Tag: C.S. Lewis

Turn Aside and Look: The Corner Has Been Turned

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rainycroci

rainycroci6

 

To be sure, it feels wintry enough still: but often in the very early spring it feels like that. Two thousand years are only a day or two by this scale. A man really ought to say, ‘The Resurrection happened two thousand years ago’ in the same spirit in which he says, ‘I saw a crocus yesterday.’

Because we know what is coming behind the crocus.

The spring comes slowly down this way; but the great thing is that the corner has been turned. There is, of course, this difference, that in the natural spring the crocus cannot choose whether it will respond or not.

We can.

We have the power either of withstanding the spring, and sinking back into the cosmic winter, or of going on into those ‘high mid-summer pomps’ in which our Leader, the Son of man, already dwells, and to which He is calling us.

It remains with us to follow or not, to die in this winter, or to go on into that spring and that summer.
~C.S. Lewis, “The Grand Miracle” God in the Dock

 

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“God is not dead, nor doth He sleep;
The wrong shall fail, the right prevail
With peace on earth, good will to men.”
~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow from “I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day”

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God is not asleep like the crocus.  We need only look up, and turn the corner to find Him.

He names us and calls us forth from the dust from which He made us.

And He knows all about us:
our days, our deeds, our hopes, our fears,
our deepest joys, our silent tears.

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1. The lone, wild bird in lofty flight
is still with you, nor leaves your sight.
And I am yours! I rest in you,
Great Spirit, come, rest in me, too.

2. The ends of earth are in your hand,
the sea’s dark deep and far off land.
And I am yours! I rest in you,
Great Spirit, come, rest in me, too.

3. Each secret thought is known to you,
the path I walk my whole life through;
my days, my deeds, my hopes, my fears,
my deepest joys, my silent tears.
~The Lone Wild Bird by Hery Richard McFayden

 

 

Being Remodeled

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pusswillows

 

Be a womb.
Be a dwelling for God.
Be surprised.
~Loretta Ross-Gotta

 

pusswillows2

 

Imagine yourself as a living house.
God comes in to rebuild that house.
At first, perhaps, you can understand what He is doing.
He is getting the drains right
and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on;
you knew that those jobs needed doing
and so you are not surprised.
But presently He starts
knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably
and does not seem to make any sense.
What on earth is He up to?
The explanation is that He is building
quite a different house from the one you thought of –
throwing out a new wing here,
putting on an extra floor there,
running up towers,
making courtyards.
You thought you were being made into a decent little cottage:
but He is building a palace.
He intends to come and live in it Himself.
~C.S. Lewis from Mere Christianity

 

moydalgan1

 

Whenever I’m tempted to hunker down
in retreat from
the rest of the world,
or from God Himself~
whenever I’m content with the status quo
and reluctant to stretch beyond
clear boundaries I’ve carefully constructed
for my one weary life~

I am surprised.

Whether in hiding inside a bud or bunker or cottage,
trying to seek safety or simplicity,
it is not enough for God’s blueprint.

I am not a dwelling for God
until His remodel project is finished~

until He puts down His chisel, hammer and saw,
looks me over
and declares it good.

 

stirlingcastle3

They Were First

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drizzlecrocus

wlccroci

Though a tremor of the winter
Did shivering through them run;
Yet they lifted up their foreheads
To greet the vernal sun.

And the sunbeams gave them welcome.
As did the morning air
And scattered o’er their simple robes
Rich tints of beauty rare.

Soon a host of lovely flowers
From vales and woodland burst;
But in all that fair procession
The crocuses were first.
~Frances Ellen Watkins Harper from “The Crocuses”

snowcrocus2

croci13

To be sure, it feels wintry enough still:
but often in the very early spring it feels like that.
Two thousand years are only a day or two by this scale.
A man really ought to say, “The Resurrection happened two thousand years ago”
in the same spirit in which he says, “I saw a crocus yesterday.”
Because we know what is coming behind the crocus.
The spring comes slowly down this way;
but the great thing is that the corner has been turned.
There is, of course, this difference that in the natural spring
the crocus cannot choose whether it will respond or not.
We can…
It remains with us to follow or not, to die in this winter, or to go on into that spring and that summer.
~C.S. Lewis from “The Grand Miracle”

fallcrocus

As if pulled by invisible threads from heaven, the crocus shoots have come through frozen ground to herald spring.  There is nothing apparent that would lure them up into the light — it is still cold, the days still dark, it is still deep winter on the calendar.

Yet they emerge, blind to all that depressing reality, to show their cheerful faces, as if all is grace and more joy is to come. The corner is turned as we trudge slowly down the slope of winter into spring.

These were first, but won’t be last.  We know what comes behind the crocus.

drizzlecroci

 

Preparing the Heart: Restless and Longing

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emptyhaybarn

Everlasting God,
in whom we live and move and have our being:
You have made us for yourself,
so that our hearts are restless
until they rest in you.
—Augustine of Hippo

haybarnfull

barnstorm

Advent is a time when I feel an “inconsolable longing, almost like a heartbreak”, as C.S. Lewis writes in his memoir. He describes “the stab, the pang” accompanying the experience of Joy. I feel it too, in a powerfully visceral way, within my chest, within the rhythm of my heart.The restlessness drives me to seek rest, taking me right where I belong in the still sanctuary of a manger of hay, quieted and swaddled alongside the Son of God.

 

Jesus, Jesus, rest your head.
You have got a manger bed.
All the evil folk on earth,
Sleep in feathers at their birth.

(But) Jesus, Jesus, rest your head.
You have got a manger bed.

Have you heard about our Jesus?
Have you heard about his fate?
How his mother came to the stable,
On that Christmas Eve so late?
Winds were blowing.
Cows were lowing.
Stars were glowing, glowing, glowing.

Jesus, Jesus, rest your head.
You have got a manger bed.

~Appalachian Carol

Tonyasleep1

In the Driver’s Seat

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farmertheo1

I heard an old man speak once,
someone who had been sober for fifty years,
a very prominent doctor.
He said that he’d finally figured out a few years ago
that his profound sense of control,
in the world and over his life,
is another addiction and a total illusion.
He said that when he sees little kids sitting in the back seat of cars,
in those car seats that have steering wheels,
with grim expressions of concentration on their faces,
clearly convinced that their efforts are causing the car
to do whatever it is doing,
he thinks of himself
and his relationship with God:
God who drives along silently,
gently amused,
in the real driver’s seat.
~Anne Lamott from Operating Instructions

farmertheo4

I pray because I can’t help myself.
I pray because I’m helpless.
I pray because the need flows out of me all the time — waking and sleeping.
It doesn’t change God — it changes me.
~C.S. Lewis

 

We want to steer life in the way we want it to go:
our plans, our timing, our chosen destination,
our hopes and dreams matter first and foremost.

And then life happens and suddenly the road ceases to look familiar and we don’t seem to be going the direction we intended.

Who is driving anyway?

In my work in a University Health Center, I am see an epidemic of an illusion of control:
a tremendous lack of resiliency, an inability to ride the roller coaster of life without panic. One of the most common responses to the unexpected is uncontrollable anxiety that interferes with eating, sleeping, working, studying. A common response to anxiety is to self medicate in any way easily accessible: video games, social media, alcohol, marijuana, nicotine, sex, a friend’s prescription drugs. A little isn’t working so a lot might be better. The anxiety is only compounded and becomes deepening depression.

The sadness and hopelessness, even anger stems from discouragement over our lack of control of circumstances, feeling there is no way out and being unable to find another path to a different future. This leads all too frequently to thoughts of ending one’s life as it seems too painful and pointless to continue, and thankfully more rarely, taking others’ lives at the same time in an attempt to make sure everyone else understands the depth of the pain.

There is an epidemic of hopelessness and helplessness among our society’s young people that I’ve never before seen to this extent in my thirty five years of clinical work. To them, their debts seem too great, their reserves too limited, their foundations too shaky, their hope nonexistent, their future too dim.

Relinquishing control by giving up the driver’s seat is not in our nature. We want to be seen as competent and feel as though we are prepared to be the captain of our fate.

Instead we need to give up our carefully planned-out life to the God who created us and has it all planned for us.

We turn over the steering wheel saying: may it be to me as you say.

May it be.
Your plans, Your purpose, Your promise.
Let it be.

Even if it may pierce my soul as with a sword:
You are there to plug the bleeding hole.

And I will follow wherever you steer me.

centralroadlane

Crowded With God

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north71516

nasturtium7816

gladjuly

We may ignore, but we can nowhere evade, the presence of God.
The world is crowded with Him.
He walks everywhere incognito.
And the incognito is not always easy to penetrate.
The real labor is to remember to attend. In fact to come awake. Still more to remain awake.
~C.S.Lewis

rainyblackberry

sumasmountain

The older I get, the more I recognize the need to be alert and awake to the presence of God in the crowded world around me.

It doesn’t come naturally.

We humans have an attention deficit, choosing to focus inwardly on self and ignoring the rest.  If it isn’t for me, or like me, or about me, it somehow is not worthy of my consideration.

We wear blinders, asleep.

We need help to recognize the presence of God, to peel the layers off the ordinary and find Him at the extraordinary core, incognito.  He reveals Himself to us, invisible, yet right in plain sight.

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gladjuly

 

Time-bound and Time-ravaged

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hairyherb

leafunfolding

It is easy enough to write and talk about God
while remaining comfortable
within the contemporary intellectual climate.
Even people who would call themselves unbelievers
often use the word gesturally,
as a ready-made synonym for mystery.
But if nature abhors a vacuum,
Christ abhors a vagueness.
If God is love,
Christ is love
for this one person,
this one place,
this one time-bound and
time-ravaged self.
~Christian Wiman from My Bright Abyss

 

lupinepods2

Well aware of all I am not,
my shortcomings and failings,
my temptation to deny self-denial,
my inability to see beyond my own troubles,
forgetting this life is not all about me:

~neglecting to witness first hand
all that God through Christ is:

the beauty in His becoming man,
the joy of His joining up with us,
the love in His gracious sacrifice,
the full promise of His Word that breathes
life back into my dying soul~

and so it becomes all about me
not because of
what I’ve done,
or who I am,
but because of
who He is and was and will be:
He loves me,
this time-bound and time-ravaged me,
no matter what.

varihydra1

Here is the mystery, the secret, one might almost say the cunning, of the deep love of God: that it is bound to draw on to itself the hatred and pain and shame and anger and bitterness and rejection of the world, but to draw all those things on to itself is precisely the means, chosen from all eternity by the generous, loving God, by which to rid his world of the evils which have resulted from human abuse of God-given freedom.
~N.T. Wright

purplehydra

God has paid us the intolerable compliment of loving us, in the deepest, most tragic, most inexorable sense.
C.S. Lewis

 

rainylily

Beginning an Uprising

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purplepetunia

 

Whatever happens. Whatever
what is is is what I want.
Only that. But that.
~Galway Kinnell “Prayer”

redhydrangea

To clasp the hands in prayer is the beginning of an uprising against the disorder of the world.
~Karl Barth

spirea2016

Prayer is easiest for the youngest among us.  It can be amazingly spontaneous for kids — an outright exclamation of joy, a crying plea for help, a word of unprompted gratitude.

I’m not sure at what age I began to silence myself out of self-conscious embarrassment, but I stayed silent for many years, unwilling to put voice to the prayers that rattled in my head.  In my 1960’s childhood, prayer in public schools had been hushed into a mere moment of silence, and intuitively I knew silence has never changed anything.

Nothing can upright this tipped-over disordered world until we are right with God, talking to Him out of our depth of need and fear.  Nothing can upright the world until we submit ourselves wholly, bowed low, hands clasped, eyes closed, articulating the joy, the thanks, and the needs filling our hearts.

An uprising is possible when a voice comes alive, unashamed, un-selfconscious, rising up from within us, uttering words that beseech and thank and praise.  To kneel down is to rise up with hands clasped together, calling upon a power needing no weapons, only words, to overcome and overwhelm the shambles left of our world.

Nothing can be more victorious
than the Amen,
our Amen,
at the end.
So be it and so shall it be.

Amen, and Amen again.

begoniagold

…the room was filled by a presence that in a strange way was both about me and within me like a light or warmth. I was overwhelming possessed by someone who was not myself.  And yet, I felt more myself than ever before.  I was filled with intense happiness and almost unbearable joy as I had never known before or never known since.  And overall, there was a deep sense of peace and security and certainty.
~C. S. Lewis

emmagibson
portrait of Dan’s mom, Emma Gibson, praying, by granddaughter Sara Lenssen

The Voice of the Earth

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ferndaisies

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In the darkness something was happening at last.

A voice had begun to sing. It was very far away and…. hard to decide from what direction it was coming. Sometimes it seemed to come from all directions at once. Sometimes he almost thought it was coming out of the earth beneath them. Its lower notes were deep enough to be the voice of the earth herself.

There were no words. There was hardly even a tune. But it was, beyond comparison, the most beautiful noise he had ever heard. It was so beautiful he could hardly bear it.

The earth was of many colors: they were fresh, hot, and vivid.  They made you feel excited; until you saw the Singer himself, and then you forgot everything else.
~C.S. Lewis from The Magician’s Nephew

dandy16

And did you get what
you wanted from this life, even so?
I did.
And what did you want?
To call myself beloved, to feel myself
beloved on the earth.
~Raymond Carver “Late Fragment”

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Beautiful things and varied shapes appeal to [the eyes],
vivid and well-matched colors attract;
but let not these captivate my soul.
Rather let God ravish it;
he made these things exceedingly good, to be sure,
but he is my good, not they.
~St. Augustine

maplecentralroad

All this he saw, for one moment breathless and intense, vivid on the morning sky; and still, as he looked, he lived; and still, as he lived, he wondered.
~Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows

 

Every time I open my eyes
and listen for the voice of the morning,
I am reminded how precious is this moment,
how intense is each breath and each heartbeat.

We are created for this.
We are, everyone of us, beloved.
We are meant to wonder breathless at this,
without ceasing.

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Between Midnight and Dawn: As Warm As Tears

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 raindrops1126
As he approached Jerusalem and saw the city, he wept over it and said, “If you, even you, had only known on this day what would bring you peace—but now it is hidden from your eyes.”
Luke 19:41

 

Love’s as warm as tears,
Love is tears:
Pressure within the brain,
Tension at the throat,
Deluge, weeks of rain,
Haystacks afloat,
Featureless seas between
Hedges, where once was green.

Love’s as fierce as fire,
Love is fire:
All sorts–infernal heat
Clinkered with greed and pride,
Lyric desire, sharp-sweet,
Laughing, even when denied,
And that empyreal flame
Whence all loves came.

Love’s as fresh as spring,
Love is spring:
Bird-song hung in the air,
Cool smells in a wood,
Whispering ‘Dare! Dare!’
To sap, to blood,
Telling ‘Ease, safety, rest,
Are good; not best.’

Love’s as hard as nails,
Love is nails:
Blunt, thick, hammered through
The medial nerves of One
Who, having made us, knew
The thing He had done,
seeing (with all that is)
Our cross, and His.
~C.S. Lewis

hearttears

Jesus is reported to have wept twice in the gospels.  When informed His friend Lazarus was dead, He weeps in response to the grief and lack of faith demonstrated by friends and family even though they knew Jesus’ power to heal and restore.  The second time was on Palm Sunday, as triumphantly He approached Jerusalem and stopping, looked down upon the city, knowing what lay ahead.   This time the stakes were not the loss of one life, but the loss of an entire city due to the unbelief and lack of faith of its people.

Indeed, Jerusalem, still torn between factions, faiths and fanatics, has not really known peace ever since.

And our own country, more fractured and torn than ever before in living memory, is raising up its own version of factions and fanatics.  How can this end well?

I am struck by the compassion shown in the Lord’s tears.  These are not tears of self-pity, nor anticipation of His own imminent personal suffering, but tears shed over the continued blindness of mankind.  They expected the militant entrance of a victorious king, unaware their salvation rode into their midst on a donkey’s colt.

Can we not,  the impatient and ignorant electorate, learn from this?  — humility and sacrifice is far more powerful in the kingdom of God than weapons, verbal barbs and hatred.

Those sacred tears shed so long ago, and still shed, were never for Himself, but for us.

Human tears rolling down the face of God;
Divine tears washing the face of man.

Peace no longer is hidden from us; we know from where our help comes.
Now that we know, there are no excuses for our blindness.

1031drops8

During this Lenten season, I will be drawing inspiration from the new devotional collection edited by Sarah Arthur —Between Midnight and Dawn