Friends Are Awesome

"And so affection, besides being a love itself, can enter into the other loves and colour them all through and become the very medium in which day to day they operate. . . There is indeed a peculiar charm, both in friendship and in Eros, about those moments when Appreciative love lies, as it were, curled up asleep, and the mere ease and ordinariness of the relationship (free as solitude, and yet neither is alone) wraps us round. No need to talk... No need at all except perhaps to stir the fire." - C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves, p. 35

Living with Lewis: Home

This weekend was filled with graduation festivities and family, first here in Tucson with so many dear friends who just completed their time here at UA, then with my sister in Phoenix in anticipation of her high school graduation (I feel so old!). And all this flurry of celebration and impending change and transition has set me to thinking about many things, but mostly the idea of home.

I still struggle with "home" mostly because I'm not entirely sure where "home" is. It seems that one should have once home, yet I can't seem to name just one. Tucson is "home": I live here, my friends are here, my life is here, my favorite little spots are here, my church is here, I know this city's quirks and tricks. But Phoenix is "home" too: my childhood home, my family, old friends, old spots, childhood memories, familiar places, so many firsts. However I also have this quirk of calling just about any place I reside for more than three days "home." Hotel rooms, crowded flats, shared rooms, village homes with somewhat alarming outdoor toilets have all been deemed "home." And there is a bit of mourning when each is left behind.

And in this mode of thought, Lewis' discussion of affection becomes quite relevant. He writes:

"Affection . . . is the humblest love. It gives itself no airs. People can be proud of being "in love" or of friendship. Affection is modest-- even furtive and shame-faced . . . Affection almost slinks or seeps through our lives. It lives with humble un-dress, private things; soft slippers, old clothes, old jokes, the thump of a sleepy dog's tail on the kitchen floor, the sound of a sewing machine, a gollywog left on the lawn." - The Four Loves, 33-34

For me at least, I would say that affection and home go hand-in-hand. That familiarity, that old, comfortable feeling, that known-ness-- the love, or at least liking, called affection that arises from this creates that feeling of "home."



The soundtrack of soft snores that accompany the second half of nearly any film viewed from the over-crowded family room sofa

The brief sense of loss when the old all-metal, forest green, built-like-a-tank, pain-to-park '93 Land Cruiser is finally put to rest

The short white canine hairs that somehow make the trip from Phoenix to Tucson and three times through the wash

The mysterious thumping and gurgling noises periodically emanating from the hallway closet water heater that may or may not belong to some prehistoric creature

The fourteenth occasion of accidentally hitting that dreadful pothole right in front of the apartment complex

The familiar sound of Dad making waffles in the kitchen on a Saturday morning



The recollection of the bathroom door in a Central Asian flat that could be locked from both the inside and outside and resulting pranks that ensued

The unmistakable grumbling of the garage door signaling someone's return

The warmth of the sun on that one side of the bed on springtime Saturday mornings

The northeast window that never latched quite right

The slide down to the basement of the music building that was supposed to be for pianos and not for people

The gathering of friends around the kitchen table on Sunday morning




These things speak of home

All photos by Kara Haberstock (and friends/family), all rights reserved

Living with Lewis: Confessions

"If ever the book which I am not going to write is written it must be the full confession by Christendom of Christendom's specific contribution to the sum of human cruelty and treachery. Large areas of 'the World' will not hear us till we have publicly disowned much of our past. Why should they? We have shouted the name of Christ and enacted the service of Moloch."                                                                                                                     -C. S. Lewis, The Four Loves 30.

 I hope that someday this book will be written. The Church and those of us who follow Christ have much to apologize for. Even if we ourselves did not commit the wrong, those who have called themselves Christian have done incredible evil in the name of Christ. So now we must seek to right the wrong and to truly represent the one whose name we bear.

Living with Lewis: Patriotism

Continuing Chaos in Libya, Summer 2011, photo via MSNBC

As someone who studies ethnic conflict, I love Lewis' thoughts on patriotism and its use as a tool to motivate action and sacrifice on behalf of one's country:

"For a long time yet, or perhaps forever, nations will live in danger. Rulers must somehow nerve their subjects to defend them or at least to prepare for their defence. Where the sentiment of patriotism has been destroyed this can be done only by presenting every international conflict in a purely ethical light. If people will spend neither sweat nor blood for 'their country' they must be made to feel that they are sending them for justice, or civilisation, or humanity. This is a step down, not up. Patriotic sentiment did not of course need to disregard ethics. Good men needed to be convinced that their country's cause was just; but it was still their country's cause, not the cause of justice as such. The difference seems to me important. I may without self-righteousness or hypocrisy think it just to defend my house by force against a burglar; but if I start pretending that I blacked his eye purely on moral ground- wholly indifferent to the fact that the house in question was mine- I become insufferable. The pretence that when England's cause is just we are on England's side- as some neutral Don Quixote might be- for that reason alone, is equally spurious. And nonsense draws evil after it. If our country's cause is the cause of God, wars must be wars of annihilation. A false transcendence is given to things which are very much of this world" (29).

Lewis hits right at the heart of so many modern conflicts: they become in our minds and our media a war of good against evil. And we, of course, support the side of the good. But conflict cannot be reduced down to this binary. For even if some on the other side could really be called evil, those beneath them, those they have drafted, those they have deceived, those they have pressed into service....they are not evil. And war is a dirty, destructive, terrifying, appalling beast. It might be pitched as a fight of good and evil at first, but by the end, it will be nothing but darkness. And few truly take up arms for wholesome motives anyway. Most conflicts the US has entered in the past decades have been pitched as humanitarian or liberation ventures, but these supposed motives of freedom and justice are driven by a far more pragmatic, profitable, and amoral (or even immoral) motive underneath, and the destruction caused perhaps outweighs whatever freedom or justice is accomplished anyways. High moral concepts are cold consolation to a mother whose son never came home.

So the heart of the message is this: be careful. It is easy to get caught up in the noble myth of war. Patriotism is not in itself wrong by any stretch of the imagination. Lewis writes (citing Chesterton), "A man's reasons for not wanting his country to be ruled by foreigners are very like his reasons for not wanting his house to be burned down; because he 'could not even begin' to enumerate all the things he would miss" (23). Love of home is natural and healthy and creates sometimes even a healthy respect for others: "How can I love my home without coming to realise that other men, no less rightly, love theirs?" (24). I would agree with Lewis though that is important to differentiate this love for our homes and our way of life from a feeling of superiority and that our cause is the cause of God because then we are entering a very dangerous realm where mythic wars quickly turn into infernos that indiscriminately destroy all life.

For more on the myth of war and the dangers therein, I highly recommend Chris Hedges' book, War is a Force that Give Us Meaning. It's a heavy, but incredible, read.

Living with Lewis: Nature's Lessons

"Nature never taught me that there exists a God of glory and of infinite majesty. I had to learn that in otherways. But nature gave the word glory a meaning for me. I still do not know where else I could have found one. I do not see how the 'fear' of God could have ever meant to me anything but the lowest prudential efforts to be safe, if I had never seen certain ominous ravines and unapproachable crags. And if nature had never awakened certain longings in me, huge areas of what I can now mean by the 'love' of God would never, so far as I can see, have existed. . . Nature does not teach. A true philosophy may sometimes validate an experience of nature; an experience of nature cannot validate a philosophy. Nature will not verify any theological or metaphysical proposition (or not in the manner we are now considering); she will help to show what it means" (20).

In this way Lewis cautions us in the love of nature. Nature reflects the one who made it: "the created glory may be expected to give us hints of the uncreated" (20). But while we may see God's character reflected in that which is created, we cannot find him there. We cannot reach God solely through nature- we must turn from the created to the Creator. Nature can point us to God, but it cannot carry us to him. Enjoy the beauty of the created, but direct one's worship the one who made it.

Photo taken by Kara Haberstock, 2008, all rights reserved

Living with Lewis: Love

Found via Pinterest (if you know the original source, please send it to me)

This quote, from the first chapter of The Four Loves, is probably one of my all-time favorite quotes on love. Lewis describes the kinds and aspects of love we give and experience in this life, though they usually exist altogether. He writes:

"Need love says of a woman "I cannot live without her"; Gift-love longs to give her happiness, comfort, protection- if possible wealth; Appreciative love gazes and holds its breath and is silent, rejoices that such a wonder should exist even if not for him, will not be wholly dejected by losing her, would rather have it so than never to have seen her at all" (17).

How beautiful is that?

I think that in the last year I have begun to understand all three of these aspects of love so much more. And when they come all in the same breath-- that is a sense so overwhelming and wonderful that I cannot put it into words any more eloquent than those of Lewis and the other masters of poetry and prose that have filled our world with books and songs and verse.

Living with Lewis: Worship (a follow-up to beauty)

[Note: Read the "Living with Lewis: Beauty" post before reading this post]

There is a second part to this discussion of beauty, a reason that we appreciate beauty, one that again points us back to God and to the nature of love. Lewis writes:

"And now our principle of starting at the lowest- without which 'the highest does not stand'- begins to pay a dividend. It has revealed to me a deficiency in our previous classification of the loves into those of Need and those of Gift. There is a third element in love, no less important than these, which is foreshadowed by our Appreciative pleasures. This judgment that the object is very good, this attention (almost homage) offered to it as a kind of debt, this wish that it should be and should continue being what it is even if we were never to enjoy it, can go out not only to things but to persons, When it is offered to a woman we call it admiration; when to a man, hero-worship; when to God, worship simply" (16).

 Our love of beauty teaches us to worship. We learn to see things and pronounce them "very good." We admire, we praise, we feel a burden to extol something, to appreciate it because of its inherent greatness. This is worship. Worship is when we turn to God and declare him good. We speak of his overwhelming greatness, we praise his character, we admire what he has made, we seek the goodness in all that belongs to him. Worship is not something to be done at a particular time with a certain sort of music- it is to be an everyday practice. Look for the beauty around you, soak it in, declare its goodness. Then turn your praise to the One who made those beautiful things. With practice it's not a challenge at all. It becomes quite a bit like breathing.

Living with Lewis: Beauty

In the first chapter of The Four Loves, Lewis discusses our "Likings and Loves for the Sub-Human," the things we like, the pleasures we take, and beauty we appreciate. He starts off by distinguishing between "need-pleasures" (things we take pleasure in because we need them- like a cold glass of water on a hot Arizona summer day- that do not hold much inherent value or beauty in themselves) and "pleasures of appreciation" (things we appreciate for their inherent beauty apart from any usefulness- like fresh flowers). And when speaking of appreciative pleasures, Lewis begins to discuss our concept of beauty:

"The objects which afford pleasures of appreciation give us the feeling- irrational or not- that we somehow owe it to them to savour, to attend to and praise them. . . in the Appreciative pleasures, even at their lowest, and more and more as they grow up into the full appreciation of all beauty, we get something that we can hardly help calling love and hardly help calling disinterested, towards the object itself. It is the feeling which would make a man unwilling to deface a great picture even if he were the last man left alive and himself about to die; which makes us glad of unspoiled forests that we shall never see; which makes us anxious that the garden or bean-field should continue to exist. We do not merely like these things; we pronounce them in a momentarily God-like sense, 'very good'" (14, 16).

What do you pronounce "very good"? What do you find beautiful?

Walking the halls of the Эрмитаж (L' Ermitage) in St. Petersburg amongst the paintings of the master artists of numerous centuries created an overwhelming appreciation of their beauty in my heart. Watching the sunrise at 4 a.m. and glint off the creamy white buildings and red roofs over the canals with wrought iron and cobblestone bridges was perhaps the definition of gorgeous.

The sunset over the mountains here in Tucson and the moment with the Catalinas turn all shades of purple and red gives an incredible glimpse of nature's beauty. Those nights when the sky is clear and chunks of rocks are raining down above the earth creating fiery trails that we call "shooting stars"- that is marvelous.

The trees I always walk beneath on my way home from class that have just budded out with brand new green leaves that shimmer in the sunlight are stunning in their simple elegance. The tulips that are growing in the little pot on my kitchen table and any day now will burst forth in colors of pink or purple and release that beautiful fresh smell that new flowers do- those are very good.

There is so much beauty all around us. I try to document just a little bit of it on this blog. But I hope that this week you take some time to sit in the "pleasures of appreciation" that surround you. Take joy in beautiful things, and give thanks.


All photos taken by Kara Haberstock, February 2012, all rights reserved

Living with Lewis: Loves and gods

Before launching into the real content of his book, Lewis gives one last warning in his introduction to The Four Loves regarding the difference between human love and God's love, one which I find especially helpful. He warns us to be careful not to let love take the place of God in our lives. Love is a good thing: it pulls us out of our own selfishness, it transforms us, it helps us to put others above ourselves, it brings us into deep, meaningful relationships. But love is not God. God is love. If we give love the place of God in our lives, if we obey it completely, if we put it above all else...we will ultimately find ourselves in trouble. Lewis writes:

"We may give our human loves the unconditional allegiance which we owe only to God. Then they become gods; then they become demons. Then they will destroy us, and also destroy themselves. For natural loves that are allowed to become gods do not remain loves. They are still called so, but can become in fact complicated forms of hatred" (8).

Throughout the introduction, Lewis has set up this idea of "need-love" and "gift-love," the first arising from our need and fragility as human beings demonstrated in the love of a child for its mother or our love for God, the second being freely given out of fullness for the sake of the beloved demonstrated by the love of a mother for her child or God's love for us. The need-loves aren't so dangerous- we will never mistake them for God. But the gift-love, so near to God by likeness (not necessarily approach) can get us into trouble. Lewis, in the rest of the book, will continue to repeat this saying by M. Denis de Rougemont that love "begins to be a demon the moment he begins to be a god" (6). Mere human loves, exalted to divinity, will become ugly, selfish, and distorted. Lewis finishes his introduction by saying this:

"The human loves can be glorious images of Divine love. No less than that: but also no more- proximities of likeness which in one instance may help, and in another may hinder, proximity of approach" (9)

Human loves can draw us toward or away from God. We (with God's help) are the ones who decide which way our love takes us.

Living with Lewis: Approaching God

As you might know from last week's post, I am working my way through Lewis' book, The Four Loves. Right now I'm still in the introduction, which I highly recommend reading. (It sets up the rest of the book.) In it, Lewis makes a distinction between two types of nearness to God: nearness by likeness and nearness by approach. In order to better explain, he uses the metaphor of hiking back to your home in a village tucked beneath a cliff. If you sit on the edge of the cliff, you are very close to the village in direct distance and space, but in terms of the time it will you take you to hike back from your home safely (jumping off the cliff to your death doesn't count), you are very far from home. To get home, you will have to hike down the trail that will take you farther from home in terms of direct distance and space, but ever closer in terms of the time it will take you to hike home (from page 4).

Lewis writes:

"At the cliff's top we are near the village, but however long we sit there we shall never be any nearer to our bath and our tea. So hear; the likeness, and in that sense nearness, to Himself which God has conferred upon certain creatures and certain states of those creatures is something finished, built in. What is near Him by likeness is never, by that fact alone, going to be any nearer. But nearness of approach is, by definition, increasing nearness. and whereas the likeness is given to us- and can be received with or without thanks, can be used or abused- the approach, however initiated and supported by Grace, is something we must do. Creatures are made in their varying ways images of God without their own collaboration or even consent. It is not so that they become sons of God." (5-6)

We are created in the image of God; in this way we are already like him. We are like God in this no matter what we do or how we live our lives. Nothing can erase the stamp of God, the mold from which we were made. We are near to God through likeness by nature. However, nearness to God by approach is not in such a defined state. We must choose to approach God in order to become like him in approach. It is a process which we undertake, one that may make us seem less near to God in likeness, but in which every step we take towards God places us closer to him. When we choose to approach God, we must lay down our pride and become humble, conscious of our need and helplessness. As we draw near to God we recognize our great unlikeness- our weakness compared to His strength, our flaws compared to his perfection, our futility and failure, His limitless power, our total lack, His completion and wholeness. We are no longer the givers, but rather beggars, lacking anything of value to bring. Such seems far from God, but it is the only way we will only get home.

Living with Lewis (is back)

Tuesdays with Lewis is back! I've started re-reading his book, The Four Loves, which is probably my favorite book by him. If you haven't read it, I encourage you to get a copy (for Tucsonans, I know the UA library has at least one copy) and read along!

Lewis starts off his book by making the distinction between gift-love and need-love: love which gives to another and love which arises out of a need that must be filled (e.g. the love of a mother for her child and the love of a child for his or her mother). And he advises us against the temptation to classify one as better than the other or one as more godly than the other. Though God loves through gift-love (He does not need us), He Himself desires our need-love.

Lewis writes:

"Man approaches God most nearly when he is in one sense least like God. For what can be more unlike than fullness and need, sovereignty and humility, righteousness and penitence, limitless power and a cry for help?"(4)

This is the paradox that seems to lie at the heart of Christianity. God, who needs nothing, decided to create creatures whom he could pour out his riches upon with the desire that they would turn and love him out of their desperate need for him. He loves despite the fact that many reject him (It says in Romans that Christ came and died for us while we were still his enemies). He loves expecting nothing in return.

It feels strange sometimes: I know that I seem to come to God in a constant state of desperation. I have nothing to give but my own broken life, and I have to come again and again with a prayer for help and a realization that I can do nothing on my own. And yet this is what God desires, that I come again and again to him empty so that he can fill me with his Spirit and his love. I can give nothing to God that he has not already given to me. It runs very counter to my logic of exchange in relationships. But God seems to run entirely counter to human logic in general ('For my thoughts are not your thoughts and neither are your ways my ways,' declares the Lord - Isaiah 55:8)

I love Lewis' book because it explores the many challenges and paradoxes of God's love and of the human loves with an incredible amount of wisdom and thought.  I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.

Living with Lewis: Seeing Love

“Look your hardest, dear. I wouldn’t hide if I could. We didn’t idealize each other. We tried to keep no secrets. You knew most of the rotten places in me already. If you now see anything worse, I can take it. So can you. Rebuke, explain, mock, forgive. For this is one of the miracles of love; it gives- to both, but perhaps especially to the woman- a power of seeing through its own enchantments and yet not being disenchanted” - Lewis, A Grief Observed, 89.  

I hope I can always say likewise about my love.

Lewis continues:

"To see, in some measure, like God. His love and His knowledge are not distinct from one another, nor from Him. We could almost say He sees because He loves, and therefore loves although He sees” (89-90).  

How amazing it is to be loved by the One who holds all things.

Living with Lewis: Questions

“When I lay these questions before God I get no answer. But a rather special sort of ‘No answer.’ It is not the locked door. It is more like a silent, certainly not uncompassionate, gaze. As though He shook His head not in refusal but waiving the question. Like, ‘Peace, child; you don’t understand.’
Can a mortal ask questions which God finds unanswerable? Quite easily, I should think. All nonsense questions are unanswerable. How many hours are there in a mile? Is yellow square or round? Probably half the questions we ask-- half our great theological and metaphysical problems are like that.” - C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed, 86-87.

I’m sure well over half my questions have been unanswerable.
“Peace, child; you don’t understand” is an answer I’m sure I’ve received many times.
The problem is living at peace with that, patiently awaiting the day when the glass will no longer be lit so dimly.

Living with Lewis: Picturing God

I've never been able to nail down what God looks like. Every time I seem to have a grasp on what God’s up to or who he is, he always seems to mess it up. I don’t buy the old paintings of an impossibly white-old-man God with a big beard- I know that’s not right. I don’t think a painting could really capture him at all. Nature gives more of a hint, but even that’s an imperfect portrait as well.
Sometimes I have some sort of experience or something happens and I learn something about his character, and my immediate reaction is to pounce upon it and say, “Ha! This is what God is like!” But then he always manages to show me that it is far far more complicated than that. Lewis, I think, captures it best.

“Images, I must suppose, have their use or they would not have been so popular…To me, however, their danger is more obvious. Images of the Holy easily become holy images- sacrosanct. My idea of God is not a divine idea. It has to be shattered time after time. He shatters it Himself. He is the great iconoclast. Could we not almost say that this shattering is one of the marks of His presence? The Incarnation is the supreme example; it leaves all previous ideas of the Messiah in ruins. And most are ‘offended’ by iconoclasm; and blessed are those who are not. But the same thing happens in our private prayers. All reality is iconoclastic” (A Grief Observed, 83).

Would we really want a God who was just what we expected?

Living with Lewis: Joy in Pain

“The notes have been about myself, and about H. (his wife), and about God. In that order. The order and the proportions exactly what they ought not to have been. And I see that I have nowhere fallen into that mode of thinking about either which we call praising them. yet that would have been best for me. Praise is the mode of love which always has some element of joy in it. Praise in due order; of Him as the giver, of here as the gift. Don’t we in praise somehow enjoy what we praise, however far we are from it? I must do more of this. I have lost the fruition I once had of H. And I am far, far away in the valley of my unlikeness, from the fruition which, if His mercies are infinite, I may some time have of God. But by praising, I can still, in some degree, enjoy her, and already, in some degree, enjoy Him. Better than nothing.” (Lewis, 79-80)

I’m moving through the last chapter of A Grief Observed now. This is the point where he’s slowly putting the pieces back together, the journeying onward and upward.

“I must do more of this.”

This I know is true for me. Because he hits it right on: praise is key in all circumstances. It doesn’t seem natural. Praise flows most naturally in good times, in times of plenty, in the high times. Praise does not come easily in the times of deep and utter despair.
And yet, perhaps, it is in those times when we most desperately need to praise. Lewis notes that by praise we enjoy God. Only by praise can we have joy. Only praise can lift our eyes from the broken mess we find ourselves in, from our own pain and suffering, from the darkness around us, to the light that is God himself. Praise is our reminder, our declaration, our cry that there is still a God, a God in control, a God who has not abandoned us, a God who still loves us. In some ways, it is our way of overcoming, of refusing to let our despair overtake us, our refusal to relinquish our hold on truth. Jesus said in the Gospels that truth will set us free. Praise is the declaration of that truth, the truth that we will be rescued, that this is not the end, that we are not stuck here, that there is hope, that there will come a day when all will be set right, that transformation is coming, that redemption is happening even now, that He has already overcome…

Praise is one vital mode of worship (see the Psalms for proof of this), of recognizing God for who he is and ascribing to him the glory He deserves. And through worship we enter into God’s presence, the presence of the Holy One, the Mighty One, the Redeeming One, the Rescuing One, the One Who Will Never Let Us Go. And we enter into His joy. And through this victory is found.

For more: read Psalm 22

Living with Lewis: Two to One

I must confess I never saw myself as the “marrying type.” Of course, I always wanted to be married someday. But that someday was somewhere in the distant future so I didn’t really have to worry about it. My plan, as described to a friend about a year ago, was to “run around war zones and other places and maybe when I’m 26 or so and I’ve figured my life out I’ll think about getting married.” I was definitely never one to think about getting married right after college. Never even crossed my mind, in all honesty. And my hesitancy about marriage went a bit deeper than just that. I have major trust issues with men: my past history isn’t quite what I’d like it to be. Up until about a year ago, I was pretty bitter and angry towards men. I honestly didn’t want a whole lot to do with them, much less let any one in any closer than a casual friendship. (I have a few friends who can testify to my frequent “I hate men/Men are stupid/Men are evil” rants.)

But, slowly, God’s been chipping away at that anger and bitterness. He’s used a few people in particular to knock down my defenses. And now, I find that my future is looking quite different than I expected it to. It’s beginning to look like quite an adventure.
I found this description of marriage in Lewis’ book, A Grief Observed, and I really like it:

“There is, hidden or flaunted, a sword between the sexes till an entire marriage reconciles them. It is arrogance in us to call frankness, fairness, and chivalry ‘masculine’ when we see them in a woman; it is arrogance in them to describe a man’s sensitiveness or tact or tenderness as ‘feminine.’ But also what poor, warped fragments of humanity most mere men and mere women must be to make the implications of that arrogance plausible. Marriage heals this. Jointly the two become fully human. ‘In the image of God created He them.’ Thus, by a paradox, this carnival of sexuality leads us out beyond our sexes” (67).

Maybe I’m learning something

Living with Lewis: Listening

I am a bad listener. I try not to be. I do try quite hard to be a good listener- for my friends, my family. I’ve actually become quite good at sitting quietly, empathizing, sympathizing, throwing in a nod or a murmur of agreement. And really, I’ve become a pretty good listener. Sure, I’m guilty of plotting out my own answer sometimes, or day-dreaming, or getting distracted by someone walking by. But overall, I’m a pretty good listener when it comes to people.
But when it comes to God….that’s a different story. It’s so hard for me to just sit, to be quiet, and listen. I’m terrible at even finding the time. And when he doesn’t speak right away, I get so frustrated. I don’t even give him the chance to start speaking half the time.
And when something is going wrong in my life….forget listening. Usually I’m either shutting God out completely, because I’m pretty pissed off. Or I’m yelling at him, also because I’m pissed off. I have far too much to say or not say to him to actually sit and listen. And because I don’t listen, I don’t hear anything from him, which makes me angrier, perpetuating this vicious cycle that usually continues until God finally steps in and strands me some place where I can’t help but listen to him, or just waits until I’m too exhausted to continue ranting and he can finally speak. And slowly, everything is restored.
So, going back to CS Lewis and A Grief Observed, I was kind of relieved to find that I wasn’t the only one with this problem:

“And so, perhaps, with God. I have gradually been coming to feel that the door is no longer shut and bolted. Was it my own frantic need that slammed it in my face? The time when there is nothing at all in your soul except a cry for help may be just the time when God can’t give it. You are like the drowning man who can’t be helped because he clutches and grabs. Perhaps your own reiterated cries deafen you to the voice you hoped to hear.
On the other hand, ‘Knock and it shall be opened.’ But does knocking mean hammering and kicking the door like a maniac? And there’s also “To him that hath shall be given.’ After all, you must have a capacity to receive, or even omnipotence can’t give. Perhaps your own passion temporarily destroys the capacity.” (64-65)

I think that God tells us to be still, to not fear, to wait, to quiet our souls for a good reason. In our panic, our anger, our anguish, our passion, our grief, we often focus far too much attention on our own pain and problems. We are too distracted to hear that still small voice. Our demanding drowns out all else. But when we turn, even just for a moment, from ourselves, and truly look for him (not to rail or rant, but to listen)….then He can speak.

Living with Lewis: Another's Pain

The only thing worse than being in pain is watching someone you love in pain. Or at least that’s how it is for me. And now I’m dating someone with a chronic illness that sometimes flares up, causing incredible pain and agony. It’s excruciating to watch, to sit there and not be able to do anything except hold a hand and pray. Another flare means another trip to the unfortunately-familiar local emergency room. And as I sit there, I know I would do just about anything so that I could take the pain away. I wish I could take it myself. But I can’t.
One thing I’ve found is that sometimes it’s not your own pain but the pain of others’ that is hardest to bear. From the midst of pain, I may cry out in frustration, I may question God’s goodness, but I can endure. I know that good will come from it. I trust that this too shall pass. But when it’s another, someone else, not me, and I sit there, wishing I could take the pain and crying out to God for relief on their behalf, trust is harder. The small voice in the back of my mind cries out, “God, if you are good, how can you bear this? I am selfish, imperfect, and not good, and yet I would give anything to take this pain, but I can’t. You can. How do you not act? If you are good, why don’t you do something?”
I came across this the other day in A Grief Observed:

“Yet this is unendurable. And then one babbles- ‘If only I could bear it, or the worst of it, or any of it instead of her (Lewis’ wife).’ But one can’t tell how serious that bid is, for nothing is staked on it. If it suddenly became a real possibility, then, for the first time, we should discover how seriously we had meant it. But is it ever allowed?
It was allowed to the One, we are told, and I find I can now believe again, that He has done vicariously whatever can be so done. He replies to our babble, ‘You cannot and you dare not. I could and dared.”

I think sometimes that he has done more than we will ever be able to imagine.

Living with Lewis: A Good God

For most of my life, I’ve struggled with the question of whether I truly believe that God is good. There’s always that question in the back of my mind, the voice that asks, “Then why so much suffering?” If God is truly good, then how could he let such things happen? To me? To others? To the already struggling in Port-au-Prince? To the already broken who are hit again and again when they’re already down. I cannot fully understand this. But I’m beginning to discover a few things I haven’t considered before, things that I’ll probably be wrestling with a while, but things that bring some progress, I think.
First came the realization that my definition of good might be faulty.
Lewis writes in A Grief Observed:

“The terrible thing is that a perfectly good God is in this matter hardly less formidable than a Cosmic Sadist. The more we believe that God hurts only to heal, the less we can believe that there is any use in begging for tenderness. A cruel man might be bribed- might grow tired of his vile sport- might have a temporary fit of mercy, as alcoholics have fits of sobriety. But supposed that what you are up against is a surgeon whose intentions are wholly good. The kinder and more conscientious he is, the more inexorable he will go on cutting. If he yielded to your entreaties, if he stopped before the operations was complete, all the pain up to that point would have been useless…What do people mean when they say, ‘I am not afraid of God because I know He is good’? Have they never been to a dentist?” (60-61)

What if good means that the suffering is necessary?

Living with Lewis: A House of Cards

I finished A Grief Observed  the other night. It’s amazing (per usual for C.S. Lewis). Anyways, I’m on my second read through it now. I’d love to share everything at once, but I haven’t entirely grasped it all yet myself (although I doubt I’ll ever quite grasp it all). Plus that would lead to quite the long post. So I’ll just share bit by bit that which caught my attention.

“I had been warned- I had warned myself- not to reckon on worldly happiness. We were even promised sufferings. They were part of the programme. We were even told, ‘Blessed are they that mourn,’ and I accepted it. I’ve got nothing that I hadn’t bargained for…The case is too plain. If my house has collapsed at one blow, that is because it was a house of cards. The faith which ‘took these things into account’ was not faith but imagination…If I had really cared, as I thought I did, about the sorrows of the world, I should not have been so overwhelmed when my own sorrow came. It has been an imaginary faith playing with innocuous counters labelled ‘Illness,’ ‘Pain,’ ‘Death,’ and ‘Loneliness.’ I though I trusted the rope until it mattered to me whether it would bear me. Now it matters and I find it didn’t.” (53-54)

Have you ever discovered that your faith wasn’t quite so strong as you thought it was? For me it seems it happens so often. I’m so good at building houses of cards and fooling myself into thinking they’re quite solid after all. But then the wind comes and everything’s fallen to pieces again and all I can pray is “I believe, oh God, help me in my unbelief…”

This very thing came up in Bible study last night when reading John 11. Lazarus dies, despite his sisters' pleading with Jesus to come and healing. Jesus tells his disciples that everything will work out, that this won't end in death for Lazarus, but he does nothing of the sort for poor Mary and Martha. So when he finally comes, four days late, Martha goes out to meet him with this cry: "If only you had been here, my brother would not have died."
But she doesn't stop there. No, she follows up her cry with this: "But even now, I know that God will give you whatever you ask."
And in that moment Martha exemplifies the kind of faith we are called to, faith that cries out to God in the darkest moments: "Even now, I know that you will deliver me."

I believe, oh God, help me in my unbelief