What should they regard as too obscene?

From That Hideous Strength:

Despair of objective truth had been increasingly insinuated into the scientists: indifference to it, and a concentration upon mere power, had been the result. ... Dreams of the far future destiny of man were dragging up from its shallow and unquiet grave the old dream of man as God. The very experiences of the dissecting room and the pathological laboratory were breeding a conviction that the stifling of all deep-set repugnances was the first essential for progress. ... What should they find incredible, since they believed no longer in a rational universe? What should they regard as too obscene, since they held that all morality was a mere subjective by-product of the physical and economic situations of men? The time was ripe. From the point of view which is accepted in Hell, the whole history of our Earth had led up to this moment.

Beauty for another

From That Hideous Strength:

At the very moment when her mind was most filled with another man there arose, clouded with some undefined emotion, a resolution to give Mark much more than she had ever given him before, and a feeling that in doing so she would be really giving it to the Director. And this produced in her such a confusion of sensations that the whole inner debate became indistinct and flowed over into the larger experience... she was in the sphere of Jove, amid light and music and festal pomp, brimmed with life and radiant in health, jocund and clothed in shining garments. ... And she rejoiced also in the consciousness of her own beauty; for she had the sensation--it may have been false in fact, but it had nothing to do with vanity--that it was growing and expanding like a magic flower with every minute that passed. In such a mood it was only natural, after the old countryman had got out at Cure Hardy, to stand up and look at herself in the mirror which confronted her on the wall of the compartment. Certainly she was looking well: she was looking unusually well. And once more, there was little vanity in this. For beauty was made for others. Her beauty belonged to the Director. It belonged to him so completely that he could even decide not to keep it for himself but to order that it be given to another, by an act of obedience lower, and therefore higher, more unconditional and therefore more delighting, than if he had demanded it for himself."

The Infinite throws out the elected invention

From That Hideous Strength:

To those high creatures whose activity builds what we call nature, nothing is "natural." From their station the essential arbitrariness (so to call it) of every actual creation is ceaselessly visible; for them there are no basic assumptions: all springs with the wilful beauty of a jest or a tune from that miraculous moment of self-limitation wherein the Infinite, rejecting a myriad possibilities, throws out of himself the positive and elected invention.

On equality

From That Hideous Strength:

"Yes, we must all be guarded by equal rights from one another's greed, because we are fallen. Just as we must all wear clothes for the same reason. But the naked body should be there underneath the clothes, ripening for the day when we shall need them no longer. Equality is not the deepest thing, you know." ... "It is not your fault. They never warned you. No one has ever told you tht obedience--humility--is an erotic necessity. You are putting equality just where it ought not to be." ... "But you see that obedience and rule are more like a dance than a drill--specially between man and woman where the roles are always changing."

Ode to a walled garden

From That Hideous Strength:

Freud said we liked gardens because they were symbols of the female body. But that must be a man's point of view. Presumably gardens meant something different in women's dreams. Or did they? Did men and women both feel interested in the female body and even, though it sounded ridiculous, in almost the same way? A sentence rose to her memory. "The beauty of the female is the root of joy to the female as well as to the male, and it is no accident that the goddess of Love is older and stronger than the god."

To adore and obey

I was not born to be free. I was born to adore and to obey.

-- C. S. Lewis

C.S. Lewis on Praise (2)

Praise is the mode of love which always has some element of joy in it.

--C. S. Lewis

A story unfolds: pray for me

My BP continues his exploration and reclamation of the Christian imagination, and we've been discussing the enlightenment mania for breaking things down into discrete facts, thereby stripping them of meaning (which exists only in and through connections). Thomas Howard's Chance or the Dance? A critique of Modern Secularism is a beautifully written exploration of this topic.

As I was contemplating this during my devotional hour the other day, I pondered what the key might be to releasing people into the freedom of wonder. The story of the Emperor's New Clothes has been coming to mind for weeks, because it represents the enlightenment in reverse.

As I thought more about this, and what sort of myth this might be, a story unfolded, and I captured it in the few remaining pages of my tattered journal.

I am not a writer of fiction, let alone fable or fairy tale. But this thing tumbled out like a pent up stream, and I merely had to catch and direct it.

It was dazzling.

The magic of the experience is fading, but at the time I felt nearly fragile with concern that the beauty of it would not be conveyed, that my BP would not think that it fits with what he is doing, or worse, that he simply wouldn't like it.

But I know that it came from God.

I've been asking for the intercession of Lewis and Tolkien and Chesterton, and believe that this story was a response to their prayer. I think that if I am obedient in finishing, it may even be good. I'm not sure how it is to be used, but I think it may be good.

Please pray for me about this.

C.S. Lewis on Unsatisfied Desire

Unsatisfied desire is in itself more desirable than any other satisfaction.

--C.S. Lewis

C.S. Lewis on valued things

The most valuable thing the Psalms do for me is to express the same delight in God which made David dance.

-- C. S. Lewis

C.S. Lewis on Joy (5)

From Shadowlands:

"The most intense joy is not in the having, but in the desire. Delight that never fades, bliss that is eternal, is only yours when what you most desire is out of reach."

--C.S. Lewis

Undiminished

A man can no more diminish God's glory by refusing to worship Him than a lunitic can put out the sun by scribbling the word 'darkness' on the walls of his cell.

-- C. S. Lewis

Day 11: more on peaches

I woke with peaches on the brain again.

This time I thought about how the fullness of a fruit's existence isn't realized unless it is consumed. If it sits on the tree until it falls off and then withers and rots, God will make use of it by providing food for creatures, fertilizing the soil, and maybe even growing a new tree. But for the true magnificence of a peach to be realized, it must be eaten by a human, who can not only comprehend the beauty of its deliciousness, but can also wonder at its creation.

That made me think about what this means for us, which led me to CS Lewis' quote:

"...it is in the lover that the beloved tastes her own delightfulness."

For our true magnificence to be realized, we also must be consumed. We must share the abundant fruitfulness of our being, even to the point of complete ravishment.

Perhaps utter ravishment should in fact be our goal.

So... my tasks are to identify what parts of me are delicious, to work on building up those parts, and then to be generous even to the point of pain in sharing them.

Sounds simple enough.

On the Lady from The Great Divorce

"...only partly do I remember the unbearable beauty of her face."

"...there is joy enough in the little finger of a great saint such as yonder lady to waken all the dead things of the universe into life."

"...her beauty brightened so that I could hardly see anything else,"

"...the invitation to all joy, singing out of her whole being like a bird's song on an April evening, seemed to me such that no creature could resist it."

"Few men looked on her without becoming, in a certain fashion, her lovers. But it was the kind of love that made them not less true, but truer, to their own wives."

"Love shone not from her face only, but from all her limbs, as if it were some liquid in which she had just been bathing."

Eros in all his splendour

From The Four Loves (Ch 4):

It is in the grandeur of Eros that the seeds of danger are concealed. He has spoken like a god. His total commitment, his reckless disregard of happiness, his transcendence of self-regard, sound like a message from the eternal world. And yet it cannot, just as it stands, be the voice of God Himself. For Eros, speaking with that very grandeur and displaying that very transcendence of self, may urge to evil as well as to good. Nothing is shallower than the belief that a love which leads to sin is always qualitatively lower more animal or more trivial than one which leads to faithful, fruitful and Christian marriage. The love which leads to cruel and perjured unions, even to suicide-pacts and murder, is not likely to be wandering lust or idle sentiment. It may well be Eros in all his splendour; heart-breakingly sincere; ready for every sacrifice except renunciation.

Screwtape on Christ and pleasure (II)

From The Screwtape Letters:

I know we have won many a soul through pleasure. All the same, it is His invention, not ours. He made the pleasures: all our research so far has not enabled us to produce one. All we can do is to encourage the humans to take the pleasures which our Enemy has produced, at times, or in ways, or in degrees, which He has forbidden. Hence we always try to work away from the natural condition of any pleasure to that in which it is least natural, least redolent of its Maker, and least pleasurable. An ever increasing craving for an ever diminishing pleasure is the formula.

--C.S. Lewis

Screwtape on Christ and pleasure

From The Screwtape Letters, referring to Christ:

He’s a hedonist at heart. All those fasts and vigils and stakes and crosses are only a facade. Or only like foam on the seashore. Out at sea, out in His sea, there is pleasure, and more pleasure. He makes no secret of it; at His right hand are ‘pleasures for evermore’. Ugh! I don’t think he has the least inkling of that high and austere mystery to which we rise in the Miserific Vision. He’s vulgar, Wormwood. He has a bourgeois mind. He has filled His world full of pleasures. There are things for humans to do all day long without His minding in the least — sleeping, washing, eating, drinking, making love, playing, praying, working. Everything has to be twisted before it’s any use to us. We fight under the cruel disadvantages. Nothing is naturally on our side.

--C.S. Lewis

Dazzling, radiant, pulsating

From Beyond Smells and Bells by Mark Galli:

"I believe--and it has been my experience--that ongoing participation in the liturgy is ongoing participation in the life of God, and, as such, will lead, as C.S. Lewis envisions human transformation, to a life 'dazzling, radiant... pulsating all through with... energy, joy, and wisdom and love as we cannot now imagine.'"

Obedience is the stairway of pleasure

From That Hideous Strength:

"The beauty of the female is the root of joy to the female as well as to the male, and it is no accident that the goddess of love is older and stronger then the god. To desire the desiring of her own beauty is the vanity of Lilith, but to desire the enjoying of her beauty is the obedience of Eve, and to both it is in the lover that the beloved tastes her own delightfulness. As obedience is the stairway of pleasure, so humility is the..."

--C. S. Lewis

Ed: Interesting how this quote within a quote was interrupted...

There is no other stream

From The Silver Chair by C.S. Lewis:

“If you’re thirsty, you may drink.”

For a second she stared here and there, wondering who had spoken. Then the voice said again, “If you are thirsty, come and drink,” and of course she remembered what Scrubb had said about animals talking in that other world, and realized that it was the lion speaking. Anyway, she had seen its lips move this time and the voice was not like a man’s. It was deeper, wilder, and stronger; a sort of heavy, golden voice. It did not make her any less frightened than she had been before, but it made her frightened in rather a different way.

“Are you not thirsty?” said the Lion. “I’m dying of thirst,” said Jill. “Then drink,” said the Lion. “May I -- could I-- would you mind going away while I do?” said Jill. The Lion answered this only by a look and a very low growl. And as Jill gazed at its motionless bulk, she realized that she might as well have asked the whole mountain to move aside for her convenience.

The delicious rippling noise of the stream was driving her nearly frantic. “Will you promise not to--do anything to me, if I do come?” said Jill. “I make no promise,” said the Lion. Jill was so thirsty now that, without noticing it, she had come a step nearer. “Do you eat girls?” she said. “I have swallowed up girls and boys, women and men, kings and emperors, cities and realms,” said the Lion. It didn’t say this as if it were boasting, nor as if it were sorry, nor as if it were angry. It just said it.

“I daren’t come and drink,” said Jill. “Then you will die of thirst,” said the Lion. “Oh dear!” said Jill, coming another step nearer. “I suppose I must go and look for another stream then.”

“There is no other stream,” said the Lion.

“It never occurred to Jill to disbelieve the Lion-- no one who had seen his stern face could do that--and her mind suddenly made itself up. It was the worst thing she had ever had to do, but she went forward to the stream, knelt down and began scooping up water in her hand. It was the coldest, most refreshing water she had ever tasted. You didn’t need to drink much of it, for it quenched your thirst at once. Before she tasted it she had been intending to make a dash away from the Lion the moment she had finished. Now, she realized that this would be on the whole the most dangerous thing of all.”