve heard every Christian argument for the pro-life debate.  I think I was supposed to like the movie Juno because it was discreetly pro-life and not because it was hilarious yet heartwarming.  And, as a Christian (and someone who wants to fear God and thus revere life), I oppose abortion.  However, I remember in high school I felt I ought to feel a fiery rage against this abomination…but I didn’t.  I wondered why it had become such a pet battle for so many Christians when there was so much else going on in the world, injustice being done to people who were already alive. 

In The Wisdom of Tenderness, Manning expounds on these faint musings that flitted through my head, but in a mature, thought-out, and intellectual manner.  He points out that “the Christian community’s pro-life posture is selective, inconsistent, and vulnerable to unbiased criticism.”  The most glaring piece of evidence is Joe Republican Christian’s contradictory stances on abortion and the death penalty.  We don’t have the right to play God and take an embryo’s life!  Oh, but a man who has lived and loved and screwed up and achieved and failed?  Sure, give him the shot in the arm he deserves.  

However, Manning unpacks three large suitcases of evidence against the inconsistency in the Christian community’s “reverence for life.”  His first argument blew me away, and filled me with a passionate and angry cry against injustice ten times stronger than I ever felt about the abortion issue.

He courageously drags into the spotlight the ugly atrocities, hatred, and even cold indifference to Jewish life that has been displayed by Christians since the Ascension of The Jew, Jesus.  Once His body left this earth, things became pretty twisted in the minds of many Christians.  Manning reminds us of the anti-Semitic Christian’s main argument: the Jews killed Jesus, thus rejecting Jesus and therefore God; becoming a cursed people.  This evil lie has stood dangerously behind every ghetto, concentration camp, Crusade, synagogue and beard-burning.  Even the church fathers and saints got in on the party.  Augustine, Martin Luther, and John Chrysostom all have anti-Semitic remarks, treatises, or sermons in the books.  Chrysostom is quoted as saying that Jews are “impure beasts” who “God has abandoned [...] What hope of salvation have they left?”  His prescription is to “turn away from them as from a pest and a plague of the human race.”

What astonishes me is that these were scholars and theologians.  Surely they must have at one time read Romans 9-11, where Paul presents a lengthy discourse on the plight of Israel, after they rejected Jesus as the Messiah.  He clearly states that all hope is not lost for Israel, and hints that God might have a glorious master plan still coming to fruition, taking into account the present rejection by the Jews of Jesus as the Messiah.  How can one misinterpret statements such as “[...] God has not rejected His people, has He?  May it never be!” (Rom. 11:1)  

I gobbled up these chapters today, underlining verses and scribbling notes in the margins of my Bible as I became less angry with the confused Christians “whose anti-Semitism is Christian spit on the face of our Jewish Savior” and more and more hopeful about the exquisite promises for the people of Israel, laid in the text of Paul’s God-breathed letter to the Romans like precious gems.  For “if their [Israel's] transgression is riches for the world and their failure is riches for the Gentiles, how much more will their fulfillment be! [...] For if their rejection is the reconciliation of the world, what will their acceptance be but life from the dead?”  (Rom. 11:12, 15)

It’s such a crazy plan that only God could come up with it.  Which is why, after Paul lays it all out there, he bursts into exclamations of wonder, “Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God!  How unsearchable are His judgments and unfathomable His ways!  [...] For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things.” (11:33, 36)

I may never picket in front of an abortion clinic, but this issue and these lives, so close the the heart of God, make me so excited that I want to hop on a plane to Israel right now and love my fellow Jews and plant myself right in the thick of that promise.

Happy Blogiverssary! May 22, 2008

Exactly one year ago I began this blog.  Wow.  Seems like only yesterday that I opened up my wordpress account, all embarrassed and secretive and not using my first name.  I can’t say we’ve come a long way, but I can say I’m glad I started Eeper.  It’s been a fun outlet for me when work gets boring, and hopefully a fun distraction for you when work gets boring. 

Today I was able to change my “About Me” section a little bit.  Remember how I said I wanted to have coffee with one of my favorite authors, Robin Jones Gunn?  Well, last Saturday I was able to meet her!  This is only a dream come half-true because it was at a book signing so I didn’t get to really sit and pick her brain.  But we did chat for about 10 minutes, she said some really sweet things, and gave me a bit of advice about writing.  It was kind of like talking to a friend’s mom. 

I’m SO excited to read her new books (which she signed for me), Peculiar Treasures and Sisterchicks Go Brit!  I’m especially interested in the former because it is the first installment in the new Katie Weldon series, which picks up where Christy and Todd: The College Years left off.  I can’t wait to see how all my old “friends” are doing.  (Make fun of me all you want…as a teen, I actually talked about these characters in such familiar terms that my mom thought they were real people).  If you want some great beach reads for the summer, pick up some of Robin’s books.  Here’s a picture of the two of us…and my face isn’t usually that weird potato shape.  I hope.