September 22, 2007

• "no answer"

  Two excerpts from C.S.Lewis - the first from Till We Have Faces, p. 95-96, with 1 Peter 1:3-9, and the second from A Grief Observed, p. 18-24 and p. 80-81.

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  We had come into the sunlight now, too bright to look into, and warm (I threw back my cloak).  Heavy dew made the grass jewel-bright.  The Mountain, far greater yet also further off than I expected, seen with the sun hanging a hand-breadth above its topmost crags, did not look like a solid thing.  Between us and it was a vast tumble of valley and hill, woods and cliffs, and more little lakes than I could count.  To left and right, and behind us, the whole coloured world with all its hills was heaped up and up to the sky, with, far away, a gleam of what we call the sea (though it is not to be compared with the Great Sea of the Greeks).  There was a lark singing; but for that, huge and ancient stillness.

  And my struggle was this.  You may well believe that I had set out sad enough; I came on a sad errand.  Now, flung at me like frolic or insolence, there came as if it were a voice - no words - but if you made it into words it would be, "Why should your heart not dance?"

  It's the measure of my folly that my heart almost answered, "Why not?"  I had to tell myself over like a lesson the infinite reasons it had not to dance.  My heart to dance?....

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  Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His great mercy has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to obtain an inheritance which is imperishable and undefiled and will not fade away, reserved in heaven for you, who are protected by the power of God through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. 

  In this you greatly rejoice, even though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been distressed by various trials, so that the proof of your faith, being more precious than gold which is perishable, even though tested by fire, may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ; and though you have not seen Him, you love Him, and though you do not see Him now, but believe in Him, you greatly rejoice with joy inexpressible and full of glory, obtaining as the outcome of your faith the salvation of your souls.

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  I must think more about H. and less about myself.

  Yes, that sounds very well. But there's a snag. I am thinking about her nearly always. Thinking of the H. facts - real words, looks, laughs, and actions of hers. But it is my own mind that selects and groups them. Already, less than a month after her death, I can feel the slow, insidious beginning of a process that will make the H. I think of into a more and more imaginary woman. Founded on fact, no doubt.  I shall put in nothing fictitious (or at least I hope I shan't). But won't the composition inevitably become more and more my own?  The reality is no longer there to check me, to pull me up short, as the real H. so often did, so unexpectedly, by being so thoroughly herself and not me.

  The most precious gift that marriage gave me was this constant impact of something very close and intimate yet all the time unmistakably other, resistant - in a word, real.  Is all that work to be undone?  Is what I shall still call H. to sink back horribly into being not much more than one of my old bachelor pipe-dreams?  Oh my dear, my dear, come back for one moment and drive that miserable phantom away.  Oh God, God, why did you take such trouble to force this creature out of its shell if it is now doomed to crawl back - to be sucked back - into it?

  Today I had to meet a man I haven't seen for ten years.  And all that time I had thought I was remembering him well - how he looked and spoke and the sort of things he said.  The first five minutes of the real man shattered the image completely.  Not that he had changed.  On the contrary.  I kept on thinking, "Yes, of course, of course.  I'd forgotten that he thought that - or disliked this, or knew so-and-so - or jerked his head back that way."  I had known all these things once and I recognized them the moment I met them again.  But they had all faded out of my mental picture of him, and when they were all replaced by his actual presence the total effect was quite astonishingly different from the image I had carried about with me for those ten years.  How can I hope that this will not happen to my memory of H.?  That it is not happening already?  Slowly, quietly, like snowflakes - like the small flakes that come when it is going to snow all night - little flakes of me, my impressions, my selections, are settling down on the image of her.  The real shape will be quite hidden in the end.  Ten minutes - ten seconds - of the real H. would correct all this.  And yet, even if those ten seconds were allowed me, one second later the little flakes would begin to fall again.  The rough, sharp, cleansing tang of her otherness is gone.

  ...

  When I lay these questions before God I get no answer.  But a rather special sort of "No answer."  It is not the locked door.  It is more like a silent, certainly not uncompassionate, gaze.  As though He shook His head not in refusal but waiving the question.  Like, "Peace, child; you don't understand."

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  My life has been filled with questions lately.  (I know, "What's new about that?"   But more questions, deeper questions, I can assure you.  And I have been asking God a lot for wisdom / answers / guidance/direction/leading.   And like Lewis' later observations (see above, unlike his earlier observations: "But go to Him when your need is desperate, when all other help is vain, and what do you find? A door slammed in your face, and the sound of bolting and double bolting on the inside.  After that, silence.  You may as well turn away.  The longer you wait, the more emphatic the silence will become. There are no lights in the windows. It might be an empty house.  Was it ever inhabited?  It seemed so once.  And that seeming was as strong as this.  What can this mean?  Why is He so present a commander in our time of prosperity and so very absent a help in time of trouble?"), God has been sending me reminders constantly, almost every day, to trust fully in Him... and that He will work these situations out for good.  I ask Him for answers to some specific questions, and He has not yet answered.  But He continually reminds me to trust in Him.

  • 10:54 am
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