For one moment she had a ridiculous and scorching vision of a world in which God Himself would never understand, never take her with full seriousness. Then, at one particular corner of the gooseberry patch, the change came.
What awaited her there was serious to the degree of sorrow and beyond. There was no form nor sound. The mould under the bushes, the moss on the path, and the little brick border, were not visibly changed. But they were changed. A boundary had been crossed. She had come into a world, or into a Person, or into the presence of a Person. Something expectant, patient, inexorable, met her with no veil or protection between. In the closeness of that contact she perceived at one that the Director's words had been entirely misleading. This demand which now pressed upon her was not, even by analogy, like any other demand. It was the origin of all right demands and contained them. In its light you could understand them; but from them you could know nothing of it. There was nothing, and never had been anything, like this. And now there was nothing except this. Yes also, everything had been like this; only by being like this had anything existed. In this height and depth and breadth the little idea of herself which she had hitherto called me dropped down and vanished, unfluttering, into bottomless distance, like a bird in space without air. The name me was the name of a being whose existence she had never suspected, a being that did not yet fully exist but which was demanded. It was a person (not the person she had thought), yet also a thing, a made things, made to please Another and in Him to please all others, a thing being made at this very moment, without its choice, in a shape it had never dreamed of. And the making went on amidst a kind of splendour or sorry or both, whereof she could not tell whether it was in the moulding hands or in the kneaded lump.
_________________________________________________
I recently came across upon this passage in the third book of the Lewis' space trilogy, That Hideous Strength. I loved it so much, I re-read it.
And then I re-read it again.
And again.
And then I typed it here.
And then I re-read it. Again.
And now I'm stuck. Because, how can one possibly comment in words on Clive's words? There is no way, road, mean, or secret passage. There is no way I could properly expound on his words as eloquently as he could himself.
So I will not. For fear I would butcher the whole thing, I will not. I will, however, simply say that I cannot believe someone can capture an experience with God in such an honest and detailed way, while summing it up to being "revealed only in it's departure."
I relate to this, as I'm sure many would. The reality of God's moving is as quick and as it is slow, so as to be too huge, yet too short to be confined to time. It is both the thesis and the antithesis. It is both wholly experiential, and wholly emotional.
I love how God meets with his people. And I love that he gave Clive the genius to explain it in words.
And yes, Clive and I are on a first name basis ... or so I like to think.
What awaited her there was serious to the degree of sorrow and beyond. There was no form nor sound. The mould under the bushes, the moss on the path, and the little brick border, were not visibly changed. But they were changed. A boundary had been crossed. She had come into a world, or into a Person, or into the presence of a Person. Something expectant, patient, inexorable, met her with no veil or protection between. In the closeness of that contact she perceived at one that the Director's words had been entirely misleading. This demand which now pressed upon her was not, even by analogy, like any other demand. It was the origin of all right demands and contained them. In its light you could understand them; but from them you could know nothing of it. There was nothing, and never had been anything, like this. And now there was nothing except this. Yes also, everything had been like this; only by being like this had anything existed. In this height and depth and breadth the little idea of herself which she had hitherto called me dropped down and vanished, unfluttering, into bottomless distance, like a bird in space without air. The name me was the name of a being whose existence she had never suspected, a being that did not yet fully exist but which was demanded. It was a person (not the person she had thought), yet also a thing, a made things, made to please Another and in Him to please all others, a thing being made at this very moment, without its choice, in a shape it had never dreamed of. And the making went on amidst a kind of splendour or sorry or both, whereof she could not tell whether it was in the moulding hands or in the kneaded lump.
_________________________________________________
I recently came across upon this passage in the third book of the Lewis' space trilogy, That Hideous Strength. I loved it so much, I re-read it.
And then I re-read it again.
And again.
And then I typed it here.
And then I re-read it. Again.
And now I'm stuck. Because, how can one possibly comment in words on Clive's words? There is no way, road, mean, or secret passage. There is no way I could properly expound on his words as eloquently as he could himself.
So I will not. For fear I would butcher the whole thing, I will not. I will, however, simply say that I cannot believe someone can capture an experience with God in such an honest and detailed way, while summing it up to being "revealed only in it's departure."
I relate to this, as I'm sure many would. The reality of God's moving is as quick and as it is slow, so as to be too huge, yet too short to be confined to time. It is both the thesis and the antithesis. It is both wholly experiential, and wholly emotional.
I love how God meets with his people. And I love that he gave Clive the genius to explain it in words.
And yes, Clive and I are on a first name basis ... or so I like to think.
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