Sunday Night Journal — March 28, 2004

I have been listening to a recording of C. S. Lewis’s Perelandra while driving home from work most weekday evenings. This is intended to be a piece of Lenten seriousness. If listening to this reading is not penitential it is certainly a source of spiritual renewal, and it does require that I give up my usual habit of listening to music. His work has been an enormous influence on me and it remains fresh. When I was returning to faith in my late twenties after a long period of wandering, Lewis was of great help in inducing me to go ahead and step over the line between vague religiosity and real belief. In particular The Screwtape Letters, Miracles, and the space trilogy (Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra, and That Hideous Strength) were part of and remain associated with a sort of mental springtime of awakening and expectation.

There is, accordingly, a bit of nostalgia in my continuing enjoyment of these books. My wife and I were entering the Episcopal Church, and the very English Christianity of Lewis and Tolkien seemed (and still seems) our spiritual home. I never take up any of the space trilogy without remembering several long drives in which I read them aloud, sometimes with a flashlight, while she drove (roles dictated by her inability to read in a car without getting sick). It was not many years before we left the Episcopal Church, convinced simultaneously of the authority of the Catholic Church, and of the incipient apostasy of the Episcopal. But as it does for many, Lewis’s work transcends that division.

One of Lewis’s great strengths, one of the first I noticed in his work, and one which occupies a central place in Perelandra, is his ability to communicate the psychology of temptation. If I remember correctly I was not yet entirely convinced of Christian claims when I read The Screwtape Letters, but I remember thinking that whether or not he was right in his doctrine he certainly knew human nature. The great event in Perelandra is the tempting of the queen, but it is the tempting of Ransom, whose task is literally to fight the devil, which is most vividly drawn. The queen, after all, is sinless and her consciousness difficult for us to imagine, while Ransom is one of us.

I am enjoying this book, but its precise explication of Ransom’s intense desire to seem to do God’s will as he struggles with equal intensity to justify evading it is painful, because I know myself to be guilty of the same dishonesty and stand condemned before this judgment. So there is some penance here after all.

Sunday Night Journal — March 28, 2004

I have been listening to a recording of C. S. Lewis’s Perelandra while driving home from work most weekday evenings. This is intended to be a piece of Lenten seriousness. If listening to this reading is not penitential it is certainly a source of spiritual renewal, and it does require that I give up my usual habit of listening to music. His work has been an enormous influence on me and it remains fresh. When I was returning to faith in my late twenties after a long period of wandering, Lewis was of great help in inducing me to go ahead and step over the line between vague religiosity and real belief. In particular The Screwtape Letters, Miracles, and the space trilogy (Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra, and That Hideous Strength) were part of and remain associated with a sort of mental springtime of awakening and expectation.

There is, accordingly, a bit of nostalgia in my continuing enjoyment of these books. My wife and I were entering the Episcopal Church, and the very English Christianity of Lewis and Tolkien seemed (and still seems) our spiritual home. I never take up any of the space trilogy without remembering several long drives in which I read them aloud, sometimes with a flashlight, while she drove (roles dictated by her inability to read in a car without getting sick). It was not many years before we left the Episcopal Church, convinced simultaneously of the authority of the Catholic Church, and of the incipient apostasy of the Episcopal. But as it does for many, Lewiss work transcends that division.

One of Lewis’s great strengths, one of the first I noticed in his work, and one which occupies a central place in Perelandra, is his ability to communicate the psychology of temptation. If I remember correctly I was not yet entirely convinced of Christian claims when I read The Screwtape Letters, but I remember thinking that whether or not he was right in his doctrine he certainly knew human nature. The great event in Perelandra is the tempting of the queen, but it is the tempting of Ransom, whose task is literally to fight the devil, which is most vividly drawn. The queen, after all, is sinless and her consciousness difficult for us to imagine, while Ransom is one of us.

I am enjoying this book, but its precise explication of Ransoms intense desire to seem to do God’s will as he struggles with equal intensity to justify evading it is painful, because I know myself to be guilty of the same dishonesty and stand condemned before this judgment. So there is some penance here after all.

Sunday Night Journal — March 21, 2004

I am a lazy man who leads a busy but sedentary life. I have a desk job and usually work through lunch. I spend an hour and a half every day in the car, going to work and coming home. What little leisure I have I prefer to spend in other sedentary activities, such as reading and writing, or listening to or making music, or—let me force myself to be honest—all too often, watching television. The only serious exercise I get is a half-mile swim which is supposed to happen at least once a week, on Saturday or Sunday, but which frequently gets crowded out by other activities or postponed because of simple laziness.

In winter—even our very mild winter—the laziness puts up particularly strong resistance. Swimming is just not very appealing in cold or even cool weather. Since last November I don’t suppose my visits to the pool have come to more than about one every two weeks, all told; enough to keep from losing ground, but not enough to gain in strength or endurance. And of course as I think most lazy people know, the less one does, the less one wants to do. So it was with no pleasure at all that I decided on Friday that I really must do something about the yard this weekend, which probably should have been mowed at least once more last fall and was now hosting an unkempt and unwelcome growth of weeds, especially in the spots where the expensive sod we laid two years ago has failed to prosper and is leaving bare patches.

Moreover, my wife had arranged an opportunity for me to assist her in bringing into some kind of order a large bed of weeds. We had turned up and mulched this bed in the summer, pending a decision as to how to plant it, but had neglected the battle against the weeds that found their way through the mulch, and they had been hardy enough to multiply and thrive through the winter. We would need to dig up the whole bed, dump a pickup truck load of compost on it, and move some large elephant ear plants around in it.

In short, I began mowing the lawn Saturday morning in a mildly sour mood, thinking of things I would rather be doing. So it was surprising to me at the end of the day that I was cheerful and even energetic, or at least what passes for energetic with me. I had not done all that much physical work, but it was more than I ordinarily do and not enough to exhaust me. My limbs felt stronger and more lively, a pleasant contrast to the dull slackness which sets in over days and weeks of sitting. I could have done more.

It was a beautiful day, not very humid for our coastal area and with a temperature somewhere in the 70s. And this (or somewhere within twenty-four hours or so of it) was the first day of spring. To dig in the earth, to overturn weeds and erect more desirable plants, seemed exactly what one ought to be doing on such a day.

Today is the fourth Sunday of Lent, the mid-point of the season. I can’t say I have ever undertaken any great sacrifice during Lent, and less this year than in some past, especially when I was young in the Church. However I have never given in to the temptation to make no sacrifice at all. I have been reasonably successful so far with the small (very small) ones I have taken on this year. And as with physical exercise any effort at all makes a difference. One rises at least a little out of slack torpor and finds that it is, after all, possible to say no to a beloved habit. One feels an unaccustomed hint of vigor in the will, and realizes that one could do more. But usually I fail to cultivate this strength with continued exercise, so that I soon lose what little ground I’ve gained. This year I will try to keep up the exercise after the end of Lent. I feel in my soul a little of the strength that yesterday I felt in my body, and I ought to try to keep it for a while.

Sunday Night Journal — March 14, 2004

Although I have pretty strong political convictions and opinions, I have not wanted to spend much time expressing them here. (If you want to classify my politics, I’m a conservative of more traditionalist than libertarian bent, and Russell Kirk’sTen Conservative Principles are more or less my own.) This is not because of any reluctance on my part to say what I think, but because the Internet is filled with intelligent commentary on all sides of every possible question and I don’t generally think I have much to contribute to these debates.

Consider, for instance, the question of homosexual marriage. It really should go without saying, although of course it does not, that a Christian is opposed to this strange attempt to deny and defy reality. I spent a little while earlier today trying to come up with an analogy for the sheer scope of the revolution embodied in the attempt to redefine the word “marriage” to include persons of the same sex, and I couldn’t come up with anything more striking than the thing itself. I consider this proposal to be preposterous on its face as an idea and probably catastrophic as a fact, if it were to be ordained, as seems entirely possible, by the courts. Yet I don’t want or intend to put a lot of effort into trying to articulate the case against it, because other people are doing that better than I could.

Before saying anything else on this subject I want to point out that I have a great deal of sympathy for those who feel sexual and romantic attraction only toward those of their own sex. I have no wish to make their difficult situation any more so. The Vatican was denounced by many homosexuals some years ago when it described homosexual desire as “intrinsically disordered.” But I thought, and think, this was actually a fairly kind way to put it. As I understand it the phrase would include any sexual desire not in keeping with God’s will, which would mean any desire for anyone other than one’s wedded wife or husband. Accordingly, I dare say there is no man (I don’t think I’ll attempt to speak for women) who has never felt sexual desire that was intrinsically disordered—that is, directed toward a woman to whom he is not married. (I include the period before marriage as well. I suppose there is a distinction to be made between lust and the romantic attraction which includes sexual desire, and between lust and a pure appreciation of female beauty that does not quite turn the corner of desire—otherwise how would anyone ever fall in love? But I’ll leave these fine points to theologians and confessors.) To be so constituted (and the nature vs. nurture controversy is irrelevant here) as to feel only illicit desire must be a heavy burden indeed. But to attempt to ameliorate it by redefining the concept of marriage is a mistake.

One very capable participant in this debate is Stanley Kurtz of National Review. A couple of weeks ago Mr. Kurtz provided, in a comment posted on “The Corner”, NR’s blog, a link to a story [sorry, this link is no longer valid -mh 6/22/2010] upon which I cannot resist commenting. It is by Lisa Duggan, a “professor of Queer Studies” at New York University, and appears in the March 15 issue of The Nation. Mr. Kurtz is of the opinion that to redefine marriage so as to include same-sex relationships will prove destructive to the institution, which as everyone knows is already pretty shaky. In answer to those who say it will have no such effect he adduces several spokesmen for homosexuality who share his opinion, except that they view the administering of the death blow to “’traditional’ marriage” and “its privileged status” as a good thing. Notice those quotes; they are Ms. Duggan’s, and seem to indicate a hostility to marriage so fierce as to be willing to doubt that marriage as the union of male and female is in fact traditional.

I could spend a long time arguing with much of what Ms. Duggan says, but it hardly seems worth the effort. I think both sides of this disagreement recognize that argument is almost beside the point, that the disagreement is too deep and too fundamental for that. But she makes a proposal that seems to warrant exhibition as an example of just how deep the disagreement is. She sees no reason why we should not scrap marriage as we know it for “a flexible menu of choices for forms of household and partnership recognition open to all citizens, depending on specific and varying needs.”

These words provoked an instant and deep revulsion in me, and I suggest that they ought to do the same to anybody with any affection for the poor benighted human race, and any knowledge of human nature. I am less shocked by the proposal for homosexual marriage itself than I am by the cold and bloodless view of love and community that are displayed here. Is this to be our future? Does Ms. Duggan really believe that the torrent of passion that flows through all we know of the history of the human race will end finally in the chilled, shallow, and stagnant puddles of “a flexible menu” for “partnership recognition?”

This is the voice of someone who could read Brave New World as a hopeful sketch for a happy future (except of course that the class system would not be acceptable). It would be a world with no more declarations of undying love, no more vows, no more “in sickness and in health,” no more till “death do us part,” but also a world with no truly deep connections between persons, just a series of convenient liasons. It is of course not a world that could ever exist—human nature would see to that. But it’s hard for me to see how anyone would even think it desirable. For the first time in my literary life I am sympathetic to Blake’s proverb of Hell: “Those who restrain desire do so because theirs is weak enough to be restrained.” A society which could operate happily on Ms. Duggan’s scheme would not be fit for real men and women to live in. Better the agony and ecstacy of all the doomed lovers of fact and fiction—Helen and Paris, Tristan and Isolde, Heloise and Abelarde, Romeo and Juliet, Dante and Beatrice, Scarlett and Rhett, all the glory and pain of families happy and unhappy—than “a flexible menu of choices for partnership recognition.”

Sunday Night Journal — March 7, 2004

I believe it has been more than once remarked, memorably by C. S. Lewis, that Christianity encompasses equally the mysterious and the reasonable aspects of religion—what Lewis called the thick and the thin and I call Blood and Light. On the one hand dangerous incomprehensible powers with definite but capricious will; on the other, the ideal, the perfect, the sweetly reasonable. On the one hand, awe and propitiation; on the other, contemplation and abstract thought.

It has been said, more or less scornfully I think, that Christianity is Platonism for the masses, a way of bringing the Ideal into the world. And so far as I understand these things it seems that many theologians of the early Church thought in those terms. And the greatest theologians of the Middle Ages certainly pursued the aspect of Light with great purity of purpose. But we cannot forget that at the core of the Christian story and of Christian theology is a bloody sacrifice, a place where the Light is temporarily eclipsed by the Blood through which it must pass in order to conquer the darkness.

Today’s Old Testament reading, from Genesis 15 reminds us that blood and darkness were a part of God’s dealings with man from of old:

And [Abram] said, Lord God, whereby shall I know that I shall inherit [this land]?

And he said unto him, Take me an heifer of three years old, and a she goat of three years old, and a ram of three years old, and a turtledove, and a young pigeon.

And he took unto him all these, and divided them in the midst, and laid each piece one against another: but the birds divided he not.

And when the fowls came down upon the carcases, Abram drove them away. And when the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell upon Abram; and, lo, an horror of great darkness fell upon him…

And it came to pass that, when the sun went down, and it was dark, behold a smoking furnace, and a burning lamp that passed between those pieces.

In the same day the Lord made a covenant with Abraham, saying, Unto thy seed have I given this land….

This is a very strange narrative. Contemplated for a few minutes, and entered into imaginatively, it is a little frightening. Abram asks a question: how am I to know…? And the answer is a series of incomprehensible or at least unexplained phenomena. What is the purpose of the sacrifice? Why are the birds not divided? What happens to Abram, or what does he see, in his sleep? Why the fire and the torch? The writer simply recounts these events as they would have been seen by a bystander, then moves on, with no comment on their meaning. But afterwards something is different. A covenant has been made. One conclusion—or, I suppose, a conjecture merely—that we might make is that Abram was not supposed to see or to understand in any rational way. He was to know only that he had been visited by a potent mystery, and he was to know it by experience, with his senses, as well as by words, with his mind.

A thread from the Genesis passage is continued in today’s Gospel, Luke 9:28-26, the account of the Transfiguration. Peter, John, and James, like Abram, are taken into darkness—“overshadowed”—and when they emerge things have changed. Something is revealed, and it is both less and more than in the Genesis passage. There are no cryptic signs or instructions, only a suggestion from Peter which seems giddy and irrelevant, and no floating fires. But there is a greater mystery: not just the hand of the supernatural touching our world—a phenomenon which would probably have been less amazing to the men of that time than to ourselves— but the entry or elevation of the man Jesus into the realm which has heretofore only come down to us, and then the voice of God the Father himself telling them who Jesus really is.

In contrast to the Genesis passage, the theme here is Light—the transfigured Christ and the light of knowledge brought by the Father’s words. It is only the bystanders, not the protagonist, who fall into sleep and are blinded by a supernatural darkness. There is no Blood. That comes later.