C.S Lewis: To be united with the beauty we see...

A story that stirs and inspires

Discovering words that speak profound truths that you struggle to structure and articulate = revelation and relief,

CS Lewis - Widely read and quoted.

Someone who I was intimidated to read.

Simply because I felt it was beyond my depth

A fear my intellect would not be able to comprehend

Silly, I know... but true.

A quote by CS Lewis was written out and posted by a singer I admire, from his work called

' The Weight of Glory'

A stirring.

Interest peaked

A longing to grow in understanding

To be challenged.

I began to read.

And re-read

The same 10 pages 5 times.

I wanted to absorb what he was saying.

To be able to reiterate it so clearly when opportunity to share came along

It was like he understood me

The way in which my mind tried to make sense of things.

"We usually notice it just as the moment of vision dies away, as the music ends, or as the landscape loses the celestial light. What we feel then has been well described by Keats as the 'Journey homeward to habitual self.'

'You know what I mean. For a few minutes we have had the illusion of belonging to that world.
Now we wake to find it is no such thing.We have been mere spectators. Beauty has smiled, but not to welcome us; her face was turned in our direction, but not to see us. We have not been accepted, welcomed or taken into the dance. We may go when we please, we may stay if we can:"Nobody marks us." A scientist may reply that since most of the things we call beautiful are inanimate, it is not very surprising that they take no notice of us. That, of course, is true.It is not the physical objects that I am speaking of, but that indescribable something of which they become for a moment the messengers.
And part of the bitterness that mixes with the sweetness of that message is due to the fact that it so seldom seems to be a message intended for us, but rather something we have overheard. By bitterness I mean pain, not resentment. We should hardly dare to ask that any notice be taken of ourselves.

But we pine. The sense that in this universe we are treated as strangers, the longing to be acknowledged, to meet with some response, to bridge some chasm that yawns between us and reality, is part of our inconsolable secret. And surely from this point of view, the promise of glory, in the sense described, becomes highly relevant to our deep desire.

...We do not merely want to see beauty though, God knows, even that bounty enough. We want something else which can hardly be put into words-to be united with the beauty we see, to pass into it, to receive it into ourselves, to bath in it, to become part of it...

...That is why the poets tell us such lovely falsehoods. They talk as if the west wind could really sweep into a human soul; but it can't. They tell us that "beauty born of murmuring sound" will pass into the human face; but t won;t.
Or not yet.
We discern the freshness and purity of morning, but they do not make us fresh and pure. We cannot mingle with the splendours we see. But all the leaves of the New Testament are rustling with the rumour that it will not always be so.
Some day, God willing, we shall get in."