An Agnostic On Lewis
Emrys
Have you ever read any George MacDonald, about whom Lewis said:
"I have never concealed the fact that I regarded him as my master; indeed
I fancy I have never written a book in which I did not quote from him.
But it has not seemed to me that those who have received my books kindly
take even now sufficient notice of the affiliation." -- preface to George
MacDonald: An Anthology
I think he would be just to your liking. I am about your age (22), and an
English major, as well as a somewhat dispirited Christian. I love Lewis
and have read practically everything I could find by him. I have
thoroughly enjoyed both his fiction and his nonfiction. I recently reread
Narnia for the first time since the 5th or 6th grade and I was surprised
at how well it still held its magic over me at this age. It is clear to
me that fiction has a power of presentation, an ability to clothe truth
in forms our hearts can appreciate and not merely our minds assimilate. I
tend to think that is why the Gospels are so full of parables. And that
is also why I love MacDonald. He wrote almost exclusively in fiction.
Probably the best of it consists of fairy tales including Phantastes,
Lilith, The Princess and the Goblin, and The Golden Key, though I am
presently reading a very enjoyable novel entitled Alec Forbes of Howglen.
I turn to MacDonald when I am feeling disillusioned and down-hearted to
breathe a fresh vision into my soul. I always come away more at peace
with myself and the world, able to see more clearly the beauty in life,
and in general feeling like I had just bathed in my childhood, or rather
a perfect childhood, baptized into innocence and wonder anew. And all
throughout his work are dispersed a wide and varied array of real gems of
insights about human nature, God, the world, and our relationship.
Lewis's own "spiritual journey" began with his early disillusionment from
his father's rather empty Christianity, as Lewis notes in Surprised By
Joy: "The charm of tradition and the verbal beauty of Bible and Prayer
Book (all of them for me late and acquired tastes) were his natural
delight, and it would have been hard to find an equally intelligent man
who cared so little for metaphysics." By the time Lewis was a teenager he
had declared himself an atheist. As he grew older and under the
influences of his friend Arthur Greeves, turned to more and more romantic
literature and became enraptured of the operas of Wagner and the Norse
mythology contained therein, he felt keenly the mythic elements
resonating with something inside him and producing or revealing a deeply
seated and intense longing which he described as a longing for Joy. It
was at this time in his life that he picked up a copy of George
MacDonald's Phantastes. He records his experience in Surprised By Joy:
"The woodland journeyings in that story, the ghostly enemies, the ladies
both good and evil, were close enough to my habitual imagery to lure me
on without the perception of a change. It is as if I were carried
sleeping across the frontier, or as if I had died in the old country and
could never remember how I came alive in the new. For in one sense the
new country was exactly like the old. I met there all that had already
charmed me in Malory, Spenser, Morris, and Yeats. But in another sense
all was changed. I did not yet know (and I was long in learning) the name
of the new quality, the bright shadow, that rested on the travels of
Anodos. I do now. It was Holiness. For the first time the song of the
sirens sounded like the voice of my mother or my nurse. Here were old
wive's tales; there was nothing to be proud of in enjoying them. It was
as though the voice which had called to me from the world's end were now
speaking at my side. It was with me in the room, or in my own body, or
behind me. If it had once eluded me by its distance, it now eluded me by
proximity -- something too near to see, too plain to be understood, on
this side of knowledge. It seemed to have been always with me; if I could
ever have turned my head quick enough I should have seized it. Now for
the first time I felt that it was out of reach not because of something I
could not do but because of something I could not stop doing. If I could
only leave off, let go, unmake myself, it would be there. Meanwhile, in
this new region all the confusions that had hitherto perplexed my search
for Joy were disarmed. There was no temptaton to confuse the scenes of
the tale with light that rested upon them, or to suppose they were put
forward as realities, or even to dream that if they had been realities
and I could reach the woods where Anodos journeyed I should thereby come
a step nearer to my desire. Yet, at the same time, never had the wind of
Joy blowing through any story been less separable from the story itself.
Where the god and the idolon were most nearly one there was least danger
of confounding them. Thus, when the great moments came I did not break
away from the woods and cottages that I read of to seek some bodiless
light shining beyond them, but gradually, with a swelling continuity
(like the sun at mid-morning burning through a fog) I found the light
shining on those woods and cottages, and then on my own past life, and on
the quiet room where I sat and on my old teacher where he nodded above
his little Tacitus. For I now perceived that while the air of the new
region made all my erotic and magical perversions of Joy look like sordid
trumpery, it had no such disenchanting power over the bread upon the
table or the coals in the grate. That was the marvel. Up till now each
visitation of Joy had left the common world momentarily a desert -- "The
first touch of the earth went nigh to kill." Even when real clouds or
trees had been the material of the vision, they had been so only by
reminding me of another world; and I did not like the return to ours. But
now I saw the bright shadow coming out of the book into the real world
and resting there, transforming all common things and yet itself
unchanged. Or, more accurately, I saw the common things drawn into the
bright shadow. Unde hoc mihi? In the depth of my disgraces, in the then
invincible ignorance of my intellect, all this was given me without
asking, even without consent. That night my imagination was, in a certain
sense, baptized; the rest of me, not unnaturally, took longer. I had not
the faintest notion what I had let myself in for by buying Phanatastes."
-- Surprised By Joy
The rest of Lewis's "conversion" was a gradual progression from a belief
in a pseudo-pantheistic Absolute, to that of the infinitely personal
Jesus Christ, and if it interests you, you can find it in Surprised By
Joy.
Following are some interesting quotes about MacDonald by Lewis that I
culled from The Quotable Lewis and lastly an excerpt from Lewis's preface
to an anthology he put together composed of snippets of George
MacDonald's thought on all sorts of topics. The preface gives the best
idea of what MacDonald's writing is really like stressing its mythopaeic
qualities above all.
"One very effective way of silencing the voice of conscience is to
impound in an Ism the teacher through whom it speaks: the trumpet no
longer seriously disturbs our rest when we have murmured "Thomist,"
"Barthian" or "Existentialist." And in MacDonald it is always the voice
of conscience that speaks. He addresses the will: the demand for
obedience, for "something to be neither more nor less nor other than
done" is incessant. Yet in that very voice of conscience every other
faculty somehow speaks as well -- intellect and imagination and humour
and fancy and all the affections; and no man in modern times was perhaps
more aware of the distinction between law and Gospel, the inevitable
failure of mere morality. The Divine Sonship is the key-conception which
unites all the different elements of this thought. I dare not say that he
is never in error; but to speak plainly I know hardly any other writer
who seems to be closer, or more continually close, to the Spirit of
Christ Himself." -- preface to George MacDonald: An Anthology
"As you said in one of your letters, his novels have great and almost
intolerable faults. His only real form is the symbolical fantasy like
Phantastes or Lilith. This is what he always writes: but unfortunately,
for financial reasons, he sometimes has to disguise is as ordinary
Victorian fiction. Hence what you get is a certain amount of the real
MacDonald linked (as Mezentius linked live men to corpses) -- linked onto
a mass of quite worthless "plot." . . . Yet the gold is so good that it
carries off the dross. . . I know nothing that gives me such a feeling of
spiritual healing, of being washed, as to read G. Macdonald." -- The
Letters of C.S. Lewis to Arthur Greeves
"I am slowly reading a book that we have known about, but not known, for
many a long day -- Macdonald's Diary of an Old Soul. How I would have
scorned it once! I strongly advise you to try it. He seems to know
everything and I find my own experience in it constantly: as regards the
literary quality, I am coming to like even his clumsiness. There is a
delicious home-spun, earthy flavour about it, as in George Herbert.
Indeed for me he is better than Herbert." -- The Letters of C.S. Lewis to
Arthur Greeves
"If we define Literature as an art whose medium is words, then certainly
MacDonald has no place in its first rank-- perhaps not even in its
second. There are indeed passages where the wisdom and (I would dare to
call it) the holiness that are in him triumph over and burn away the
baser elements in his style: the expression becomes precise, weighty,
economic; acquires a cutting edge. But he does not maintain this level
for long. The texture of his writing as a whole is undistinguished, at
times fumbling. Bad pulpit traditions cling to it; there is sometimes a
nonconformist verbosity; there is sometimes a nonconformist verbosity,
sometimes an old Scotch weakness for florid ornament (it runs right
through them from Dunbar to the Waverly Novels), sometimes an over-
sweetness picked up from Novalis. But this does not quite dispose of him
even for the literary critic. What he does best is fantasy-- fantasy that
hovers between the allegorical and the mythopoeic. And this, in my
opinion, he does better than any man. The critical problem with which we
are confronted is whether this art-- the art of myth-making-- is a
species of the literary art. The objection to so classifying it is that
the Myth does not essentially exist in words at all. We all agree that
the story of Balder is a great myth, a thing of inexhaustible value. But
of whose version-- whose words-- are we thinking when we say this?
For my own part, the answer is that I am not thinking of any one's
words. No poet, as far as I know or can remember, has told this story
supremely well. I am not thinking of any particular version of it. If the
story is anywhere embodied in words, that is almost an accident. What
really delights and nourishes me is a particular pattern of events, which
would equally delight and nourish if it had reached me by some medium
which involved no words at all -- a mime or silent film. And I find this
to be true of all such stories. [For me, I think of the Arthurian
legends, no specific telling of which captures the full beauty of the
whole, but more or less plants a seed, which blossoms into something
larger and more beautiful than itself. Star Wars would almost certainly
fit in this category as well.] When I think of the story of the Argonauts
and praise it I am not praising Appolonius Rhodius (whom I never
finished) nor Kingsley (whom I have forgotten) nor even Morris, though I
consider his version a very pleasant poem. In this respect stories of the
mythical type are at the opposite pole from lyrical poetry. If you try to
take the 'theme' of Keats' Nightingale apart from the very words in which
he has embodied it, you find that you are talking about almost nothing.
Form and content can there be separated only by a false abstraction. But
in a myth -- in a story where the mere pattern of events is all that
matters -- this is not so. Any means of communication whatever which
succeeds in lodging those events in our imagination has, as we say, 'done
the trick.' After that you can throw the means of communication away. To
be sure, if the means of communication are words, it is desirable that
they should be well chosen, just as it is desirable that a letter which
brings you important news should be fairly written. But this is only a
minor convenience, for the letter will, in any case, go into a waste
paper basket as soon as you have mastered its contents, and the words
(those of Lempriere would have done) are going to be forgotten as soon as
you have mastered the Myth. In poetry the words are the body and the
'theme' or 'content' is the soul. But in myth the imagined events are the
body and something inexpressible is the soul: the words, or mime, or
film, or pictorial series are not even clothes-- they are not much more
than a telephone. Of this I had evidence some years ago when I first
heard the story of Kafka's Castle related in conversation and afterwards
read the book for myself. The reading added nothing. I had already
received the myth, which was all that mattered.
Most myths were made in prehistoric times, and, I suppose, not
consciously made by individuals at all. But every now and then there
occurs in the modern world a genius -- a Kafka or a Novalis -- who can
make such a story. MacDonald is the greatest genius of this kind whom I
know. But I do not know how to classify such genius. To call it literary
genius seems unsatisfactory since it can co-exist with great inferiority
in the art of words -- nay, since its connection with words at all turns
out to be merely external and, in a sense, accidental. Nor can it be
fitted into any of the other arts. It begins to look as if there were an
art, or a gift, which criticism has largely ignored. It may even be one
of the greatest arts; for it produces works which give us (at the first
meeting) as much delight and (on prolonged acquaintance) as much wisdom
and strength as the works of the greatest poets. It is in some ways more
akin to music than to poetry or at least most poetry. It goes beyond the
expression of things we have already felt. It arouses in us sensations we
have never had before, never anticipated having, as though we had broken
out of our normal mode of consciousness and 'possessed joys not promised
to our birth.' It gets under our skin, hits us at a level deeper than our
thoughts or even our passions, troubles oldest certainties till all
questions are reopened, and in general shocks us more fully awake than we
are for most of our lives.
It was in this mythopoeic art that MacDonald excelled. And from
this it follows that his best art is least represented in the Anthology I
prepared in 1946. The great works are Phantastes, the Curdie books, The
Golden Key, The Wise Woman, and Lilith.
It must be more than thirty years ago that I bought -- almost
unwillingly, for I had looked at the volume on that bookstall and
rejected it on a dozen previous occasions -- the Everyman edition of
Phantastes. A few hours later I knew that I had crossed a great frontier.
I had already been waist deep in Romanticism; and likely enough, at any
moment, to flounder into its darker and more evil forms, slithering down
the steep descent of eccentricity and thence to that of perversity. Now
Phantastes was romantic enough in all conscience, but there was a
difference. Nothing was at that time further from my thoughts than
Christianity and I therefore had no notion what this difference really
was. I was only aware that if this new world was strange, it was also
homely and humble; that if this was a dream, it was a dream in which one
at least felt strangely vigilant; that the whole book had about it a sort
of cool, morning innocence, and also, quite unmistakably, a certain
quality of Death, good Death. What it actually did to me was to convert,
even to baptise (that was where the Death came in) my imagination. It did
nothing to my intellect nor (at that time) to my conscience. Their turn
came far later and with the help of many other books and men. But when
the process was complete -- by which, of course, I mean 'when it had
really begun' -- I found that I was still with MacDonald and that he had
accompanied me all the way and that I was now at last ready to hear from
him much that he could not have told me from the beginning. But in a
sense, what he was now telling me was the very same that he had told me
from the beginning. There was no question of getting through to the
kernel and throwing away the shell: no question of a gilded pill. The
pill was gold all through. The quality which had enchanted me in his
imaginative works turned out to be the quality of the real universe, the
divine, magical, terrifying and ecstatic reality in which we all live. I
should have been shocked in my 'teens if anyone had told me that what I
learned to love in Phantastes was goodness. But now that I know, I see
there was no deception. The deception is all the other way around -- in
that prosaic moralism which confines goodness to the region of Law and
Duty, which never lets us feel in our face the sweet air blowing from
'the land of righteousness,' never reveals that elusive Form which if
once seen must inevitably be desired with all but sensuous desire -- the
thing (in Sappho's phrase) 'more gold than gold.'"
--excerpted from an abbreviated version of Lewis's preface to George
MacDonald: An Anthology, which I found in the introduction to MacDonald's
Phantastes.
I hope you will give MacDonald a try, if for no better reason than I
think you will enjoy him.
Jonathan
Tigger
I've read Phantasties and loved it. I have "The Princess and Curdie" on my
shelf but haven't read it yet. There's a leaning tower of Pisa of books on
the bedside table that I must get through first. But I must say, you have
inspired me to dust off the cover and give it a read.
- Tigger
Emrys <s...@home.com> wrote in message
news:MPG.1392df615...@news.rdc1.on.home.com...
Delphi
> Have you ever read any George MacDonald
No; I read Lewis because he's the guy who wrote the Narnia books and is
therefore okay and "safe." ;-) Which is not to say his subject matter is a
tame lion any more than the other Christian writers. I was very amused by
MacDonald's appearence in The Great Divorce. I didn't even know who he was,
but he was obviously a favorite of Lewis', and between that and the soft
Scots accent Lewis gives him, I found him quite a charming figure! Hey, any
friend of Jack's is a friend of mine. I'm due to run out of Lewis works
alarmingly soon, and maybe then I'll look up MacDonald........
> It is clear to
> me that fiction has a power of presentation, an ability to clothe truth
> in forms our hearts can appreciate and not merely our minds assimilate.
I call what Lewis does in fiction moral and spiritual teaching rather than
presentation of capital-T Truth, but by any label he's immensely good at it.
His writings have taught me a great deal about the power of fiction to do
that sort of thing.
I actually just finished Surprised by Joy (okay, I skimmed most of the
middle, which was almost but not quite as interesting as most of the middle
of That Hideous Strength).
> he felt keenly the mythic elements
> resonating with something inside him and producing or revealing a deeply
> seated and intense longing which he described as a longing for Joy.
The thing that perhaps resonates most with me in SBJ is the vividness and
importance of Lewis' inner life. I think this is a big part of the sympathy
I feel with him, because for me as well, my fantasy life seems at times more
real and more compelling than what some would call my "real" one. And God
(and what Lewis names Joy) is an inextricable part of that fantasy life.
Lewis decided that there was a hard core to his fantasy that was really
Real, whereas I may never quite get there -- I'm capable of saying that,
whether it's real OR fantasy, it's something I have a commitment to. The
distinction does not seem to me essential. Most people I say this to don't
quite grasp the point I'm making -- I have as much real commitment to god as
any religious believer (more, I often think!), I just don't don't know if he
exists.
> Thus, when the great moments came I did not break
> away from the woods and cottages that I read of to seek some bodiless
> light shining beyond them, but gradually, with a swelling continuity
> (like the sun at mid-morning burning through a fog) I found the light
> shining on those woods and cottages, and then on my own past life
<swoon>
> "I am slowly reading a book that we have known about, but not known, for
> many a long day -- Macdonald's Diary of an Old Soul. How I would have
> scorned it once! I strongly advise you to try it. He seems to know
> everything and I find my own experience in it constantly: as regards the
> literary quality, I am coming to like even his clumsiness.
<chuckle> ... He's in love! Well I know the feeling.
> The reading added nothing. I had already
> received the myth, which was all that mattered.
And I think that's so important in Lewis' fiction... his attempts to cleanly
communicate the "myth" he has in mind. I think that's perhaps why The Great
Divorce is rated his best by so many, because its clearness of focus is
excellent. I was bothered only that the characters were such charicatures
or stereotypes that they annoyed or offended me at moments, but I also
recognized that that was part of Lewis' mythic storytelling style.
Perelandra, which I think I have to call most nearly my favorite of all
Lewis' books, is another great example of this, and The Lion, the Witch and
the Wardrobe is pretty good too.
> I hope you will give MacDonald a try, if for no better reason than I
> think you will enjoy him.
Okay, Jonathan, you're a good salesman (and not a bad typist either!). :-)
Will do.
Elizabeth
Nathan Murray
true. The man whose vision is weak, but who, as far as he sees, and desirous
to see farther, does the thing he sees, is a true man.'
*George McDonald*
PS My mate Aidan wants to know if you are single Elizabeth.
Delphi
> 'A man may delight in the vision and glory of a truth, and not himself be
> true. The man whose vision is weak, but who, as far as he sees, and
desirous
> to see farther, does the thing he sees, is a true man.'
> *George McDonald*
:-) I guess that clears up where Lewis is getting it from. Including his
default use of the word "man"! hehheh
> PS My mate Aidan wants to know if you are single Elizabeth.
LOL! Yes, I am extremely single, and not entirely unbeautiful! I do lack
completely in real life the charm I project online, however, as I suffer
from terrible social phobias (some would call this shyness).
Elizabeth
sharon m homer-drummond
But that's an excellent reason to participate in online discussions. It's
so hard to have discussions like this face to face. Either it's too
embarassing or people think you're arrogant for (gasp) having an opinion,
or no one is interested in talking about it. By the way, did you know
that over 50% of the population (US) is thought to suffer from severe to
moderate 'shyness?'
Tigger
> >
> But that's an excellent reason to participate in online discussions. It's
> so hard to have discussions like this face to face. Either it's too
> embarassing or people think you're arrogant for (gasp) having an opinion,
> or no one is interested in talking about it. By the way, did you know
> that over 50% of the population (US) is thought to suffer from severe to
> moderate 'shyness?'
>
That's the precise reason why I love online discussions. I wouldn't
consider myself shy, but I do tend to be rather quiet. But if a topic of
interest comes up in a social group, then I love to talk. This seldom
happens though because most social groups tend to dwell on the ordinary and
run-of-the-mill commentary of everyday life. That's OK for a while but it
does get tiresome when you want to get to a deeper level but can't because
they just aren't interested in talking about deeper issues. I know I would
thought of as "wierd" if I brought up CS Lewis in some social circles. My
dearest friends live a distance away, and when we get together, like we did
last weekend, it's truly wonderful because in the space of an hour we can
talk about everything from CS Lewis, Botticelli, what "a sense of wonder"
means, good blends of tea, Hamlet, John Donne, flyfishing, Lothlorien, on
drinking red wine, how amazing George Herbert is, Van Morrison, favourite
essays, Narnia, and whether we should have lunch now or later, or rather go
for a walk. I crave it when I'm apart from them. I find then, that I get my
fill of ideas from reading the discussions on this newsgroup. Sadly I
barely have enough time to read them let alone reply, but I do try to read
it everyday (for a year now). I enjoy it immensely.
- Tigger
M
are my responses to Tigger's and Elizabeth's responses to my response of
Elizabeth's initial post a while back. Did I say "response" often enough?
Tigger,
Glad you liked the post. You might want to read The Princess And The
Goblin before The Princess And Curdie, as the latter picks up where the
former left off. For my part, I enjoyed The Princess And The Goblin more
so than The Princess And Curdie, but both were well worth the read.
Phantastes was my first encounter with MacDonald, and I have to admit at
first I was unsure how to read it. I had never read anything like it, so
full of dream imagery (in fact I think of MacDonald as succeeding like no
one else I've ever read at bringing the experience of our dreams into our
waking life, that same strange vigilance, to borrow a phrase from Lewis,
that makes the dream experience so much more real than most of life
itself, that power to call forth the whole spectrum of human emotion, to
embody our inner life in the most common or most bizarre symbols ever
arranged, and then to depart as mysteriously as it has conquered, with
the gradual dissipation of its spell). As I read, I kept wanting to
construct and fit concrete meanings over things that weren't made so much
to be interpreted as experienced (at least in so far as an interpretation
deals with what the author intended something to represent, as opposed to
the far deeper question of what makes the symbols themselves resonate
within the individual, what it is within the person that is reflected in
these symbols to give them their power, that which makes the experience
memorable for the individual at all). It was all so strangely stirring,
so many of the scenes echoed within me, leaving me with more questions
than answers. It was the story of Cosmo's Mirror which spoke to me most
powerfully, nearly making me weep, and for the life of me I could not see
how it had such a hold on me. As soon as I was able to compose myself I
reread it, seeking desperately to know how it could reduce me to such a
state. Looking back I don't see how I could have missed it, for I was
Cosmo, or rather the story largely reflected my own story back to me, too
close and too painful to look squarely at; probably that is always the
hardest thing to see, because you are unable to get any distance away
from it to see it from another perspective. At any rate after I reread
the story I saw its theme in greater clarity (it still held me spellbound
through a second reading) and in a flash of insight I saw myself as Cosmo
and my own passions and actions mirrored in him, and I was left to make
the same decision which had faced him. So at any rate, not wanting to
weaken the power of the myth for anyone who has not read it yet, I will
confine myself to these vagueries. Have you a favorite scene or passsage,
Tigger?
Elizabeth,
I enjoyed MacDonald's appearance in The Great Divorce as well. The novel
I just finished this morning by MacDonald, Alec Forbes of Howglen (quite
good), is full of characters who speak with a delightful Scotch accent,
though the narrator maintains a clear and precise English throughout. I
own an editted version as well, updated for modern readers (alas) and
containing three of his novels, in which the accent is practically
editted out along with what were deemed extraneous digressions from the
plot, which to my present opinion is no small travesty. They even dared
change all three titles to something utterly unrecognizable (ie. Alec
Forbes of Howglen became The Maiden's Bequest). I hope you will forgive
my ranting. And babbling too I guess while I'm asking. Anyway, I believe
I noticed elsewhere that you were plunging into Miracles, The Problem Of
Pain, and The Pilgrim's Regress next in your adventures with Lewis. You
will admit that you are T-ruth-seeking in reading these, I hope? You
aren't too likely to feel very many waves of joy breaking over you as you
read Miracles, at least in my experience, nor very much in the way of
moral instruction.
"I call what Lewis does in fiction moral and spiritual teaching rather
than presentation of capital-T Truth"
How was it that you were separating moral and spiritual truths from
Truth, again? By spiritual did you just mean a synonym for moral?
"Lewis decided that there was a hard core to his fantasy that was really
Real, whereas I may never quite get there -- I'm capable of saying that,
whether it's real OR fantasy, it's something I have a commitment to. The
distinction does not seem to me essential. Most people I say this to
don't quite grasp the point I'm making -- I have as much real commitment
to god as any religious believer (more, I often think!), I just don't
don't know if he exists."
Indeed, and that is admirable on your part. You don't know if it is true,
yet you hope it to be true and you act as if you knew it to be true.
Samuel Johnson had some interesting things to say about hope that might
shed some light on our discussion:
"'The natural flights of the human mind are not from pleasure to
pleasure, but from hope to hope (Rambler 2). 'There is no temper so
generally indulged as hope: other passions operate by starts on
particular occasions, or in certain parts of life; but hope begins with
our first power of comparing our actual with our possible state, and
attends us through every stage and period, always urging us forward to
new aquisitions, and holding out some distant blessing to our view,
promising us either relief from pain, or increase of happiness'(Rambler
67) 'Hope is necessary in every condition . . . Nor does it appear that
the happiest lot of terrestial existence can set us above the want of
this general blessing'(Rambler 67) 'It is necessary to hope, tho' hope
should always be deluded, for hope itself is happiness, and its
frustrations, however frequent, are yet less dreadful than its
extinction' (Idler 58) 'It is not . . . from this world that any ray of
comfort can proceed . . . But futurity has still its prospects; there is
yet happiness in reserve, which, if we transfer our attention to it, will
support us in the pains of disease, and the languor of decay. This
happiness we may expect with confidence, because it is out of the power
of chance, and may be attained by all that sincerely desire and earnestly
pursue it.'" (Rambler 203). (I read Johnson's Rasselas and found the
notes to the text, including these gems, to be as interesting as the
story)
I am reminded of the story somewhere in the Gospels of the man who asked
Jesus to heal his son and when Jesus asked him if he believed that He
could, the man cried out "I believe, help my unbelief!" I take this to
mean that the man wanted to believe in earnest, because the possibility
existed that his son could be saved if Jesus were capable of healing him,
but his mind was unable to convince itself that the possibility was a
reality, whether it appeared too good to be true, too unlikely to occur,
too incomprehensible altogether, or some combination, we can only
speculate. But he did go to where Jesus was and he did ask him to do what
he wasn't even sure was possible, he had faith that if He could, Jesus
would, and Jesus heard his cry and answered the desire of his heart,
healing his son.
The hope you have described seems to me to be akin to what others have
called faith. I am committed to my hope, may very well translate into I
am committed to my faith, or at least into something not very distant
from it. Faith doesn't mean a lack of doubt, but rather, a commitment
even in the face of doubt. Intellectual assent to any particular set of
propositions would appear to be over-rated, in that, it is not necessary
to salvation, yet it would seem to be a thorny position for a person to
be in: to have faith and not believe. There's no need to deprive oneself
of the Truth, if it can be had, and I think that it can for some, but it
has never been knowledge which makes a person Christ-like, that "saves"
him. Yet who would say that knowledge can not contribute?
Have you ever read any of William James' The Will to Believe? He was an
American philosopher, a pragmatist specifically, of the early 20th C,
author of Varieties of Religious Experience, The Will To Believe, and
Pragmatism. If you don't recognize him you may remember his brother,
American author Henry James, who wrote The Turn of the Screw, Portrait of
a Lady, Wings Of A Dove, etc. I read a bit of The Will To Believe in a
philosophy of religion class and I think it is something you could relate
to pretty well as far as your will to believe, though what he has to say
might challenge your intellectual integrity a wee bit, and might just
raise more questions than answers, though it would introduce you to
someone who definitely understood the distinction you are making and
chose a novel approach, and yet perhaps it is only new in that he is the
first to unveil what we typically do anyway, and state it in a more
formulaic, prescriptive answer. I fear I can be of little assistance in
that arena since I already intellectually affirm the existence of God,
and practically always have, with only a brief exception, if even that. I
would recommend you to another of Jack's "friends," G.K. Chesterton for a
bit of an explanation as to why I am convinced (maybe I'll write my own
book about it someday, but that day has not yet come-- though perhaps you
are beginning to think it has, by the length of this post :). You might
have heard Chesterton mentioned in Surprised By Joy-- that is, if you
didn't skim over him ;) maybe I'll try and sell him to you later:) But
the passage I was referring to of Chesterton's occurs in his Orthodoxy
and its the chapter entitled The Paradoxes of Christianity, although the
whole book does a remarkably good job of it. Unlike Lewis, much of
MacDonald's and Chesterton's work is online and can be downloaded and
read at leisure. I'll probably post that chapter to save you the trouble,
and give you a taste of Chesterton (also one of my favorite authors).
"I was bothered only that the characters were such caricatures
or stereotypes that they annoyed or offended me at moments, but I also
recognized that that was part of Lewis' mythic storytelling style."
Yes, I don't think he could have made the points he wanted to make
without exaggerating one particular sin in each "ghost's" (after)life and
making it the dominating factor, whereas in real life we are full of
destructive tendencies (I define sin roughly as that), and it may not be
that there is one which stands out much more so than the rest. I found
the depiction of Hell to be about the only conceivable one, if it should
have to exist, that might be acceptable to my conscience and still allow
me to call God good. Something along the lines of the scene in the movie
What Dreams May Come, with Robin Williams, in which Hell is in essence a
soul locked from the inside, a mind locked within itself by the work of
its own hands, and yet perhaps still able to be called forth from itself
by Divine Love. I loved Perelandra (certainly the best of the Space
Trilogy, although oddly enough I have That Hideous Strength to thank for
introducing me to the world of Arthurian legend, through Merlin, which
sparked several months in which I read almost nothing but Arthurian Lit
and reveled in the great myth) and that for the opening up of
possibilities never before conceived. The presentation of an unblemished
race. . . It IS a wonderful myth. Well, to prevent boring you further, I
think I will close on that image.
Jonathan
M
possibilities never before conceived, the presentation of an unblemished
race. . . It IS a wonderful myth. Well, to prevent boring you further and
in the interest of closing on a good note, I think I will end with that
image.
Jonathan
PS: Oh no (wince), I just realized as I'm about to post this that I am in
great danger of offending you, for I fear somewhere in the body of this
reply I have continued in the ignorance of my spiritual ancestors and
used "man," where I meant human (Oops huMan, that won't do either I
suppose ;) or "he," "him" for convenience and simplicity's sake (really I
was going to substitute "she" and "her" at least on one specific occasion
but on that occasion I feared it would sound too much like I meant to
place the emphasis of the point too specifically on you , when I really
meant it in a general sort of way for everyone). I hate those "he/she"
"her/him" beasties from a purely aesthetic displeasure. I would prefer to
throw in an occasional she,her to soften things up a bit than to be
forced to use them. But I just can't part with "man," (nor "human" if
anybody's asking) it is too rich a word in meaning to abandon. Well, now
I find myself asking forgiveness for something I fear I'll never repent
of. Oh well, nevermind. There has never been perfect peace and harmony
between the sexes on the Silent Planet. Maybe we'd be living out
Perelandra if Eve had listened to her husband instead of screwing
everything up for us. Sorry, a thousand pardons, I couldn't resist :)
Delphi
> But if a topic of
> interest comes up in a social group, then I love to talk. This seldom
> happens though because most social groups tend to dwell on the ordinary
Yeah, what I just said in my reply to Sharon. Though the other reason I say
so much more on the Internet is that my writing skills are about a million
times more developed than my speaking skills.
> My
> dearest friends live a distance away, and when we get together, like we
did
> last weekend, it's truly wonderful because in the space of an hour we can
> talk about everything from CS Lewis, Botticelli, what "a sense of wonder"
> means, good blends of tea, Hamlet, John Donne, flyfishing, Lothlorien, on
> drinking red wine, how amazing George Herbert is, Van Morrison, favourite
> essays, Narnia, and whether we should have lunch now or later, or rather
go
> for a walk.
:-) My dearest friends (okay, my only friends) are online. And I will have
the great pleasure and good fortune of getting to meet about two dozen of
them at a SF convention this summer. I won't promise that there won't be a
lot of giddy silliness stemming from our happiness to meet one another and
trot out all our running in-jokes in person, but I have no doubt that we
will have some really meaningful conversation as well, of the sort I just
can't get at home. There are some very bright people in that group, and we
have many common passions.
And regarding the shyness, as though it were not enough to go alone to a
strange city to meet two dozen semi-strangers and wander about in a giant,
noisy, strangely-attired crowd, I am also scheduled to moderate one or two
panels and be a panelist on two or three others. I've never done anything
like that before, so it should be an adventure to say the least.
Elizabeth
Delphi
> But that's an excellent reason to participate in online discussions. It's
> so hard to have discussions like this face to face. Either it's too
> embarassing or people think you're arrogant for (gasp) having an opinion,
> or no one is interested in talking about it.
Actually, I talk pretty well and confidently on subjects I'm interested and
knowledgable in (this has to do with my sense of distinct social inferiority
coupled with my sense of distinct intellectual superiority). It's smalltalk
that kills me! 99% of offline talk is about trivialities. I generally only
say something if I have something relevent and insightful to say; most
people talk to fill the void.
> that over 50% of the population (US) is thought to suffer from severe to
> moderate 'shyness?'
No, but I don't question the statistic. Most of them have some friends
though -- offline I have none, unless you count my parrot.
Elizabeth
Delphi
> I noticed elsewhere that you were plunging into Miracles, The Problem Of
> Pain, and The Pilgrim's Regress next in your adventures with Lewis. You
> will admit that you are T-ruth-seeking in reading these, I hope?
One would think, eh? Actually, I'm quite serious that I don't think it
would be at all possible to convince me of the existence of God logically.
No such proof exists and so I consider that a fairly fruitless avenue in my
spiritual adventures. And I can out-logic Lewis on most any point! I'm
reading it because it's Lewis and surely there is some kernel of interest or
joy buried in there somewhere. Once I get stuck on an author I just plow
through his work serially sometimes.
> aren't too likely to feel very many waves of joy breaking over you as you
> read Miracles, at least in my experience, nor very much in the way of
> moral instruction.
No? Oh, don't kill my enthusiasm yet! :-)
> How was it that you were separating moral and spiritual truths from
> Truth, again? By spiritual did you just mean a synonym for moral?
What? lol. I don't know what I mean... hmm, I guess I can call my
definition of spiritual that which has to do with the Joy Lewis speaks of,
that which has to do with idealism and trying to perfect oneself after some
pattern, that which has to do with supernaturalism. I'm never quite sure
how to use the word spiritual because I can't say as I believe in a soul or
spirit distinct from the physical, or that I necessarily believe in anything
but the physical, so I just use it in some general way according to a
vernacular sense of the word that I have in my head, that has something to
do with the supernatural and something to do with emotion. Is that
nonspecific enough? ;-)
The word moral I have to relate to the word ethical. Ethics is a system of
reasoning about "right" behavior based on philosophy, whereas morality
appeals to some standard or code of right and wrong. In general I might say
ethics is right behavior because it "makes sense" and morality is right
behavior because it "is our duty." And which word I use often has much to
do with whether I am at the moment in an atheistic or theistic frame of
mind. :-)
> 'It is necessary to hope, tho' hope
> should always be deluded, for hope itself is happiness, and its
> frustrations, however frequent, are yet less dreadful than its
> extinction'
I think that perhaps sums up my feelings about God. Including being
deluded, though I know the author meant it in another sense. ;-)
> The hope you have described seems to me to be akin to what others have
> called faith. I am committed to my hope, may very well translate into I
> am committed to my faith, or at least into something not very distant
> from it. Faith doesn't mean a lack of doubt, but rather, a commitment
> even in the face of doubt. Intellectual assent to any particular set of
> propositions would appear to be over-rated, in that, it is not necessary
> to salvation, yet it would seem to be a thorny position for a person to
> be in: to have faith and not believe.
You have described my spirituality exactly as I do myself, faith without
belief. Many believers use the word faith to mean belief, but I make a
clear distinction there. Faith is trust and devotion, belief is knowing. I
have the one, but not the other. And yes, it is a very thorny and peculiar
position, a slightly uncomfortable position, but not an unsustainable one.
To my mind, I have grasped the essence of what religion (more or less any
world religion) asks of anyone, while still being honest with myself
intellectually. I don't think I have any particular desire to *believe*
anything. I think I am realizing, slowly, that I have what it was that I
really wanted after all, and belief seems kind of an irrelevent and
unnecessary formality in that light.
> Have you ever read any of William James' The Will to Believe? He was an
> American philosopher, a pragmatist specifically, of the early 20th C,
> author of Varieties of Religious Experience, The Will To Believe, and
> Pragmatism.
No, but I have heard of Varieties of Religious Experience, and certainly of
Henry James.
> I read a bit of The Will To Believe in a
> philosophy of religion class and I think it is something you could relate
> to pretty well as far as your will to believe
But that's just it, I don't think I have a will to believe. When I was
younger I wanted to, and was constantly frustrated by my inability to. But
if I have such a will now, I cannot discover it. I have a will to faith, a
will to submission, a will to an ideal, a will to some standard of goodness
I have in mind, a will to the pursuit of Joy.
I hope very much for God to be real, but I don't honestly think that I can
know that and it doesn't bother me especially. I am agnostic.
> (maybe I'll write my own
> book about it someday, but that day has not yet come-- though perhaps you
> are beginning to think it has, by the length of this post :)
LOL... I'm waiting for someone to convince a publisher to print and market a
volume of his or her most brilliant emails and newsgroup postings. That
would just make my year; it would be hilarious. Come to think of it it
would make a good short story, a la Jorge Louis Borges. Oh, I could be the
Borges of the Internet if I applied myself! hehheh
> Unlike Lewis, much of
> MacDonald's and Chesterton's work is online and can be downloaded
Yes, I should look it up. I do most of my reading on a computer screen
anyway, and maybe it is gradually blinding me, but there's so much to read
out there!!!! Not to mention the brilliant thing is that I can add my own
words, as I am doing here.
Elizabeth
Tigger
Hmmmmmmm............I read Phantasties about 15 years ago. As I recall I
read it for several reasons. One was because the cover artwork intriged me.
Second because CS Lewis recommended it. And thirdly, because I heard a song
by The Waterboys called "Room to Roam" from a CD of the same name taken from
Phantasties. It's a poem that's near the end of the book. As it was so
long ago and there have been so many books in between, I do not recall
individual scenes or episodes in any great clarity, though your description
of Cosmo's mirror does bring it to memory. I remember being moved by the
language - his descriptive power. Like you were mentioning - the ability to
bring the dreamworld into sharp focus so that it is almost more real than
the "real". And the language of symbols that also reasonate within oneself.
There was a strong connection there. I also love the concept of a journey,
and all the soul-wrestling that goes with it I also love poetry, and from
what I remember, the story was full of verse.
I shall take your advice and read The Princess and the Goblin first. I
haven't a copy but will buy one. Pity. Another trip to the bookstore. :)
- Tigger
M <silmar...@home.com> wrote in message
news:MPG.139468f06...@news.rdc1.ab.home.com...
Tigger
> And regarding the shyness, as though it were not enough to go alone to a
> strange city to meet two dozen semi-strangers and wander about in a giant,
> noisy, strangely-attired crowd, I am also scheduled to moderate one or two
> panels and be a panelist on two or three others. I've never done anything
> like that before, so it should be an adventure to say the least.
>
> Elizabeth
>
in "familiar" company, meaning that you will be speaking to people who share
a common interest. If those kind of situations go well then it can give you
confidence to do simular things but with a different group of people.
That's been my personal experience at least. :)
- Tigger
Tigger
wish conversation wouldn't stick there like it all too often does because
then I just draw a blank.
- Tigger
Delphi <ede...@NOSPAM.worldnet.att.net> wrote in message
news:7zGW4.461$Lj7....@bgtnsc06-news.ops.worldnet.att.net...