The Great Divorce

Originally posted in November, 2006.

http://www.xanga.com/cookie_monster44/547273705/item.html






I felt like posting again today, as I had the day off and I haven't been on xanga much lately, so I took the time to type up a passage from The Great Divorce by C.S. Lewis that has given me much thought lately, for almost the past month or so. I'm hoping you can all catch the symbolism involved as you read it without my going into detail over it. If not, then take what you can out of it and go read the book--it's terrific (and short).



The Great Divorce

By C.S. Lewis



The reason why I asked if there were another river was this. All down one long aisle of the forest the undersides of the leafy branches had begun to tremble with dancing light; and on earth I knew nothing so likely to produce this appearance as the reflected lights cast upward by moving water. A few moments later I realized my mistake. Some kind of procession was approaching us, and the light came from the persons who composed it.

First came bright Spirits, not the Spirits of men, who danced and scattered flowers—soundlessly falling, lightly drifting flowers, though by the standards of the ghost-world each petal would have weighed a hundred-weight and their fall would have been like the crashing of boulders. Then, on the left and right, at each side of the forest avenue, came youthful shapes, boys upon one hand, and girls upon the other. If I could remember their singing and write down the notes, no man who read that score would ever grow sick or old. Between them went musicians: and after these a lady in whose honour all this was being done.

I cannot now remember whether she was naked or clothed. If she were naked, then it must have been the almost visible penumbra of her courtesy and joy which produces in my memory the illusion of a great and shining train that followed her across the happy grass. If she were clothed, then the illusion of nakedness is doubtless due to the clarity with which her inmost spirit shone through the clothes. For clothes in that country are not a disguise: the spiritual body lives along each thread and turns them into living organs. A robe or a crown is there as much as one of the wearer’s features as a lip or an eye.

But I have forgotten. And only partly do I remember the unbearable beauty of her face.

“Is it?...Is it?” I whispered to my guide.

“Not at all,” said he. “It’s someone ye’ll never have heard of. Her name on earth was Sarah Smith and she lived at Golders Green.”

“She seems to be…well, a person of particular importance?”

“Aye. She is one of the great ones. Ye have heard that fame in this country and fame on earth are two quite different things.”

“And who are these gigantic people…look! They’re like emeralds…who are dancing and throwing flowers before her?”

"Haven’t ye read your Milton? A thousand liveried angels lackey her.”

“And who are all these young men and women on each side?”

“They are her sons and daughters.”

“She must have had a very large family, Sir.”

“Every young man or boy that met her became her son—even if it was only the boy that brought the meat to her back door. Every girl that met her was her daughter.”

“Isn’t that a bit hard on their own parents?”

“No. There are those that steal other people’s children. But her motherhood was of a different kind. Those on whom it fell went back to their natural parents loving them more. Few men looked on her without becoming, in a certain fashion, her lovers. But it was the kind of love that made them not less true, but truer, to their own wives.”

“And how…but hullo! What are all these animals? A cat—two cats—dozens of cats. And all those dogs…why, I can’t count them. And the birds. And the horses.”

“They are her beasts.”

“Did she keep a sort of zoo? I mean, this is a bit too much.”

“Every beast and bird that came near her had its place in her love. In her they became themselves. And now the abundance of life she has in Christ from the Father flows over into them.”

I looked at my teacher in amazement.

“Yes,” said he. “It is like when you throw a stone into a pool, and the concentric waves spread out further and further. Who knows where it will end? Redeemed humanity is still young, it has hardly come to its full strength. But already there is enough joy in the little finger of a great saint such as yonder lady to waken all the dead things of the universe into life.”

While we spoke the lady was steadily advancing towards us, but it was not at us she looked. Following the direction of her eyes, I turned and saw an oddly-shaped phantom approaching. Or rather two phantoms: a great tall ghost, horribly thin and shaky, who seemed to be leading on a chain another ghost no bigger than an organ-grinder’s monkey. The taller ghost wore a soft black hat, and he reminded me of something that my mind could not quite recover. Then, when he had come within a few feet of the Lady he spread out his lean, shaky hand flat on his chest with the fingers wide apart, and he exclaimed in a hollow voice, “At last!” All at once I realized what it was that he had put me in mind of. He was like a seedy actor of the old school.

“Darling! At last!” said the Lady. “Good heavens!” thought I. “Surely she can’t---,” and then I noticed two things. In the first place, I noticed that the little Ghost was not being led by the big one. It was the dwarfish figure that held the chain in its hand and the theatrical figure that wore the collar round his neck. In the second place, I noticed that the Lady was looking solely at the dwarf Ghost. She seemed to think it was the Dwarf who had addressed her, or else she was deliberately ignoring the other. On the poor dwarf she turned her eyes. Love shone not from her face only, but from all her limbs, as if it were some liquid in which she had just been bathing. Then, to my dismay she came nearer. She stooped down and kissed the Dwarf. It made one shudder to see her in such close contact with that cold, damp, shrunken thing. But she did not shudder.

“Frank,” she said, “before anything else, forgive me. For all I ever did wrong and for all I did not do right since the first day we met, I ask your pardon.”

I looked properly at the Dwarf for the first time now: or perhaps, when he received her kiss he became a little more visible. One could just make out the sort of face he must have had when he was a man: a little, oval, freckled face with a weak chin and a tiny wisp of unsuccessful moustache. He gave her a glance, not a full look. He was watching the Tragedian out of the corner of his eye. Then he gave a jerk to the chain: and it was the Tragedian, not he, who answered the Lady.

“There, there,” said the Tragedian. “We’ll say no more about it. We all make mistakes.” With the words there came over his features a ghastly contortion which, I think, was meant for an indulgently playful smile. “We’ll say no more,” he continued. “It’s not myself I’m thinking about. It is you. That is what has continually been on my mind—all these years. The thought of you—you here alone, breaking your heart about me.”

“But now,” said the Lady to the Dwarf, “you can set all that aside. Never think like that again. It is all over.”

Her beauty brightened so that I could hardly see anything else, and under that sweet compulsion the Dwarf really looked at her for the first time. For a second I thought he was growing more like a man. He opened his mouth. He himself was going to speak this time. But oh, the disappointment when the words came!

“You missed me?” he croaked in a small, bleating voice.

Yet even then she was not taken aback. Still the love and courtesy flowed from her.

“Dear, you will understand about that very soon,” she said. “But today---.“

What happened next gave me a shock. The Dwarf and Tragedian spoke in unison, not to her but to one another. “You’ll notice,” they warned one another, “that she hasn’t answered our question.” I realized then that they were one person, or rather that both were the remains of what had once been a person. The Dwarf again rattled the chain.

“You missed me?” said the Tragedian to the Lady, throwing a dreadful theatrical tremor into his voice.

“Dear friend,” said the Lady, still attending exclusively to the Dwarf, “you may be happy about that and about everything else. Forget all about it for ever.”

And really, for a moment, I thought the Dwarf was going to obey: partly because the outlines on his face became a little clearer, and partly because the invitation to all joy, singing out of her whole being like a bird’s song on an April evening, seemed to me such that no creature could resist it. Then he hesitated. And then—once more he and his accomplice spoke in unison.

“Of course it would be rather fine and magnanimous not to press the point,” they said to each other. “But can we be sure she’d notice? We’ve done these sort of things before. There was the time we let her have the last stamp in the house to write her mother and said nothing although she had known we wanted to write a letter ourself. We thought she’d remember and see how unselfish we’d been. But she never did. And there was the time…oh, lots and lots of times!” So the Dwarf gave a shake to the chain and---.

“I can’t forget it,” cried the Tragedian. “And I won’t forget it, either. I could forgive them all they’ve done to me. But for your miseries---.”
“Oh, don’t you understand?” said the Lady. “There are no miseries here.”

“Do you mean to say,” answered the Dwarf, as if this new idea had made him quite forget the Tragedian for a moment, “do you mean to say you’ve been happy?”

“Didn’t you want me to be? But no matter. Want it now. Or don’t think about it at all.”

The Dwarf blinked at her. One could see an unheard-of idea trying to enter his little mind: one could even see that there was for him some sweetness in it. For a second he had almost let the chain go: then, as if it were his lifeline, he clutched it once more.

“Look here,” said the Tragedian. “We’ve got to face this.” He was using his “manly” bullying tone this time: the one for bringing women to their senses.

“Darling,” said the Lady to the Dwarf, “there’s nothing to face. You don’t want me to have been miserable for misery’s sake. You only think I must have been if I loved you. But if you’ll only wait you’ll see that it isn’t so.”

“Love!” said the Tragedian striking his forehead with his hand: then, a few notes deeper, “Love! Do you know the meaning of the word?”

“How should I not?” asked the Lady. “I am in love. In love, do you understand? Yes, now I love truly.”

“You mean,” said the Tragedian “you mean—you did not love me truly in the old days?”

“Only in a poor sort of way,” she answered. “I have asked you to forgive me. There was a little real love in it. But what we called love down there was mostly a craving to be loved. In the main I loved you for my own sake: because I needed you.”

“And now!” said the Tragedian with a hackneyed gesture of despair. “Now, you need me no more?”

“But of course not!” said the Lady; and her smile made me wonder how both the phantoms could refrain from crying out with joy.

“What needs could I have,” she said, “now that I have all? I am full now, not empty. I am in Love Himself, not lonely. Strong, not weak. You shall be the same. Come and see. We shall have no need for one another now: we can begin to love truly.”

But the Tragedian was still striking attitudes. “She needs me no more—no more. No more,” he said in a choking voice to no one in particular. “Would to God,” he continued, but he was now pronouncing it Gud—“Would to Gud I had seen her lying dead at my feet before I heard those words. Lying dead at my feet. Lying dead at my feet.”

I do not know how long the creature intended to go on repeating the phrase, for the Lady put an end to that. “Frank! Frank!” she cried in a voice that made the whole wood ring. “Look at me. Look at me. What are you doing with that great, ugly doll? Let go of the chain. Send it away. It is you I want. Don’t you see what nonsense it’s talking?” Merriment danced in her eyes. She was sharing a joke with the Dwarf, right over the head of the Tragedian. Something not at all unlike a smile struggled to appear on the Dwarf’s face. For he was looking at her now. Her laughter was past his first defenses. He was struggling hard to keep it out, but already with imperfect success. Against his will, he was even growing a little bigger. “Oh, you great goose,” said she. “What is the good of talking like that here? You know as well as I do that you did see me lying dead years and years ago. Not ‘at your feet,’ of course, but on a bed in a nursing home. A very good nursing home it was too. Matron would never have dreamed of leaving bodies lying about on the floor! It’s ridiculous for that doll to try to be impressive about death here. It just won’t work.”







I do not know that I ever saw anything more terrible than the struggle of that Dwarf Ghost against joy. For he had almost been overcome. Somewhere, incalculable ages ago, there must have been gleams of humour and reason in him. For one moment, while she looked at him in her love and mirth, he saw the absurdity of the Tragedian. For one moment he did not misunderstand at all her laughter: he too must once have known that no people find each other more absurd than lovers. But the light that reached him, reached him against his will. This was not the meeting he had pictured; he would not accept it. Once more he clutched at his death-line, and at once the Tragedian spoke.

“You dare to laugh at it!” it stormed. “To my face? And this is my reward. Very well. It is fortunate that you give yourself no concern about my fate. Otherwise you might be sorry afterwards to think that you had driven me back to Hell. What? Do you think I’d stay now? Thank you. I believe I’m fairly quick at recognizing where I’m not wanted. ‘Not needed’ was the exact expression, if I remember rightly.”

From this time on the Dwarf never spoke again: but still the Lady addressed it.

“Dear, no one sends you back. Here is all joy. Everything bids you stay.” But the Dwarf was growing smaller even while she spoke.

“Yes,” said the Tragedian. “On terms you might offer to a dog. I happen to have some self-respect left, and I see that my going will make no difference to you. It is nothing to you that I go back to the cold and the gloom, the lonely, lonely streets---.”

“Don’t, don’t Frank,” said the Lady. “Don’t let it talk like that.” But now the Dwarf was so small that she had dropped on her knees to speak to it. The Tragedian caught her words greedily as a dog catches a bone.

“Ah, you can’t bear to hear it!” he shouted with miserable triumph. “That was always the way. You must be sheltered. Grim realities must be kept out of your sight. You who can be happy without me, forgetting me! You don’t even want to hear of my sufferings. You say, don’t. Don’t tell you. Don’t make you unhappy. Don’t break in on your sheltered, self-centered little heaven. And this is the reward---.”

She stooped still lower to speak to the Dwarf which was now a figure no bigger than a kitten, hanging on to the end of the chain with his feet of the ground.

“That’ wasn’t why I said, Don’t,” she answered. “I meant, stop acting. It’s no good. He is killing you. Let go of that chain. Even now.”

“Acting,” screamed the Tragedian. “What do you mean?”

The Dwarf was now so small that I could not distinguish him from the chain to which he was clinging. And now for the first time I could not be certain whether the Lady was addressing him or the Tragedian.

“Quick,” she said. “There is still time. Stop it. Stop it at once.”

“Stop what?”

“Using pity, other people’s pity, in the wrong way. We have all done it a bit on earth, you know. Pity was meant to be a spur that drives joy to help misery. But it can be used the wrong way round. It can be used for a kind of blackmailing. Those who choose misery can hold joy up to ransom, by pity. You see, I know now. Even as a child you did it. Instead of saying you were sorry, you went and sulked in the attic…because you knew sooner or later one of your sisters would say, “I can’t bear to think of him sitting up there alone, crying.’ You used your pity to blackmail them, and they gave in in the end. And afterwards, when we were married…oh, it doesn’t matter, if only you will stop it.”

“And that,” said the Tragedian, “that is all you have understood of me, after all these years.” I don’t know what had become of the Dwarf Ghost by now. Perhaps it was climbing up the chain like an insect: perhaps it was somehow absorbed into the chain.

“No, Frank, not here,” said the Lady. “Listen to reason. Do you think joy was created to always live under that threat? Always defenseless against those who would rather be miserable than have their self-will crossed? For it was real misery. I know that now. You made yourself really wretched. That you can still do. But you can no longer communicate your wretchedness. 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. No, no, no. Come to us. We will not go to you. Can you really have thought that love and joy would always be at the mercy of frowns and sighs? Did you not know they were stronger than their opposites?

“Love? How dare you use that sacred word?” said the Tragedian. At the same moment he gathered up the chain which had now for some time been swinging uselessly at his side, and somehow disposed of it. I am not quite sure, but I think he swallowed it. Then for the first time it became clear that the Lady saw and addressed him only.

“Where is Frank?” she said. “And who are you, Sir? I never knew you. Perhaps you had better leave me. Or stay, if you prefer. If it would help you and if it were possible I would go down with you into Hell: but you cannot bring Hell into me.”

“You do not love me,” said the Tragedian in a thin bat-like voice: and he was now very difficult to see.

“I cannot love a lie,” said the Lady. “I cannot love the thing which is not. I am in Love, and out of it I will not go.”

There was no answer. The Tragedian had vanished. The Lady was alone in that woodland place, and a brown bird went hopping past her, bending with its light feet grasses I could not bend.

Presently the Lady got up and began to walk away. The other Bright Spirits came forward to receive her, singing as they came:

“The Happy Trinity is her home: nothing can trouble her joy.

She is the bird that evades every net: the wild deer that leaps every pitfall.

Like the mother bird to its chickens or a shield to the arm’d knight: so is the Lord to her mind, in His unchanging lucidity.

Bogies will not scare her in the dark: bullets will not frighten her in the day.

Falsehoods tricked out as truth assail her in vain: she sees through the lie as if it were glass.

The invisible germ will not harm her: nor yet the glittering sun-stroke.

A thousand fail to solve the problem, ten-thousand choose the wrong turning: but she passes safely through.

He details immortal gods to attend her: upon every road where she must travel.

They take her hand at hard places: she will not stub her toes in the dark.

She may walk among Lions and rattlesnakes: among dinosaurs and nurseries of lionets.

He fills her brim full with immensity of life: he leads her to see the world’s desire.”



“And yet…and yet…,” said I to my Teacher, when all the shapes and singing had passed some distance away into the forest, “even now I am not quite sure. Is it really tolerable that she should be untouched by his misery, even his self-made misery?”

“Would ye rather he still had the power of tormenting her? He did it many a day and many a year in their earthly life.”

“Well, no. I suppose I don’t want that.”

“What then?”

"I hardly know, Sir. What some people say on earth is that the final loss of one soul gives the lie to all the joy of those who are saved.”

“Ye see that it does not.”

“I feel in a way that it ought to.”

“That sounds very merciful: but see what lurks behind it.”

“What?”

“The demand of the loveless and the self-imprisoned that they should be allowed to blackmail the universe: that till they consent to be happy (on their own terms) no one else shall taste joy: that theirs should be the final power; that Hell should be able to veto Heaven.”

“I don’t know what I want, Sir.”

“Son, son, it must be one way or the other. Either the day must come when joy prevails and all the makers of misery are no longer able to infect it: or else for ever and ever the makers of misery can destroy in others the happiness they reject for themselves. I know it has a grand sound to say that ye’ll accept no salvation which leaves even one creature in the dark outside. But watch that sophistry or ye’ll make a Dog in a Manger the tyrant of the universe.”

“But dare one say—it is horrible to say—that Pity must ever die?”

“Ye must distinguish. The action of Pity will live forever: but the passion of Pity will not. The passion of pity, the pity we merely suffer, the ache that draws men to concede what should not be conceded and to flatter when they should speak truth, the pity that has cheated many a woman out of her virginity and many a statesman out of his honesty—that will die. It was used as a weapon by bad men against good ones: their weapon will be broken.”

“And what is the other kind—the action?”

“It’s a weapon on the other side. It leaps quicker than light from the highest place to the lowest to bring healing and joy, whatever the cost to itself. It changes darkness into light and evil into good. But it will no, at the cunning tears of Hell, impose on good the tyranny of evil. Every disease that submits to a cure shall be cured: but we will not call blue yellow to please those who insist on still having jaundice, nor make a midden of the world’s garden for the sake of some who cannot abide the smell of roses.”

“You say it will go down to the lowest, Sir. But she didn’t go down with him to Hell. She didn’t even see him off by the bus.”

Where would ye have had her go?”

“Why, where we all came from by that bus. The big gulf, beyond the edge of the cliff. Over there. You can’t see it from here, but you must know the place I mean.”

My Teacher gave a curious smile. “Look,” he said, and with the word he went down on his hands and knees. I did the same (how it hurt my knees!) and presently saw that he had plucked a blade of grass. Using its thin end as a pointer, he made me see, after I had looked very closely, a crack in the soil so small that I could not have identified it without this aid.

“I cannot be certain,” he said, “that this is the crack ye came up through. But through a crack no bigger than that ye certainly came.”

“But—but,” I gasped with a feeling of bewilderment not unlike terror. “I saw an infinite abyss. And cliffs towering up and up. And then this country on top of the cliffs.”

“Ay. But the voyage was not mere locomotion. That bus, and all you inside it, were increasing in size.”

“Do you mean then that Hell—al that infinite empty town—is down in some little crack like this?”

“Yes. All Hell is smaller than one pebble of your earthly world: but it is smaller than one atom of this world, the Real World. Look at you butterfly. If it swallowed all Hell, Hell would not be big enough to do it any harm or to have any taste.”

“It seems big enough when you’re in it, Sir.”

“And yet all loneliness, angers, hatreds, envies and itchings that it contains, if rolled into one single experience and put onto the scale against the least moment of joy that is felt by the least in Heaven, would have no weight that could be registered at all. Bad cannot succeed even in being bad as truly as good is good. If all Hell’s miseries together entered the consciousness of yon wee yellow bird on the bough there, they would be swallowed up without trace, as if one drop of ink had been dropped into that Great ocean to which your terrestrial Pacific itself is only a molecule.”

“I see,” said I at last. “She couldn’t fit into Hell.”

“He nodded. “There’s not room for her,” he said. Hell could not open its mouth wide enough.”

“And she couldn’t make herself smaller?—like Alice, you know?”

“Nothing is small enough. For a damned soul is nearly nothing: it is shrunk, shut up in itself. Good beats upon the damned incessantly as sound waves beat upon the ears of the deaf, but they cannot receive it. Their fists are clenched, their teeth are clenched, their eyes fast shut. First they will not, in the end they cannot, open their hands for gifts, or their mouths for food, or their eyes to see.”

“Then no one can ever reach them?”

“Only the Greatest of all can make Himself small enough to enter Hell. For the higher a thing is, the lower it can descend—a man can sympathize with a horse but a horse cannot sympathize with a rat. Only One has descended into Hell.”

“And will He ever do so again?”

“It was not once long ago that He did it. Time does not work that way when once ye have left the Earth. All moments that have been or shall be were, or are, present in the moment of His descending. There is no spirit in prison to Whom He did not preach.”

“And some hear Him?”

“Aye.”

“In your own books, Sir,” said I, “you were a Universalist. You talked as if all men would be saved. And St. Paul too.”

“Ye can know nothing of the end of all things, or nothing expressible in those terms. It may be, as the Lord said to the Lady Julian, that all will be well, and all will be well, and all manner of things will be well. But it’s ill talking of such questions.”

“Because they are too terrible, Sir?”

“No. Because all answers deceive. If ye put the question from within Time and are asking about possibilities, the answer is certain. The choice of ways is before you. Neither is closed. Any man may choose eternal death. Those who choose it will have it. But if ye are trying to leap on into eternity, if ye are trying to see the final state of things as it will be (for so ye must speak) when there are no more possibilities left but only the Real, then ye ask what cannot be answered to mortal ears. Time is the very lens through which ye see—small and clear, as men see through the wrong end of a telescope—something that would otherwise be too big for you to see at all. That thing is Freedom: the gift whereby ye most resemble your Maker and are yourselves parts of eternal reality. But ye can see it only through the lens of Time, in a little clear picture, through the inverted telescope. It is a picture of moments following one another and yourself in each moment making some choice that might have been otherwise. Neither the temporal succession nor the phantom of what ye might have chosen and didn’t is itself Freedom. They are a lens. The picture is a symbol: but it’s truer than any philosophical theorem (or, perhaps, than any mystic’s vision) that claims to go behind it. For every attempt to see the shape of eternity except through the lens of time destroys your knowledge of Freedom. Witness the doctrine of predestination which shows (truly enough) that eternal reality is not waiting for a future in which to be real; but at the price of removing Freedom which is the deeper truth of the two. And wouldn’t Universalism do the same? Ye cannot know eternal reality by a definition. Time itself, and all acts and events that fill time, are the definition, and it must be lived. The Lord said we were gods. How long could ye bear to look (without Time’s lens) on the greatness of your own soul and the eternal reality of her choice?”







And suddenly all was changed. I saw a great assembly of gigantic forms all motionless, all in deepest silence, standing forever about a little silver table and looking upon it. And on the table there were little figures like chessmen who went two and fro doing this and that. And I knew that each chessman was the idolum or puppet representative of some one of the great presences that stood by. And the acts and motions of each chessman were a moving portrait, a mimicry or pantomime, which delineated the inmost nature of his giant master. And these chessmen are men and women as they appear to themselves and to one another in this world. And the silver table is Time. And those who stand and watch are the immortal souls of those same men and women. Then vertigo and terror seized me and, clutching at my Teacher, I said, “Is that the truth? Then is all I have been seeing in this country false? The conversations between the Spirits and the Ghosts—were they only the mimicry of choices that had really been made long ago?”

“Or might ye not as well say, anticipations of a choice to be made at the end of all things? But ye’d do better to say neither. Ye saw the choices a bit more clearly than you could see them on earth: the lens was clearer. But it was still seen through the lens. Do not ask of a vision in a dream more than a vision in a dream can give.”

“A dream? Then—then—am I not really here, Sir?”

“No, Son,” he said kindly, taking my hand in his. “It is not so good as that. The bitter drink of death is still before you. Ye are only dreaming. And if ye come to tell of what ye have seen, make it plain that it was but a dream. See ye make it very plain. Give no poor fool the pretext to think ye are claiming knowledge of what no mortal knows. I’ll have no Swedenborgs and no Vale Owens among my children.”

“God forbid, Sir,” said I, trying to look very wise.

“He has forbidden it. That’s what I’m telling ye.” As he said this he looked more scotch than ever. I was gazing steadfastly on his face. The vision of the chessmen had faded, and once more the quiet woods in the cool light before sunrise were about us. Then, still looking at his face, I saw there something that sent a quiver through my whole body. I stood at that moment with my back to the East and the mountains, and he, facing me, looked toward them. His face flushed with a new light. A fern, thirty yards behind him, turned golden. The eastern side of every tree-trunk grew bright. Shadows deepened. All the time there had been bird noises, trillings, chatterings, and the like; but now suddenly the full chorus was poured from every branch; cocks were crowing, there was music of hounds, and horns; above all this ten thousand tongues of men and woodland angels and the wood itself sang. “It comes! It comes!” they sang. “Sleepers awake! It comes, it comes, it comes.” One dreadful glance over my shoulder I essayed—not long enough to see (or did I see?) the rim of the sunrise that shoots time dead with golden arrows and puts to flight all phantasmal shapes. Screaming, I burrowed my face in the folds of my Teacher’s robe. “The morning! The morning!” I cried, “I am caught by the morning and I am a ghost.” But it was too late. The light, like solid blocks, intolerable of edge and weight, came thundering upon my head. Next moment the folds of my Teacher’s garment were only the folds of the old ink-stained cloth on my study table which I had pulled down with me as I fell from my chair. The blocks of light were only the books which I had pulled off with it, falling about my head. I awoke in a cold room, hunched on the floor beside a black and empty grate, the clock striking three, and the siren howling overhead.









I've had a lot of fun with the ideas in this passage this past month, especially the discussion on the lens of time, but the reason I took the time to share this all with you is the mental picture I've gotten over the size of a soul that clings to Hell in the midst of Heaven. C.S. Lewis paints a wonderful picture of the comparative size and volume of Heaven vs. Hell, and the souls contained therein. Hell, which in the beginning of the book appears infinite to its inhabitants, is actually too small and ghostly to even be measurable in Heaven. The souls it contains have all shrunken around whatever they have chosen instead of Christ and his abundant life. During their lifetime, they consistently chose death in some form or another (all sin is death) rather than the life God offers them, remaining in shadows as ghostly figures they were familiar with rather than stepping into the world they were designed for, a world too full of light for shadows and too real for ghosts. . They clung to death, like the Dwarf to his chain, refusing to let go and come alive, though the choice was his.

Taking the same imagery and placing it within the bounds of time, the "picture of moments following one another and yourself in each moment making some choice that might have been otherwise," I got an image of my soul shrinking slightly around something every time I chose that something to whatever I knew God had chosen for me. Every time I cling to sin in the presence of grace my soul wraps its folds closer around that sin, leaving less room for God. But every time I face that choice and choose to let go rather than cling, and instead embrace what God has for me, my soul grows stronger, solider, and larger as it expands to make room for the piece of Heaven it has chosen. And as I do so, the sin I let go of seems smaller than it did before, especially when I let go of it consistently and choose Christ instead. For a tangible example, let's use anger. I struggled with anger very much when I was younger, especially during late middle school and early junior high, much of it learned from, stemming from, and directed toward (although anger can never truly be directed solely somewhere--as it lies undealt with under the surface it erupts often when you least want it to) my dad's struggles with alcoholism. At that time in my life, anger seemed like a really big part of me. I lived in the midst of it, and it seemed really big and unconquerable. But now that I've been learning to forgive my dad and see him as he really is in Christ, the love of Christ has been entering my soul and enlarging it, crowding out the anger in there for lack of room.

You see, another thing I've learned is that you can't pull something out of your soul. I can't pull anger, bitterness, pain, self-righteousness, lust, selfishness, fear, cruelty, or anything else that has taken root in my soul, out. I may be able to, by focusing my efforts on it, shrink my anger down by keeping a close watch on it, but I can never completely control it, and the process of trying to control and remove it will leave a vacuum that something else will undoubtably fill. So trying to pull something out never works, but it can be pushed out. The more I fill my life with Christ the less space there is for anything not of Him, and He came to give me overflowing life, so as I keep filling my soul with Him the rest of the junk in me will eventually be kicked out for lack of room as my life begins to overflow with Christ.

Do you see the difference between pushing and pulling? It's all in the focus. If I am focused on the thing itself, setting rules for myself about my conduct concerning it, the very act of focusing on it makes it impossible to remove, but if I am focused on Christ, the thing will fade away as it cannot compete with the reality of His abundant life. Elisabeth Elliot wrote with a similar thought process a quote from her book Passion and Purity that has stuck with me more than anything else she has written. About her desires for marriage to Jim and the seemingly endless waiting stage they were in, she wrote, "My heart was saying, 'Lord, take away this longing, or give me that which I long for.' The Lord was answering, 'I must teach you to long for something better'" The solution isn't in more and better rules to guard and guide my conduct, but in longing for, searching after, and clinging to Christ Himself.



Yesterday and today I have been letting go of some things I've been clinging to for too long, though, truthfully, my grip has been loosening for some time, and these past two days were just the completion in the physical realm of what had already been happening inside. It's been really good and I know I'm where I need to be right now, but I also am aware that if I leave any open space in my soul, they can quite easily enter right back in. Just like the man Jesus described in Matthew 12: 43-45, if the space isn't occupied by Christ, something else will surely occupy it.





Here is a song I came across today that I can really identify with. How's that for perfect timing?



Stay Close to me Tonight

David Kauffman

That long lost look in your eyes says you're in trouble

The distant smile that you smile is just a disguise

You've been hiding inside, a lonely pretender

The only companion left to you is pride



Somewhere in yesterday you must have been wounded

The cut is deep and the scar never quite closed

So who can blame you for thinking

You'll only be mended

By covering over your heart and suffering alone



Stay close to me tonight you should not be alone

I will wrap the wounds that heal your hurting soul

It's gonna take some time for healing to take hold

Stay close to me tonight, stay close to me tonight



You've tried so many ways to say what you're feeling

How the damage was done and how it remains

But words can never explain as well as the silence

Come be silent with me and I'll bear the pain



Stay close to me tonight you should not be alone

I will wrap the wounds that heal your hurting soul

It's gonna take some time for healing to take hold

Stay close to me tonight, stay close to me tonight



Whatever you cling to that's less than me

Cannot heal your aching need

Trust your heart, do not hide

Come be by my side



Stay close to me tonight you should not be alone

I will wrap the wounds that heal your hurting soul

It's gonna take some time for healing to take hold

Stay close to me tonight, stay close to me tonight

Stay close to me tonight, stay close to me tonight







Lord, may my desires be for you and you alone. Fill me with you.

Stepping out of death and into life once again,

identifying with Christ in His death and resurrection,

tasting Heaven once again,

Joe