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

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 Inspiration Begins

This is a place for inspiration–bold, naked, and unashamed. Thanks for joining me! In some lives at some times God has broken through. Your heart is pierced. Your mind is lifted to unforeseen heights. For those weighed down with baggage about the word “God,” then we can say someone or some things from a higher dimension have entered our third. Miraculous intervention, divine love, profundity made visible: All these have somehow been experienced on our planet by people of all races.

I hope to upload a new item daily, but my schedule and the length of some passages may intervene. You are welcome to submit your own, from your own experience or others’.

All these accounts are true, or at least alleged to be true by their authors. I do not write them. I copy and paste them. This is a service.

Most of these accounts are joyful. But some are terrifying. For God is holy, absolute and infinite goodness, and we are not. Since “inspire” originally meant “infused with Spirit,” and if the Spirit can motivate us to abandon the worst part of ourselves, then these readings are inspiring too. One thing you will find here is what the word “awesome” originally meant.

The site will eventually include wisdom about the nature of these experiences; I have a master’s degree in spiritual theology from a major, accredited Canadian institution of higher learning. Don’t make me string cliches like that together again or I will find you. But seriously, guidance can be useful. The wisest guidance of all is that we do not seek these experiences for themselves. That makes for a destiny of disappointment. We seek the One who makes them, who gives us a glimpse of reality more real than the everydayness we must live in here.

The experiences are like telescopes in this way. We use them to see beyond. We are not going to learn about the stars by admiring, collecting, and stroking the brass of the telescopes. And to keep perspective on the moral importance of mystical experience we might apply the mysticism of the poet William Blake:

God appears, and God is light
To those poor souls who dwell in night
But does a human form display
To those who dwell in realms of day.

So: Many things on our journey are more important than ecstasy and mystical experience: Seeing the image of God in your neighbor, loving her or him as yourself. Just keeping faith when you have to slog through another day of what seems like winter with no Christmas or a desert sans oases. But sometimes we need a cup of hot chocolate or a cool cup of water to keep on going. Sometimes we need what medieval writers called consolations. If we cannot have it ourselves at least we can be glad that others have, and we can be reminded that we live in a world of possibilities not impossibilities. Ask your nearest quantum mechanic.

That’s enough spiritual theology. For now, enjoy.

Mystical experiences are rare things, but we will begin with one of the most widely read, from a man who–many years later– had as large a spiritual impact on our modern age as any writer.

Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter. — Izaak Walton

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