Tag: C.S. Lewis

Between Midnight and Dawn: Becoming His Cells

barnstormingblogLeave a comment

plumbuds16

plumsunset1

 

Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it.
1Corinthians 12:27

 

Christ has no body now but yours.
No hands, no feet on earth but yours.
Yours are the eyes through which he looks compassion on this world.
Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good.
Yours are the hands through which he blesses all the world.
Yours are the hands,
yours are the feet,
yours are the eyes,
you are his body.
Christ has no body now on earth but yours.
~Teresa of Avila

 

The whole mass of Christians are the physical organism through which Christ acts—
that we are his fingers and muscles,
the cells of His body.
~C.S. Lewis

raindrop21316

 

When I am awake in the night to attend to those who are hurting,
who hurt others or themselves in their hopelessness,
I remember, in my own weariness,
this dear one too is part of His body,
one of the cells
that adjoins the cell that is me,
each of us critical to the life
raised in the body of Christ.

 

 

Keep watch, dear Lord,
with those who work, or watch, or weep this night,
and give your angels charge over those who sleep.
Tend the sick, Lord Christ;
give rest to the weary,
bless the dying,
soothe the suffering,
pity the afflicted,
shield the joyous;
and all for your loves sake.
Amen.
~Common Book of Prayer

 

plumsunset

 

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

Between Midnight and Dawn: Pouring Out Ourselves

barnstormingblog2 Comments

fencepost11816

fenceposttop1

I know how to be brought low, and I know how to abound. In any and every circumstance, I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need. I can do all things through him who strengthens me. Yet it was kind of you to share my trouble.
~Philippians 4:12-14

The truth that many people never understand, until it is too late, is that the more you try to avoid suffering the more you suffer because smaller and more insignificant things begin to torture you in proportion to your fear of being hurt.
~Thomas Merton
We want to avoid suffering, death, sin, ashes. But we live in a world crushed and broken and torn, a world God Himself visited to redeem. We receive his poured-out life, and being allowed the high privilege of suffering with Him, may then pour ourselves out for others.
Elisabeth Elliot

 

Much of my professional work as a physician involves helping people avoid suffering. Either I strive to prevent illness, or address symptoms early, or once someone is very sick or injured, try to mitigate the discomfort and misery. Sometimes I am able to help. Too often they are futile efforts. At that point all I can give is myself, caring for my patient as best I can. There is no medication, no physical manipulation or surgery, no magic touch that makes the difference that love can.

In a flawed and broken world, there will be suffering that cannot be prevented. We can run, but we can’t hide. It is avoidance that hurts us most. For some, it is the temporary anesthesia of alcohol or other recreational substances, a burrowing into numbness that prevents feeling anything at all. For others, it is the never-ending quest for fulfillment in pleasure, which is transient and hollow, or accumulating material goods, which eventually bore, become obsolete and pile up in landfills.

He poured Himself into us as He suffered. In turn, thus filled, we have ourselves to give.

Nothing else lasts. Nothing else matters.

I’m not sure God wants us to be happy. I think he wants us to love, and be loved. But we are like children, thinking our toys will make us happy and the whole world is our nursery. Something must drive us out of that nursery and into the lives of others, and that something is suffering.
~C. S. Lewis

fenceposttop2

lichen19165

 

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

Fingerprints of the Creator

barnstormingblog7 Comments

sunrise81115

 

wwuleaf1

thistlebud2

sunset8101514

C.S. Lewis said, “Most of us miss our cues repeatedly.” 
Or, as Sherlock Holmes commented to Watson:
“You see, but you do not observe.” 
Artist Thomas La Duke noted: 
“Some things are so common that they disappear. 
They’re all around us, but they vanish.” 
Missing our cues, we fail to notice the fingerprints of the Creator
in the ordinary textures and phenomena of living
because we are distracted by daily urgencies,
by things we consider more important,
which in the end may prove to be both trivial and transient.
Mary Oliver wrote:  
“If you notice anything
it leads you to notice
more
and more.”
~Luci Shaw from Breath for the Bones

 

How is it I see more at 61 than I ever did at 20, 30, 40, or even 50?
It is like being ten again when everything was a discovery; everything is worth notice.

 

fairflower10

 

wwuleavesturning

sunset810155

grassunset81915

Scattered Joy

barnstormingblog4 Comments

hydrangea62215

feverfew62215

begonia62215

wwuoakleaf6

The settled happiness and security which we all desire,
God withholds from us by the very nature of the world:
but joy, pleasure, and merriment, he has scattered broadcast.
We are never safe, but we have plenty of fun, and some ecstasy.
It is not hard to see why.

The security we crave would teach us to rest our hearts in this world
and oppose an obstacle to our return to God:
a few moments of happy love, a landscape, a symphony,
a merry meeting with our friends, a bathe
or a football match, have no such tendency.

Our Father refreshes us on the journey with some pleasant inns,
but will not encourage us to mistake them for home.
~C.S. Lewis from The Problem of Pain

 

It is easy for us to lose focus on the “why” of our existence:
so much of our time and energy spent seeking safety and security,
striving for a journey filled with happiness, joy and contentment,
as if that sole goal is our only ultimate destination and purpose.
This is not our home, we are mere wayfarers.

The nature of a fallen world leads us down roads
filled with potholes and flat tires and hurting people
scattered by the wayside, often alone, oppressed and suffering,ourselves sometimes among them.

Though we rejoice in the glimpses we have of joy broadcast like seed,
sprouting brief moments of happiness,
and the temporary comfort of contentment,
God calls us to know discomfort
so that we gratefully accept the gift of grace,
and understand what it means to give it to others:

For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat,
I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink,
I was a stranger and you invited me in,
36 I needed clothes and you clothed me,
I was sick and you looked after me,
I was in prison and you came to visit me.
~Matthew 25:35-6

 

seedpods2

pinkweed

sweetpeas

tennant62121

sunset625151

 

The Poem Itself

barnstormingblog4 Comments

pondshimmer

daylily62215

In science we have been reading only the notes to a poem:
in Christianity we find the poem itself.
~C.S. Lewis from Miracles

 

Science fails
to love us,
to grasp the hand of the dying,
to give hope to the weak and afraid,
to become sacrifice for our sin,
to offer us everlasting forgiveness and grace.

Science is merely the footnote
to a Word far greater,
a fermata allowing us
to dwell indefinitely
on His ultimate symphonic Work.

 

hollyhockred

 

Time to Hatch

barnstormingblog2 Comments

eggshell2

It may be hard for an egg to turn into a bird:
it would be a jolly sight harder for it to learn to fly while remaining an egg.
We are like eggs at present.
And you cannot go on indefinitely being just an ordinary, decent egg.
We must be hatched or go bad.
~C.S. Lewis
Our destiny is to fly free,
whether soaring alone
or arcing and sweeping together as one organism.
It starts in the nest, protected and warmed.
No view of sky
until shrugging off the shell,
then fed until our wings
spread beyond the edges,
readying to carry us
to places beyond imagining.
morningswans
murmur3

Still About to Be

barnstormingblog5 Comments

morning52815

peonyshower

raindropsonroses

Give up
the bitterness,
the anger,
the sadness
for what isn’t,
that you wish you had.

And embrace the gift of what you do have.
For therein
is really what you want more of:
Joy

~Elizabeth Elliot

All Joy reminds.
It is never a possession,
always a desire for something longer ago
or further away
or still ‘about to be’.
~C.S. Lewis from Surprised by Joy

tennant12

rosebud

pinkdogwoodnew

Prepare for Joy: Through the Open Door

barnstormingblog2 Comments
the wardrobe from C.S. Lewis' childhood home built by his grandfather, later to serve as his inspiration for "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe" in his home "The Kilns" at Oxford. Now at the Marion Wade Center at Wheaton College, Illinois
the wardrobe built by C.S. Lewis’ grandfather that served as his inspiration for “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe” — it first stood in his childhood home and later in his home “The Kilns” at Oxford. Now part of the C.S. Lewis collection at the Marion Wade Center at Wheaton College, Illinois

“We do not take responsibility for people disappearing.”

This is no mere piece of furniture;
Enchantment hangs within
Among the furs and cloaks
Smelling faintly of mothballs.

Touch the smooth wood,
Open the doors barely
To be met with a faint cool breeze~
Hints of snowy woods and adventure.

Reach inside to feel smooth soft furs
Move aside to allow dark passage
Through to another world, a pathway to
Cherished imagination of the soul.

Seek a destination for mind and heart,
A journey through the wardrobe,
Navigate the night path to reach a
Lit lone lamp post in the wood.

Beaming light as it shines undimmed,
A beacon calling us home, back home
Through the open door, to step out transformed,
No longer lost or longing, now found and filled.

lewiswardrobe

Prepare for Joy: Unshaken

barnstormingblogLeave a comment

dawn752

irishroad

I do not think that all who choose wrong roads perish;
but their rescue consists in being put back on the right road.
A sum can be put right:
but only by going back til you find the error
and working it afresh from that point,
never by simply going on.

There are only two kinds of people in the end:
those who say to God,
“Thy will be done,”
and those to whom God says, in the end,
“Thy will be done.”
All that are in Hell, choose it.
Without that self-choice there could be no Hell.
No soul that seriously and constantly desires joy will ever miss it.
Those who seek find.
To those who knock
it is opened.

Everything becomes more and more itself.
Here is joy that cannot be shaken.
Our light can swallow up your darkness;
but your darkness cannot now infect our light.
~C.S. Lewis excerpts from A Great Divorce

 

So much value is placed on choice — our country thrives on it: the choice to abort or let live, the choice to vaccinate or let nature take its course, the choice to recycle or overwhelm landfills, the choice to marry whom you wish or not at all, the choice to believe or decide there is nothing worth believing in.

Each fork in the road forces a choice.  Which is the “right” road? How can we ever know?

Each time I’ve chosen a road that ends up darkening to the point of invisibility or covered in brambles, potholes or muddy mire, I must choose again: keep going deeper into the darkness, or turn around and choose again.  I backtrack, rethink, make mistakes, get lost, try again.   When I finally come to my senses and whisper to God, “Thy will be done,” only then does His light lead the way and swallow up my darkness.

My joy at seeking the light remains unshaken:  He is God and always has been, and I am not and never will be.

sunset21615iphone2

sunrise22115

Prepare for Joy: More Than a Cottage

barnstormingblogLeave a comment

 

moydalgan1

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

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

Whenever there is the temptation to hunker down
in retreat from
the rest of the world,
and God Himself,
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 bunker or cottage,
when I seek safety or simplicity,
it is not enough.
I am not a dwelling for God
until His remodel project is finished~

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

stirlingcastle3

stirlingcastle2