The Far Off Country

As the summer heat begins to set come on in earnest and the work day starts earlier and earlier (tis busy season in the steel fabrication business), let us take a break from baseball and our various national celebrations and turn towards more weighty matters.

In the relative cool of the day before work I have been reading through selections from C.S. Lewis' writings. One of my favorite essays of his is The Weight of Glory. I love the way Lewis writes, his cadence, his "voice" as it were. If he were to be sitting in my living room with a cup of coffee, there are many finer points of theology that we would disagree on I am sure. However, I could not help but share the following selection.

In speaking of this desire for our own far-off country, which we find in ourselves even now, I feel a certain shyness. I am almost committing an indecency. I am trying to rip open the inconsolable secret in each one of you - the secret which hurts so much that you take your revenge on it by calling it names like Nostalgia and Romanticism and Adolescence; the secret also which pierces with such sweetness that when, in very intimate conversation, the mention of it becomes imminent, we grow awkward and affect to laugh at ourselves; the secret we cannot hide and cannot tell, though we desire to do both. We cannot tell it because it is a desire for something that has never actually appeared in our experience. We cannot hide because our experience is constantly suggesting it, and we betray ourselves like lovers at the mention of a name. Our commonest expedient is to call it beauty and behave as if that had settled the matter.
~ C.S. Lewis from The Weight of Glory

When quoting Lewis, the primary challenge is know when to stop. To really get where he's going I would need to post the entire essay, however, this will have to do for a starting point. This may come as a surprise to some, and as no surprise at all to others; but I am a ridiculous romantic. This passage strikes a chord with me as it puts into words thoughts that I have always had. Each of us reacts to certain things around us with a certain... longing, admiration, affection. It can be different things for each of us. Personally, I am most greatly moved by ideas, principles, qualities; as well as the Creation. Ideas and principles like loyalty, nobility, integrity, sacrifice for a cause. Seeing these qualities lived out elicits a deep admiration and respect from the depth of my soul. More than that, often feelings deeper than seem warranted. I am not alone in this.

While the the early morning sunlight shining through the light mists still clinging to the fields under an endless Illinois sky might not move your spirit, there are things that do. Certain landscapes, certain ideas, certain people, memories forgotten, works of art; often for reasons we can't explain.
If we agree with Lewis, these things strike such a strong chord in our hearts because they point us to heaven. To God. To the "eternity set in the hearts of men."

They are not heaven in and of themselves, they are not perfect, they ultimately will not deliver what our spirits desire. They speak to us of a perfection we don't really understand and will not experience in this life. However, in one sense, they are indications to us that we are created for something more than what we experience. We are not accidents of "nature" or "chance." We are created beings. Created by a Creator that is not of this world, and as his creations, neither are we, completely.

We all search for our "far off country" even if only in the deeper corners of our souls. When pressed on it we too often "call it beauty and behave as if that settled the matter." But that doesn't settle the matter. Beauty it is, but not for it's own sake. "Beauty" because it is a reflection of God, imperfect perhaps, but a reflection of God even so.

~ Gabriel