The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe

I think that reading the Chronicles of Narnia gives me the same feeling that northern mythology gave Lewis - sweet, painful joy.  I remember crying when I was little because it wasn't real and I couldn't go there. Just something about it always gets me and I feel that pang of remembering something that I've never experienced yet... "an unsatisfied desire which is itself more desirable than any other satisfaction." I think because I am religious and have a relationship with God that it's not more desirable than any other satisfaction... but I do love the pang of reading Narnia. It reminds me of something, like news from a country I have never yet visited. :)

The Turkish Delight - "Anyone who had once tasted it would want more and more of it, and would even, if they were allowed, go on eating till they killed themselves."

"Edmund was already feeling uncomfortable from having eaten too many sweets, and when he heard that the Lady he had made friends with was a dangerous witch he felt even more uncomfortable. But he still wanted to taste that Turkish Delight again more than he wanted anything else."

Perelandra {III}

"And now the experiences of the past day and night began to make a direct assault upon his faith... It was all very well to talk of Maledil: but where was Maledil now?... Knowledge remained an abstraction. Mere bigness and loneliness overbore him."

Remember Lewis' definition of faith: "The art of holding on to things your reason has once accepted, in spite of your changing moods." Bad days happen. Sometimes several bad days happen in a row. It's easy to forget what we once knew when all we feel is loneliness or depression.

"Say a child's prayer if you can't say a man's."

 "There was, no doubt, a confusion of persons in damnation... they were melted down into their Master, as a lead soldier slips down and loses his shape in the ladle held over the gas ring." 

This is a horrible (and probably accurate) conception of Hell... elsewhere in Mere Christianity and The Screwtape Letters Lewis has expressed his opinion that, "Sameness is to be found most among the most "natural" men, not among those who surrender to Christ. How monotonously alike all the great tyrants and conquerors have been," and that the goal of the devils is to devour and consume humanity. Real personality, real individuality can only be found in Christ.

Perelandra {II}

"Were all the things which appeared as mythology on earth scattered throughout other worlds as realities?" 

This betrays Lewis' great love of myth, and the fact that myth led him to a belief in Christianity makes this sentence intriguing to me.

Thinking about when Ransom is drenched with "an ice-cold shower bath," that brings to his mind the phrase, "die of a rose in aromatic pain," I think it represents baptism.

"Such was the refreshment that he seemed to himself to have been, till now, but half-awake. When he opened his eyes... all the colours about him seemed richer and the dimness of that world seemed clarified... The golden beast at his side seemed no longer either a danger or a nuisance." 

It's cool to think of baptism in that way.

Ransom christens the trees, just as Adam was charged with naming all the creatures in the Garden of Eden.

Interesting thought:

"This itch to have things over again, as if life were a film that could be unrolled twice or even made to work backwards... was it possibly the root of all evil? No: of course the love of money was called that. But money itself - perhaps one valued it chiefly as a defence against chance, a security for being able to have things over again, a means of arresting the unrolling of the film."

Perelandra {I}

In Perelandra, Ransom "described us as being in a state of siege, as being, in fact, an enemy-occupied territory, held down by eldils who were at war both with us and with the eldils of "Deep Heaven," or "space."" This is the exact same term that Lewis used in Mere Christianity when he said, ""Enemy-occupied territory—that is what this world is." :)

Of the fallen eldila - "Oh, they'll put all sorts of things into your head if you let them," said Ransom lightly. "The best plan is to take no notice and keep straight on. Don't try to answer them. They like drawing you into an interminable argument." This is both like and unlike the devils of The Screwtape Letters. Screwtape advised Wormwood that their best work was sometimes done keeping things out rather than putting things into the heads of mortals. However, I feel that there is still a similarity between the tempting eldila and the devils.

"If you mean, Does my reason accept the view that he will (accidents apart) deliver me safe on the surface of Perelandra? - the answer is Yes," said Ransom. "If you mean, Do my nerves and my imagination respond to this view? - I'm afraid the answer is No. One can believe is anesthetics and yet feel in a panic when they actually put the mask over your face. I think I feel as a man who believes in the future life feels when he is taken out to face a firing party. Perhaps it's good practice." This is very much like what Lewis said in Mere Christianity - "Faith... is the art of holding on to things your reason has once accepted, in spite of your changing moods."

Essays and Letters

From Letters to Arthur Greeves: 

"All the 'homeliness' (wh. was your chief lesson to me) was the introduction to the Christian virtue of charity or love. I sometimes manage now to get into a state in wh. I think of all my enemies and can honestly say that I find something lovable (even if it is only an oddity) in them all: and your conception of 'homeliness' is largely the route by wh. I have reached this. On the other hand, all the 'strangeness' (wh. was my lesson to you) turned out to be only the first stop in far deeper mysteries."

I like the idea of friends giving each other lessons that help them become better; helping each where they are weak and the other strong and receiving help in return. :)

In another letter to his friend Arthur, he writes about his conversion to Christianity.

"Now what Dyson and Tolkien showed me was this: that if I met the idea of sacrifice in a Pagan story I didn't mind it at all: again, that if I met the idea of a god sacrificing himself to himself (cf. the quotation opposite the title page of Dymer) I liked it very much and was mysteriously moved by it: again, that the idea of the dying and reviving god (Balder, Adonis, Bacchus) similarly moved me provided I met it anywhere except in the Gospels. The reason was that in Pagan stories I was prepared to feel the myth as profound and suggestive of meanings beyond my grasp even tho' I could not say in cold prose 'what it meant'.

Surprised by Joy {II}

"This was a religion that cost nothing. We could talk religiously about the Absolute: but there was no danger of Its doing anything about us. It was "there"; safely and immovable "there." It would never come "here," never (to be blunt) make a nuisance of Itself. This quasi-religion was all a one-way street; all eros (as Dr. Nygren would say) steaming up, but no agape darting down. There was nothing to fear; better still, nothing to obey."

I like how Lewis describes God as "hunting," or actively pursuing him. I definitely agree that God's love is powerful and active, and that He does pursue us. His love is relentless.

"Total surrender, the absolute leap in the dark, were demanded. The reality with which no treaty can be made was upon me. The demand was not even "All or nothing." I think that stage had been passed, on the bus top when I unbuckled my armour and the snowman started to melt. Now, the demand was simply "All.""

Surprised by Joy {I}

"An unsatisfied desire which is itself more desirable than any other satisfaction." This is what Lewis calls "Joy." Like Happiness or Pleasure, anyone who has experienced it will want it again. Considered only in its quality, it might almost equally well be called a particular kind of unhappiness or grief. But then it is a kind we cant. Joy is never in our power and pleasure often is. "Joy is distinct not only from pleasure in general but even from aesthetic pleasure. It must have the stab, the pang, the inconsolable longing."

Lewis says in his childhood, as he prayed for his mother to live, he approached God , or his idea of God, "without love, without awe, even without fear. He was, in my mental picture of this miracle, to appear neither Savior nor Judge, but merely as magician, "and when He had done what was required of Him I supposed He would simply - well, go away." I think this is the attitude Howard W. Hunter was talking about when he said,

"If prayer is only a spasmodic cry at the time of crisis, then it is utterly selfish, and we come to think of God as a repairman or a service agency to help us only in our emergencies." 

Of his father - "It is strange that having known me all my life he should have known me so little."

On prayer - "My nightly task was to produce by sheer will power a phenomenon which will power could never produce, which was so ill-defined that I could never say with absolute confidence whether it had occurred, and which, even when it did occur, was of very mediocre spiritual value." I'm pretty sure I've prayed like this before; trying to use all my imagination to conjure a picture of God to pray to.