Living in Jesus, Abiding in Him (26)

  

As we continue to reflect on John 15:7, here is another thought from George MacDonald, which C. S. Lewis titles, Corrective Granting:

 

“Even such as ask amiss may sometimes have their prayers answered. The Father will never give the child a stone that asks for bread; but I am not sure that He will never give the child a stone that asks for a stone. If the Father says, ‘My child, this is a stone; it is no bread,’ and the child answer, ‘I am sure it is bread; I want it,’ may it not be well that he should try his ‘bread’?” George MacDonald – An Anthology, C. S. Lewis, Day 105, page 55.

 

I have to say that this is not something I have thought much about…if at all; it is certainly another perspective on the possibilities of prayer. C. S. Lewis thought it was important enough to include in his Anthology.

 

As I ponder MacDonald’s words, I see that the principle of relationship is valid; whether of parent – child, teacher – student, mentor – mentee, employer – employee, pastor – parishioner. Do we not learn when we, at times, get exactly what we ask for? Are there not some things which only experience can teach us?

 

There are times we need to be allowed to fail, to come up against harsh reality, to recognize that our perceptions were wrong, our values were wrong, that we were in error. Sometimes we can superimpose our illusions and wants and desires onto situations and deceive ourselves, and the only way to have the bubble burst is to jump into the pool and find there is no water – it can hurt.

 

Yet, in the Father our painful learning is nevertheless a secure learning. That is, we learn in the security of His love and not in an environment of condemnation. I used to tell my congregation that we ought to be the safest place on earth, that we ought to be the place, the people, where we can get on the bike and fall off and get on again with encouragement from one another.

 

As a pastor, and as an employer in business, I’ve watched folks go down roads that I pretty much knew were dead ends, but I knew that the roads needed to be traveled because the lessons needed to be learned and that there were no shortcuts for the lessons. I also knew that when harsh reality hit and disappointment enveloped folks, that I needed to be with them to encourage them to learn and try again – to figure out the difference between bread and a stone.

 

Sadly, most of us live in a world of condemnation – and this often includes church environments. Failure often leads to harsh criticism and ridicule rather than constructive coaching and learning. However, our heavenly Father want us to be secure in Him and secure with one another – loving one another as Jesus Christ loves us, being tenderhearted, laying our lives down for one another. (John 13:34 – 35; 15:12 – 17; Ephesians 4:32 – 5:2; 1 John 3:16).

 

Life together in the Trinity ought to be the safest place on earth.

 

When our Father answers our prayers with what C. S. Lewis terms Corrective Granting, we can be assured that He does so in His deep love for us – and we can trust Him to walk with us through the experience.

 

 

A Lifetime of Books – Musings (8)

Continued from the previous post in this series…

Along with the sense of the numinous, is the sense of opposing forces which we cannot see. Beneath the earth in The Princess and the Goblin are the goblins and their king and queen. I never lost sight, for indeed it was sight, of the Princess and Curdie in the bowels of the earth as prisoners of the goblins; their escape remained with me. When I read the story to Vickie a few years ago I revisited my experience when my mother read the story to me, and I kept thinking, “Oh yes, I remember that. Oh, that is the way it was, the mists of cloudy memory have disappeared. Why did I wait so long to read this myself? Why did I wait so long to share it?”

One of the marks of great storytelling is the ability of the narrator to portray the antagonist. An antagonist ought to be etched as deeply in our minds as the hero, for the hero’s heroism is framed within the evil which he or she encounters and overcomes. When evil and opposition are portrayed vividly we will not forget what we have seen and experienced. We may not dwell on it (hopefully we won’t), we will shut it in the abyss and throw away the key; but we will never forget what we have seen and the courage and faith it took to defeat it. MacDonald portrays evil in many forms in his writings, sometimes it is overt, at others time it is seductive – only a fool thinks that evil has a limited wardrobe.

Lewis does much the same in the Chronicles of Narnia and the Space Trilogy; evil can be beautiful to the eye and pleasing to the senses, it can be logical and scientific, or it can be hideous.

MacDonald also portrays the good and courageous in various forms, as does Lewis. Is Irene’s grandmother old or young? Is she beautiful or ugly? What does the natural eye see versus what is really there? Is not this the way it was and is with Jesus? Isaiah says that He had no beauty or form that we should desire Him. What can we learn from this?

The Bible teaches us that we do not “see” all there is to see, it teaches that there is an unseen realm(s) of which we have limited awareness…and yet, it need not be so, at least to the degree that most of us experience. However, the Bible does not turn this into a religious or supernatural amusement park ride, it doesn’t entice us to “experience” the supernatural, for these are not playthings – better not to see these things than to see them and play with them…they can destroy you; or they can make you think you know more than you do. For the Christian, life must always be about Jesus Christ, loving Him and loving others and not thinking a great deal of ourselves or what we think we know. Better to be in love with Jesus than think we are something we are not.

Yet, the Scriptures pull back the curtain; in Daniel, in Revelation, in Zechariah, to name but three. Yet, Paul writes that we are to look at the unseen and not the seen – but he does this in the context of knowing Jesus and suffering for Him, he does this in the context of looking for our home, anticipating the day when we will put off this temporal dwelling and be clothed with heaven’s dwelling (2 Corinthians Chapters 4 & 4). Moses (Hebrews 11) sees “Him who is invisible”. We don’t wrestle against flesh and blood, but against powers in the unseen that manifest themselves in the seen (Daniel and Ephesians 6).

Children, as adults, need to know there is evil and MacDonald portrays just enough malice in the goblins to leave a lasting impression, an impression that’s been with me for 60 years or more. There is good and there is evil in the story; there is the guiding hand of Princess Irene’s great-great-grandmother, there is the capture and the escape, there is the defeat of the goblins in the king’s house – where are we in the story?

Where are we in the story of the Bible? In the story of life? Do we live as if what we see is all there is? If so, what is the point? If what we see is not all there is, then who will have the courage to live as if life matters? Will I have the courage? Will you? 

A Lifetime of Books – Musings (7)

Have you ever “felt” something and didn’t know what it was? Or perhaps tasted something that intrigued you and appealed to you, but didn’t know the ingredients? Have you ever been aware of “something other” than what you can touch and see?

When I was a very young boy my mother read a story to me; not a nursery rhyme, not a Little Golden Book, but a story that took me on an adventure beyond myself, and beyond anything I could touch with my fingers or see with my eyes…and yet…yet I could “see” what she was reading, I could feel it; it drew me, beckoned me, invited me. As she read, my mother’s words transported me beyond my surroundings and I found myself with the Princess Irene, and her grandmother, and Curdie, and with the goblins. George MacDonald’s book, The Princess and the Goblin, awakened the numinous within me – or perhaps better – the numinous broke through to me and touched something within me.

C.S. Lewis termed George MacDonald “my master”. When Lewis was an adolescent, after having rejected Christianity, he purchased and read MacDonald’s Phantastes (Lewis didn’t know MacDonald was a Christian); the story stirred Lewis and he excitedly wrote to his friend Arthur Greeves about it – he didn’t know what it was but he had touched something, or perhaps we should say that something had touched Lewis. Not until years later would Lewis understand what had happened with Phantastes, not until he was surprised by joy – the joy of finding his desire, the joy of finding that for which he had always yearned, and had often denied, in his struggle between materialism and the numinous. The seed planted by MacDonald would be nurtured by Hugo Dyson and J.R.R. Tolkien – and one day Lewis would know that “this is that which has been drawing me all these years” (my words) and he would surrender to God “a most reluctant convert” (his words).

I never forgot my experience with The Princess and the Goblin, but I didn’t understand it – not until in my 50s, and even now I am still discovering its depths and heights. When Chesterton writes that all he needed to know was to be found in the nursery, he is writing about the numinous, the sense of “other”, the experience of adventure and journey, of being surprised by joy. Alas, as Chesterton also writes, the world does its best to extinguish it, it educates it out of us, it shames us, it tells us to grow up. Lewis’s tutor, Kirkpatrick, educated the sense of the divine out of Lewis…or at least tried to…it was nonsense, illogical (really?), you couldn’t see it or touch it. But Phantastes remained with Lewis, lingered, hung in the background; and it would knock on the door, whisper its voice, beckon him to come…Lewis thought that there must surely be something more than the material world, he knew there would be no surprises of joy in materialism but he felt constrained to force himself to think like an atheist or agnostic…and yet his heart told him that there must be something more.

I never forgot The Princess and the Goblin, and there were times I would sense that experience I had when listening to my mother, but like a fool I sought to find it in places where it was not to be found – sometimes in frivolous places, sometimes in sinful places, many times in places where the world told me that I should go, such as career, position, recognition, accomplishment, material things.

The church was not helpful either, for coming to know Jesus in the context of my experience was like joining a subculture among a subculture with competing subcultures. Intellectual theological propositions have their place, but in and of themselves they are at best Stoicism; spiritual/emotional experiences have their place, but in and of themselves they are akin to riding a roller coaster – perhaps we can call them religious Epicureanism. I had a longing for “home” but I didn’t know it, and had I known it I may not have known where home was.

How many times did I read Hebrews Chapter 11 and miss the theme of “longing” for home? The men and women of faith longed for their true home, they lived with a sense of the numinous – and yet I reduced what I read to either the intellectual or emotional and did not see the holistic, did not see the cosmic. I thought I was living in the penthouse, or at least a floor or two below it, when all the time I was in the basement depending on artificial light.

We underestimate what happens when the numinous is educated out of us – whether by the church or by the world. As Lewis wrote, we are men without chests; without hearts, without souls, without higher desire, without a sense of who we really are. It is not my intention to offend, I write this clinically, but when I see the drivel contained in popular catalogs of “Christian” books, enticing us to engage in the latest and greatest revelatory teaching, or self-help program, I want to shout – “We are being dumbed-down in an opium den of the little universe of self and religious entertainment – we are reinforcing heavens of brass and shutting the Divine Presence from our lives, obscuring the call of Jesus Christ to belong to Him and to Him alone.” Yes, there are substantive writings, past and present, to be had but the general “Christian” population is generally unaware of them and has little patience with that which does not appeal to our short-attention spans and obsession with self.

Are you longing for home?

A few years ago I read The Princess and the Goblin to Vickie, and then its sequel, The Princess and Curdie; I highly recommend them to you.

I will return to The Princess and the Goblin in my next post in this series.

C.S. Lewis and George MacDonald – Phantastes: II

This morning I picked up George Sayer’s, Jack, and saw that he does a much better job of interacting with Lewis and MacDonald that I’ll be able to do – so let me point you in that direction if you want to pursue the subject – but having said that – I’ll still venture forth.

Lewis was living with his tutor Kirkpatrick when he read Phantastes. Kirkpatrick was, as I recall, an atheist. I find it interesting that in the midst of his time with Kirkpatrick that he encounters Phantastes. His time with Kirkpatrick was wonderful, and if memory serves me well Kirkpatrick started Lewis off with Homer in Greek – there we have romance as well. So even if Kirkpatrick was an atheist it would seem that he had a sense of “beauty” about him. (Are these speculations valid?)

MacDonald idealizes women in his writings. Better yet, if we consider Lilith (which I intend to reread), MacDonald has strong women in his writings. MacDonald works with at least two types of women, the wise older woman and the idealized younger woman. Lilith would be yet a third type of woman, beautiful evil – though that may be simplistic, I really need to reread that book – and let’s add the Ash-Tree in Phantastes to the category of evil women.

The wise older women encountered in Phantastes would have spoken to Lewis of his mother and his nurse. Lewis’s loss of both at an early age was a life-defining experience – Phantastes presumably would have evoked their memory, their presence, and the joy and beauty associated with that innocent season of life. Also, consider that after the death of his mother that Lewis was sent to England and the hell of Robert Capron’s boarding school – what a shattering of joy and beauty and hopes and dreams! With Kirkpatrick Lewis finds true learning, stability, intellectual challenge – and lo – in reading MacDonald while with Kirkpatrick he once again senses “joy”. Of course he has no idea that MacDonald is a Christian – but the return journey has begun.

The idealized younger women in Phantastes may have been a counter balance to Lewis’s preoccupation with women as sexual objects; of perhaps even misogamy as a reaction against the death-abandonment of his mother? Lewis and his friend, Arthur Greeves, discussed and fantasized about some pretty dark sexual things; beyond that, as far as I know, we have speculation. I raise this not to speculate, and I know that many are uncomfortable with approaching this subject in general or with Lewis in particular, but the pre-Christian Lewis was hardly a saint, as he would readily confess, and while some elements of his pre-Christian life matured in an ethical fashion, others got worse – he was a snob and a liar to name two elements that got worse. This is a testimony to the grace and redemption of God – we ought not to avoid the facts, we have only to read Lewis’s letters.

My sense is that when Lewis came to Christ that his moral and ethical life experienced an immediate change – and that he continued to work through these things with a deep awareness of the grace of Christ towards him and in him.  

Both kinds of women in Phantastes, the older wise woman and the younger idealized woman, speak of something higher, something nobler, which in turn leads to joy and beauty – to that which is invisible and which is also enduring.

There are also five prominent men in Phantastes; the knight with the tarnished armor, Cosmo in the fairy story, the two brothers with whom Anodos (the protagonist in Phantastes) joins in brotherhood and battle against giants; the fifth is Anodos.

The knight’s armor is tarnished because he has fallen victim to the Ash-Tree – but he will redeem himself through noble actions, through redeeming others, and attain to true love with an idealized woman.

Cosmo is a character in a story read by Anodos. Cosmo gives his life to free a woman he loves (yet another woman in Phantastes) from a curse.

The two brothers give their lives to restore the honor of their father, a king, whose land is under the tyranny of three giants who are holding hostages. One of the brothers is engaged to be married but is willing to risk this deep love in battle – so again love for a woman enters into the story, though in this case it is not a driving force.

Anodos, the fifth man, well, Phantastes is about his journey through Fairy Land. This journey commences when he turns twenty-one years old and it lasts, in man’s natural time, twenty-one days – he learns this when he returns to his own land. It is a journey of maturation, of testing, of triumph and failure, of heart-searching, of an exploration of selfish and unselfish love – and if you’ve read the book I’m sure you can add other elements.

Considering Lewis’s enchantment with epic story and myth it is little wonder Phantastes had an immediate and unfolding effect on him. What George MacDonald began, Hugo Dyson and J.R.R. Tolkien would complete years later as the three friends traversed Addision’s Walk in Oxford. Dyson and Tolkien would bring into focus for Lewis that which he undoubtedly already knew at some level – that it is all one story, the Gospel of Jesus Christ, a longing for our home, a return to “joy”. From Boxen to Phantastes to Fairy Land to Narnia – not a bad pilgrimage at all, not a bad pilgrimage at all.

I have never concealed the fact that I regarded George MacDonald as my master; indeed, I fancy I have never written a book in which I did not quote from him. – C.S. Lewis

C.S. Lewis and George MacDonald - Phantastes

I recently reread Lewis’s Surprised by Joy, and just finished the last page of MacDonald’s Phantastes. It is my second time through MacDonald’s fairy story; this time I savored the journey. The first time reading Phantastes I succumbed to a habit of mine of driving through a region quickly, getting a feel for the land. While I may acknowledge the scenery, I often see it at too fast a speed. This drive was leisurely.

Another habit I have is driving quickly through verse interspersed in a manuscript. This time I slowed down and drank it in; experienced it. It was pleasant – like the aroma of honeysuckle on a still summer’s evening.

I wanted to read Phantastes right after Surprised by Joy because of the role of Phantastes in reawakening “joy” in Lewis. (I wonder if “higher critics” will one day teach that there were at least two men who wrote under the name C.S. Lewis? After all, how could the same person write intellectual/logical material on the one hand and mythical stories on the other? And what will they do with the fact that Lewis called himself “Jack”? No doubt they’ll have at least three men writing Lewis’s material!)

Phantastes is a Romance, not in the sense that we popularly use the term today, but in in the sense that Lewis, Charles Williams, Dorothy L. Sayers and others used the term – and I think I’d include Chesterton though I don’t know that he used the term (Chesterton also influenced Lewis in Lewis’s journey to Christ). And while MacDonald may have set out to “just” write a Fairy Story, (and my limited knowledge tells me that all Fairy Stories are Romantic stories) I don’t see how George MacDonald could write anything not imbued with his understanding and experience of Christ.

In Romance the transcendent is encountered in the individual object of affection – whether it be a woman, a man, or a virtue such as honor, courage, or truth. Sayers wrote about the “union of the intellect and the imagination as the highest means of reaching religious truth.” It is the Romance that often evokes the imagination, that in Chesterton caused him to reflect that everything he needed to know he learned in the stories told him in the nursery. Chesterton tried to kill the nursery stories and in so doing realized that he almost killed himself – isn’t that what many of us have done? Is this what Lewis meant when he wrote about “men without chests”?

And can we hear echoes of Lewis’s comment on Narnia about either reading it when you’re young or when you’re old, because in essence when you’re trying to act like the adult the world expects you to be you’ll distain Narnia? The problem in our day with those in advanced adulthood is that we’ve been so conditioned by a mechanistic worldview that we can’t seem to find our hearts to discover Narnia. (Is the younger generation’s embrace of fantasy a reaction against a mechanistic view of humanity?) When we do venture into that land we tend to do so as Uncle Andrew in The Magician’s Nephew, for hedonistic and utilitarian purposes.

Well, I see that I need to pull myself back into Lewis and Phantastes, I’ll try that in my next post.

The Refraction of His Glory

In George MacDonald’s sermon, The New Name, found in his Unspoken Sermons, he writes:

Not only then has each man his individual relation to God, but each man has his peculiar relation to God…In every man there is a loneliness, an inner chamber of peculiar life into which God only can enter…From this it follows that there is a chamber also – (O God, humble and accept my speech) – a chamber in God himself, into which none can enter but the one, the individual, the peculiar man, - out of which chamber that man has to bring revelation and strength for his brethren. This is that for which he was made – to reveal the secret things of the Father.

Relative worth is not only unknown – to the children of the kingdom it is unknowable.

While MacDonald may be pushing the envelope for some of us, his point is that each of us is called, in Christ, to reflect a facet of Christ to our brothers and sisters. We are a body with many members, a multitude which no man can number, and the Infinite – Personal God, in Christ, desires to display His splendor through His people, individually, peculiarly, and corporately.

This ties back to an earlier post about friendship and co-inherence, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, Dorothy L. Sayers, and Dante. We reflect God’s glory and beauty to others and God places special people in our lives so that we may behold His glory and beauty through them. It is not for us to be conscious of the glory and beauty in ourselves – that would be toxic, but it is for us to seek God’s glory and beauty in others.

In Lewis’s essay, The Weight of Glory, he writes:

It may be possible for each to think too much of his own potential glory hereafter; it is hardly possible for him to think too often or too deeply about that of his neighbor…It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship…There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal…Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbor is the holiest object presented to your senses. If he is your Christian neighbor, he is holy in almost the same way, for in him also Christ vere latitat – the glorifier and the glorified, Glory Himself is truly hidden.

Life in the Body of Christ is sacramental, the koinonia of the Body of Christ is the sharing of the life of Christ, we are one bread (1Cor. 10:16), sharing one Life. When we profane and desecrate a relationship in Christ, we bring that which is unclean into the Temple. MacDonald, Lewis, Williams, Sayers, and Dante give me much to ponder about relationships. I know I have failed to appreciate others, failed to honor others, failed to protect others – I hope that our merciful God will teach me to behold HIs beauty in others and to seek their glory and honor in Christ above my own.