Shame.

Edition note (Harper Collins edition 2001): beginning around page 58, the word "to" is sometimes depicted as the typo "eo". It's slightly distracting. Also, the edition misses some opening and closing quotation marks on occasion.

from The Great Divorce

'I wish I'd never been born' it said. 'What are we born for?'

'For infinite happiness,' said the Spirit. 'You can step out into it at any moment...'

'But, I tell you, they'll see me.'

'An hour hence and you will not care. A day hence and you will laugh at it. Don't you remember on earth--there were things too hot to touch with your finger but you could drink them all right? Shame is like that. If you accept it--if you will drink the cup to the bottom--you will find it very nourishing: but try to do anything else with it and it scalds.' (Lewis 61)

The ghost in question is ashamed to step out into the light of Heaven because she is see-through and pales in comparison to the solid Spirit beings, and her shame is palpable and debilitating. She cannot shed it and move into absolute joy.

This short passage had me wondering about the true nature of shame. Is it really something that we simply have to accept as a part of us--as a normal, human reaction to our own imperfections as judged by our perceptions of the world and others? Is it then a choice to shed this when we are faced with the prospect of eternal happiness? Does it, then, remain something we cannot be rid of in this finite life? I am not sure.

More than that, how many of us have, on very low occasions, wished that we hadn't been born? Is this statement driven by shame, at its core, rather than the hundred other things we can attribute to it? Is this why it is such an affront to the gift of life--because we are too ashamed of ourselves and cannot break out of it? The idea certainly puts things in a different perspective, especially if shame is something that most of us experience now and again. Are we then saying we prefer death to the collective human condition at these moments?

There is so much to think about. Maybe I am over-thinking all of this. I wish I had someone to ask.

Hell is a State of Mind.

Plato returns.

from The Great Divorce

'Hush,' he said sternly. 'Do not blaspheme. Hell is a state of mind--ye never said a truer word. And every state of mind, left to itself, every shutting up of the creature within the dungeon of its own mind--is, in the end, Hell. But Heaven is not a state of mind. Heaven is reality itself. All that is fully real is Heavenly. For all that can be shaken will be shaken and only the unshakeable remains.' (Lewis 70-71)

This really does bring me back to the Platonic idea of Forms; perhaps, intuitively, these are the reasons I have always preferred Plato to Aristotle.

Hell as a state of mind--a state of mind we take with us into death: this frightens me, or at least makes me feel uncomfortable. This reminds me, too, of Dante Gabriel Rossetti's poem, The Blessed Damozel and her gold bar of Heaven. I read this poem for the first time as an undergraduate student, and it struck me so profoundly because it represented an idea I had never given credence to before: that we still feel loss and pain and sorrow while we are in Heaven--that we will still miss those we love and ache for them until we are together again.

And still she bow’d herself and stoop’d
Out of the circling charm;
Until her bosom must have made
The bar she lean’d on warm,
And the lilies lay as if asleep
Along her bended arm.

From the fix’d place of Heaven she saw
Time like a pulse shake fierce
Through all the worlds. Her gaze still strove
Within the gulf to pierce
Its path; and now she spoke as when
The stars sand in their spheres.

The sun was gone now; the curl’d moon
Was like a little feather
Fluttering far down the gulf; and now
She spoke through the still weather.
Her voice was like the voice the stars
Had when they sang together.

(Ah sweet! Even now, in that bird’s song,
Strove not her accents there,
Fain to be hearken’d? When those bells
Possess’d the mid-day air,
Strove not her steps to reach my side
Down all the echoing stair?)

“I wish that he were come to me,
For he will come,” she said.
“Have I not pray’d in Heaven?—on earth,
Lord, Lord, has he not pray’d?
Are not two prayers a perfect strength?
And shall I feel afraid?

(Lines 43-72)

But this is not necessarily what Lewis means, I do not think. I believe we enter death with these thoughts still etched on our soul, but we must let them go in order to fully appreciate the joy of Heaven and God's grace. It's in letting them go, though, that we find the difficulty. How do you step away from a soul-changing love?

I suppose it is in realizing that need and love and want are separate and that unconditional love transcends the contexts and connotations we attach to it.

There is more to talk about when it comes to Hell as a state of mind, but I do not feel I can do it justice as yet.

Acclimatised.

from The Great Divorce

'I prefer it up here,' said I.

'Well, I don't see what all the talk is about,' said the Hard-Bitten Ghost. 'It's as good as any other park to look at, and darned uncomfortable.'

'There seems to be some idea that if one stays here one would get--well, solider--grow acclimatised.'

'I know all about that,' said the Ghost. 'Same old lie. People have been telling me that sort of thing all my life. They told me in the nursery that if I were good I'd be happy. And they told me at school that Latin would get easier as I went on. After I'd been married a month some fool was telling me there were always difficulties at first, but with Tact and Patience I'd soon "settle down" and like it! And all through two wars what didn't they say about the good time coming if only I'd be a brave boy and go on being shot at? Of course they'll play the old game here if anyone's fool enough to listen.' (Lewis 53-54)

I picked out this part because it highlights the concept I was talking about in the previous post but, a bit more fun, I was simply struck by the word acclimatised here. It made me pause, and I spent several minutes trying to pronounce it correctly--with and without a British accent--just to feel it on my tongue. I haven't seen the word used outside of more specific or sterile settings, but I like it here because I think this diction enhances the narrator's characterization--his personality and slightly-detached, slightly-proper role of clinical observer rather than Heaven-Hell participant.

Cynicism.

from The Great Divorce

It was that of a lean hard-bitten man with grey hair and a gruff, but not uneducated voice: the kind of man I have always instinctively felt to be reliable. (Lewis 51)

This is the kind of man I have always instinctively trusted, too; it is the character I have always wanted to be, or play, or write about--the hard-worn working man of integrity and quiet confidence and such.

The problem is that this man, having seen "so much" never really makes it to Heaven. He goes back to Hell because he can't believe that Heaven is really offering what it's offering.

I can only hope I do not become that cynical as I age.

I think Joe would like this quotation, too, for some reason. I wish I could ask him. I am equally afraid that he wouldn't care.

Facing Yourself.

from The Great Divorce

The promise--or the threat--of sunrise rested immovably up there. (Lewis 23)

'Will you come with me to the mountains? It will hurt at first, until your feet are hardened. Reality is harsh to the feet of shadows.' (Lewis 39)

'...I will bring you to Eternal Fact, the Father of all other fact-hood.' (Lewis 42)

I choose these three quotations for different reasons, but each struck me in its own way. In this chapter, the Phantom-Observer (as I call him) is witnessing a conversation between one who has become whole and solid (an angel-like or spiritual being) and a man who just got off the bus from Hell. This man is someone who spent his lifetime asking and thinking about and arguing for or against God and His existence for the very sake of argument--speculating, not because of Faith or Love but because it began a wonderful career. It tackles those Christians who go through the motions but do not really believe or know what it means to believe, those who are too logical to believe and thus cannot believe even when standing in Heaven, and those who believe that death awards an automatic audience with God, Himself, so as to answer all of their unanswered questions; that is, they believe death, alone, entitles them to answers with submitting to God or belief.

The first quotation represents all that I love about Lewis. It is a simple sentence, but it represents a complicated, weighted idea. It's difficult to explain the concept out of context, but it works a bit like this in my mind: Even though the sinners are so close to Heaven--so close to Joy and God--the thought of Joy or God or eternity and fulfillment is still too overwhelming and terrifying for the sinner to comprehend. Sometimes the things that have the potential to make us happiest are the things we are most frightened of. It feels real to me--very real to me--that this habit in our finite lives would carry over into the infinite, stamped on our souls so to speak. Perhaps Purgatory is slowly recognizing your faults and mistakes and not only accepting them but finally facing them honestly, openly--so that you can finally move on.

This, I feel, is very relevant to my life right now. I have no problem accepting my faults. I have a real problem facing them--living up to them, living up to their consequences. I think, in a lot of ways, that is one reason I am in the situation I am in.

This relates a bit to the second quotation, as I think it's important to recognize that the path to forgiveness and God and Joy and acceptance and Love and the rest is not an easy one--and it shouldn't be. It is a path we are all entitled to, but letting go of the parts of ourselves we are most attached to for the off-chance of finding new parts of ourselves to love, well--that is also rather frightening and difficult to do. More than that, I like the idea that "reality is harsh to the feet of shadows"--that we are mere shadows and that this life, while very real to us, does not touch reality. It seems almost Platonic, that--this idea that there are perfect forms of all we see--that there is a reality beyond this one that is somehow more solid, more real.

The third quotation, well--I have never heard of God being called the Father of all fact-hood, nor have I seen him referred to as the Eternal Fact. I find it intriguing, and it is something I want to reflect on a bit more when I am feeling less sentimental.

Vituperation.

from The Great Divorce

Curses, taunts, blows, a filth of vituperation, came to my ears as fellow-passengers struggled to get out. (Lewis 19)

Sometimes one word really makes a line. I fell in love with the above sentence, not only because it shows the sinners struggling to get out of the bus in a way that is all too human, but because the word vituperation is used to perfection.

More on the bus: The passengers are struggling to get out of the bus so they can all see Heaven first, but they do not realize that this untoward struggle is just more of an example of why Heaven is still out of their reach. I find the troubling irony in this situation so painful because it is both true and realistic, and I shudder because I wonder if I'd be hurrying like the rest. I'd hope I have a few more manners to last me than that, but sometimes aren't our manners or an excuse? So much to think about!

The Sinner

from The Great Divorce

I shrank from the faces and forms by which I was surrounded. They were all fixed faces, full not of possibilities but impossibilities, some gaunt, some bloated, some glaring with idiotic ferocity, some drowned beyond recovery in dreams; but all, in one way or another, distorted and faded. (Lewis 17)

The premise of this short novella is that a man awakes in Hell and boards the bus to Heaven. This scene, in the very beginning, describes the faces of the others on the bus--others who were making the trip by choice (the transition) from Hell to Heaven.

I don't pick out this passage because I believe we'll all be boarding a bus to Heaven someday (that's just a variation on the River Styx theme anyway) but because I was struck by the sinners' descriptions. I briefly wondered: which am I? Which will I be?

At the moment I believe I would be a gaunt face or maybe--and more frightening--drowned beyond recovery in dreams. Gaunt because I believe I let my personal baggage bleed me dry--strip all the joy from me. I believe I have let myself go--so used to suffering that I continue to suffer even when it is unnecessary. Imposed Purgatory, almost--that's what life feels like at times. And I know this is my doing and my choice, and it is something I would like to change.

Drowned beyond recovery in dreams because, and sadly, I feel I have been living in dreams so long that I am not sure how to function in reality. If I could have my greatest dream come true--the one I feel I want as deeply and passionately (almost) as I feel my faith--I would grow old with Joe. I sometimes look forward to eternity because I think that maybe that will be the chance or the opportunity for us to try again, to finally work. But I know it doesn't work that way, no matter how much I want it to. And here I am, a lost soul in desperate love with someone I can't have, and I get so hung up on that anymore that it's paralyzing. I need to work through it--I want to work through it--not because I want to forget him or lose that love, but because I want to be a complete human being again with or without him.