The one class that I have yet to comment on is probably my favorite class I am currently taking. This is not to say that I do not thoroughly love and enjoy my other three classes, I do, but this class tops them all. The reading for it is magnificent, the lectures are fascinating, and if there were to be a field-trip, I would be about as close to heaven as I am going to get here on earth.
Have I intrigued you enough yet? Peaked your interest? Well, for the A students who read the title of this blog, they can deduce that his nickname is Jack. This is a self-proclaimed nickname, by the way, because his proper name does not have any way of breaking down to Jack. Give up? This course is on C.S. Lewis. Clive Staples - author, poet, philosopher, theologian, teacher, student, and just about one of the most intelligent men that have entered into this wonderful thing called Church History.
For my own part, C.S. Lewis became a part of my life when I was very young, and my father would read The Chronicles of Narnia to me. As I learned how to read, I slowly started reading them back to him, a chapter a night. Thus began my love for reading, for story and for the mystical land of Narnia itself. As I grew older, Lewis remained a strong part of my life. I read the letters to Screwtape, I wrestled through what it meant to merely be a Christian, and I attempted, at a pre-mature age, to understand the journey of the Pilgrim's Regress (which I re-read this past weekend and I still need an Encyclopedia for many of the movements and philosophies that are mentioned). When I started my undergraduate education, I was introduced to what are now my three favorite Lewis works - Till We Have Faces, A Grief Observed and The Great Divorce. Lewis became not just an author of wonderful fantasies and philosophy, but he became my teacher and instructor in greater things:
- what does it truly mean to love unconditionally,
- how are we able to see anything clearly in this world,
- have I truly abandoned everything of this world and started the walk on blades of grass that will not be plucked,
- how does one observe grief and believe in a sovereign, loving God
Lewis has taught me more than I think he ever believed or intended possible from these small books. He opened up a completely new way of thinking and brought questions to my mind that I never had before. In short - C.S. Lewis has been God's instrument in teaching me throughout my walk of faith.
Recently, we were asked to read Surprised By Joy, this is Lewis' autobiography of his journey to Christian faith. He is very open in it, for the secretive man that he was. He shares briefly of pain, of loss, of deep-seated hurt, of struggles, but than he shares openly and honestly about Joy, about longing for something that cannot be named - sensucht, about expression, about far-off lands of imagination and about homes that require a cup of tea and a good book in every room. Everything about Lewis draws me in - his wonderful mind that is able to be both analytical and creative is something one day I hope to be able to say of my own.
It has been his notion of longing or sensucht that I have been focusing on lately. He was trying so hard to find Joy, but when he finally reached the longing, he discovered that Joy was not even it - Joy was merely a signpost along the way. Joy, as some of you know, was given to me as my middle name. I have always truly loved my name, Stephanie Joy. Stephanie means "crowned one" - so I have considered myself to be the Crowned One with Joy. Not that many would consider me to be particularly "joyous" in personality (I hear that snickering), quite the opposite actually. I am a rather sarcastic spirit who hears "Smile" a lot because apparently there is a permanent frown on my face.
However, I do not think that being happy is the correct meaning of Joy. Joy is not necessarily loud and flamboyant, it is also not always marked with a smile. I truly believe that Joy is a part of faith. This is something that I have thought through now for almost 10 years. Where there is contemplative peace - Joy is. Where there is inexpressible worship - Joy is. Where grace and mercy abound - Joy is. Joy is far deeper than mere happiness. Faith in God the Father, our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and the Spirit happens and Joy exists for us, not as a longing, but as reality. Lewis longed for something, thinking that it was called Joy, but when he discovered his longing in the Incarnation, he realized that Joy was just something that came with the Faith.
I want to leave you with the words of Lewis in Surprised By Joy on this subject, because let's face it - as much as I love to write, and think that I do a pretty descent job at it, Lewis waxes more eloquently than I am capable of.
"In so far as we really are at all (which isn't saying much) we have, so to speak, a root in the Absolute, which is the utter reality. And that is why we experience Joy: we yearn, rightly for that unity which we can never reach except by ceasing to be the separate phenomenal beings called 'we.' Joy was not a deception. Its visitations were rather the moments of clearest consciousness we had, when we became aware of our fragmentary and phantasmal nature and ached for that impossible reunion which would annihilate us or that self-contradictory waking which would reveal, not that we had had, but that we were, a dream."
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