A Prison, a Paradise: part 2

Continuing yesterday’s installment from A Prison, A Paradise. After her near-suicide, Gay Taylor writes:

…when I came back from Tripoly, the peace of God seemed to enter my heart. I feel that it all had to happen, and happen in just that way. Nothing else would have removed the suicide-obsession I’ve cherished secretly, ever since I was a child. Those hours by the northern river had to be, when I was beyond all human help, and knew at last that God was there.

yolanda-leyva-635145-unsplash

October 4^th. Mist and cold, after yesterday’s Indian summer. It was one of the perfect days—the high tide of this present time. I went out for a walk, then picked blackberries on Periton Hill, in that far clump at the edge of the downs. For a long time I sat on the crumbling turf, sheltered from the wind, with the blue distances below, and warm sun lying over this lovely autumn land. And suddenly I was swept out of myself—knowing, knowing, knowing. Feeling the love of God burning through creation, and an ecstasy of bliss pouring through my spirit and down into every nerve. I’m ashamed to put it down in these halting words. For it was ecstasy—that indissoluble mingling of fire and light that the mystics know. There was a scalding sun in my breast—the “kingdom of God within”—that rushed out to that All-Beauty.

patrick-fore-379182-unsplash

Blackberries photo by Yolanda Leyva on Unsplash

Periton Hill photo by Patrick Fore on Unsplash

“It is all that is made.”

It may be the most well-known mystical vision in the western world: the entire universe, round as a ball and the size of a hazelnut, being held in the palm of the hand. Julian of Norwich was born in 1342 and lived as an anchoress–sort of like an extreme nun. On what seemed to be her deathbed she had a series of 16 visions. She was miraculously healed and spent the years afterward reflecting upon the meaning of the visions. She eventually composed them into a book, Revelations of Divine Love, written in the simple English of the day, not Latin.

That was Middle English, the language of Chaucer. I have used the public domain translation by Grace Warrack and updated the language for modern ears, with the help of Clifton Wolters’ 1966 translation.

When I was thirty-one, God sent me a bodily sickness, in which I lay three days and three nights. On the fourth night the priest gave me the Last Rites, because those with me were certain that I would not to live till day. But after this I lingered for two more days and nights, and on the third night I was sure I was dying, and those with me were certain too…

My parish priest was sent for to be at my death. By the time he arrived, my eyes were fixed and could not move. I could not speak. He held the Cross before my face and said “I have brought thee the Image of thy Maker and Saviour: look upon it and be strengthened.”….

After this my sight began to fail, and room became dark about me, as if it were night, except in the Image of the Cross which somehow was giving off light; and I could not understand how that was happening. Except for the Cross everything else in the room was horror, as if it were filled with demons. After this the upper part of my body began to die, and I could hardly feel anything, and my breath became shorter and shorter. I was certain I was dying. And in this moment suddenly all my pain was taken from me, and I felt as fit and strong as ever…..

[The visions begin. She has a vision of Jesus dying on the cross, and she receives insight about the Trinity and then Mary, the mother of Jesus. Then this.]

….At this moment our Lord showed me a spiritual sight of how intimately he loves us. I saw that He is everything that we know to be good and helpful. In his love he clothes us, hugs us, holds us tight, because of his tender love, never to leave us. As I saw it he is everything that is good.

And He showed me more, a little thing, the size of a hazel-nut, on the palm of my hand; it was as round as a ball. I looked thoughtfully and wondered, “What could this be?” And the answer came: “It is all that is made.” I marveled that it continued to exist and did not disintegrate, because it was so small. And I was answered in my understanding: “It exists, both now and forever, because God loves it.” That is, everything owes its very existence to the love of God.

Through Mine Own Eyes, part 3

Concluding installment from Katharine Trevelyan’s remarkable experience in the garden at Coombe. Previous installments tell more about Ms. Trevelyan.

annie-spratt-372221-unsplash

Every prayer was fulfilled, every possible desire for the whole world consummated; for His Kingdom had come and I had beheld it with my very eyes. Never again the need to meditate for He was here, to be stood in, sat in, as a child might play on the edges of a great sunny river. And, indeed, I found myself only a child, playing in Him, laughing with Him at the way He was visiting His world. When I stood within Him, He gave and was everything. The years to come, which He showed me as easily as a father shows his child a curious shell beside the great river, held in them no surprise; only wonder and joy.

Through Mine Own Eyes, Part 2

Continuing Katharine Trevelyan’s experience in the garden at Coombe from her “autobiography of a natural mystic.” The book was originally published as A Fool in Love in 1962. Trevelyan came from a prominent British family. Her uncle was the noted historian George Macaulay Trevelyan. She dabbled in anthroposophy (a belief system C. S. Lewis was well acquainted with because of his life-long friendship and debate with Owen Barfield). Before the 1958 experiences recounted in these installments, Trevelyan had joined the Church of Christ but had become disenchanted with its divisions. This is the second of three installments.

Every flower spoke to me, every spider wove a miracle of intricacy for my eyes, every bird understood that here was heaven come to earth. Turner must have been seeing the skies as I saw them then—living cloud shapes crossing and recrossing each other as though conversing inform or singing in color.

But there was something more wonderful than the Light within the light – more wonderful than the standstill of time. It was that God walked with me in the garden as He did before the Fall. Whether I sat, whether I walked, He was there – radiant, burningly pure, holy beyond holy.

When I breathed, I breathed Him; when I asked a question, He both asked and answered it.

My heart was unshuttered to Him, and He came and went at will; my head had no limit or boundary of skull, but the Spirit of God played on me as though my mind were a harp which reached the zenith.

Photo by Sora Sagano on Unsplash

Through Mine Own Eyes

From Katharine Trevelyan’s above-named autobiography. This is an example of a mystical experience that transforms nature itself. “Seeing face to face at last” is likely a reference to the Bible’s I Corinthians 13, Paul’s famous chapter on love: “For now we see only a reflection as if in a cloudy mirror; then, we shall see face to face.” More from this experience of Trevelyan will be published next time.

Dame_Nellie_Final-900x1200

When I knew myself as nothing but a prize fool in love, I took my pain and foolishness in both hands and quite simply offered them to God, whom I recognized through this last anguish to be the backcloth of my life and my eternal love.

What followed was beyond me to understand.

Whether it was predestined or whether the Heavens had been waiting with an open question to hear an uncomplaining acceptance of this last sorrow, I cannot say.

It felt as though an infinitely complex machine had in all its parts, between one moment and the next, clicked silently into gear and started to work with inexorable power.

I saw face to face at last.

Light streamed down from the sky such as I have never beheld. The sun shone with a new light, as though translucent gold were at its heart. I saw not only the physical sun, but the spiritual sun also, which poured down on me as I walked in the garden at Coombe.

The wonder was beyond anything I have ever read or imagined or heard men speak about. I was Adam walking alone in the first Paradise. That it was a garden near the outskirts of London in the twentieth century made no difference, for time was not, or had come round again in a full circle. Though I was Adam, I had no need for Eve, for both combined within me. Marriage and maternity fulfilled and surpassed, I had run beyond womanhood and become a human being.

mehdi-thomas-boutdarine-425503-unsplash

Photo by Mehdi-Thomas BOUTDARINE on Unsplash

The Third Glimpse

Lewis completes this part of his memoir. Note again the role of literature in this mystical experience–but also that its role is tangential, almost accidental. We can speculate that the piercing juxtaposition of “the beautiful” with “is dead” foreshadowed Lewis’s acceptance of Absolute Goodness himself dying on a cross—just as the snippet from Tegner’s Drapa represents all the pagan myths showing the longing for the death of someone so good to be meaningful, redemptive. Be that as it may, one reason Lewis belongs here at the beginning of this blog is that his ability to both describe the indescribable and reflect upon its nature may be unsurpassed. Note that this Joy was a beacon throughout his life: “in a sense the central story of my life is about nothing else.” (Same for me.)

The third glimpse came through poetry. I had become fond of Longfellow’s Saga of King Olaf: fond of it in a casual, shallow way for its story and its vigorous rhythms. But then, and quite different from such pleasures, and like a voice from far more distant regions, there came a moment when I idly turned the pages of the book and found the unrhymed translation of Tegner’s Drapa and read

I heard a voice that cried,
Balder the beautiful
Is dead, is dead—-

I knew nothing about Balder; but instantly I was uplifted into huge regions of northern sky, I desired with almost sickening intensity something never to be described (except that it is cold, spacious, severe, pale, and remote) and then, as in the other examples, found myself at the very same moment already falling out of that desire and wishing I were back in it.

Mountain sky fabrizio-conti-559920-unsplash

The reader who finds these three episodes of no interest need read this book no further, for in a sense the central story of my life is about nothing else. For those who are still disposed to proceed I will only underline the quality common to the three experiences; it is that of an unsatisfied desire which is itself more desirable than any other satisfaction. I call it Joy, which is here a technical term and must be sharply distinguished both from Happiness and from Pleasure. Joy (in my sense) has indeed one characteristic, and one only, in common with them; the fact that anyone who has experienced it will want it again. Apart from that, and considered only in its quality, it might almost equally well be called a particular kind of unhappiness or grief. But then it is a kind we want. I doubt whether anyone who has tasted it would ever, if both were in his power, exchange it for all the pleasures in the world. But then Joy is never in our power and pleasure often is.
–-C. S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy. New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1955. @ C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd.

For more on C. S. Lewis see Into the Wardrobe as well as “The official” website.

See also Fellowship of the Performing Arts for their wonderful dramatizations of Lewis’s life and works.

The Second Glimpse

Continuing with Lewis’s memoir. Note how this excerpt (and the next) show literature, books, as the vehicle for the mystical experience. These experiences had this one effect among others: They contributed to Lewis’s tremendous love of and life-long dedication to poetry and stories.

Somewhat the same thing happened to me as a child. Books such as A Wrinkle in Time, The Outsiders (S . E. Hinton), The Lord of the Rings, and Lewis’s own Voyage of the Dawn Treader and The Last Battle provided this kind of unspeakable joy and longing and a glimpse of something quite beyond the story and the walls of the world around me. Has it happened to you?

The second glimpse came through Squirrel Nutkin; through it only, though I loved all the Beatrix Potter books. But the rest of them were merely entertaining; it administered the shock, it was a trouble. It troubled me with what I can only describe as the Idea of Autumn. It sounds fantastic to say that one can be enamored of a season, but that is something like what happened; and, as before, the experience was one of intense desire. And one went back to the book, not to gratify the desire (that was impossible–how can one possess Autumn?) but to reawake it. And in this experience also there was the same surprise and the same sense of incalculable importance. It was something quite different from ordinary life and even from ordinary pleasure; something, as they would now say, “in another dimension.” –C. S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy. New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1955. @ C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd.

Photo by Sandis Helvigs on Unsplash

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this: