I am amused tonight to look back over my old posts on this blog. I established this little space to use as a storyboard, I suppose. If I could throw my hopes and ideas and worries upon this black square maybe I’d be able to stand back, observe them, understand them, and in a flurry move all the index cards this way and that until the story included the three acts, the joys and sorrows, the character development, the action, the intensity, the romance that I wanted.
Many of my last posts were about the “blank slate” I was facing after I left my job at the Pepperdine law school to live at home and “take my time about things” for the duration of one year. I entered the time with very few actual goals. I wanted to apply for and be admitted to a graduate program, both of which, praise the Lord, have come to pass. But other than that, I think my aim was to make peace with two of my “selves” who seemed to constantly push against one another – the one that aches to sit, observe, pray, and listen, and the one that never stops striving to win, achieve, see, do, and dominate.
Shortly before his conversion to Christianity, C. S. Lewis wrote a poem called “Reason.” I’ve copied the first fourteen lines here:
Set on the soul’s acropolis the reason stands
A virgin arm’d, commercing with celestial light,
And he who sins against her has defiled his own
Virginity; no cleansing makes his garment white;
So clear is reason. But how dark, imagining,
Warm, dark, obscure and infinite, daughter of Night:
Dark is her brow, the beauty of her eyes with sleep
Is loaded, and her pains are long, and her delight.
Tempt not Athene. Wound not in her fertile pains
Demeter, not rebel against her mother-right.
Oh who will reconcile in me both maid and mother,
Who will make in me a concord of the depth and height?
Who make imagination’s dim exploring touch
Ever report the same as intellectual sight?
(Before I continue, I must give credit to Malcolm Guite for first drawing my attention to this poem and explaining the meaning of the “maid and mother” paradox I will discuss below. His excellent essay about which is in the Cambridge Companion to C.S. Lewis.)
Lewis begins by discussing the stark world of “reason” – the Athens of the soul. The part that looks logically upon all things. The part that looks upon the defiled and determines that “no cleansing can make his garment white.” The “maid.”
Lewis then uses a delicious succession of adjectives to describe the alternative: “warm, dark, obscure and infinite…/her pains are long, and her delight.” The “mother.” The part that imagines and hopes for the unreasonable. The foggy part that seems to constantly be in a state of vague yet formidable longing.
However shall these warring components of our souls make peace? This particular wording is essential – the Virgin Mary, of course, was both maid and mother when Christ was born. In Him, through her, cold logic and warm imagination not only coexist but are dependent on one another. Let us here feel the weight of the word “reconciliation.” In the name of Love, our faults are reconciled against the debt we owe. In the name of love, our contradictory desires in life no longer battle but pull one another ever higher and higher. In the name of Love, two truths that disagree meet in Truth.
During my “year off,” I did not take a road trip across the United States. I did not backpack Southeast Asia. I did not write a novel. What did I do? I fasted.
Technically my fasting lasted from Ash Wednesday until Easter (I did the Daniel Fast for the duration of Lent), but truly this entire year has been a fast from the lifestyle I have lead for as long as I can remember. Except for my grad school applications, I competed for absolutely nothing and had no practical responsibilities whatsoever.
Donald S. Whitney says fasting "hoists the sails of the soul in hopes of catching the gracious winds of God's spirit." And oh, have I. This year my sails have learned to undulate with billowing gusts of grace upon grace as they slice through the wild and untamed winds of God’s spirit. My spirit is unburdened and trusting, and I have never felt more humble or more empowered at the same time. I have never felt more free yet more controlled. See? Paradox.
I once read about a Sufi master who taught, "One has achieved wisdom when he experiences immediate joy when sudden disappointment hits." I'm still working on the "immediate" part, but I learned this year that sorrow is, in the long run, an occasion for greater joy. Anxiety is an opportunity for reconciliation, and conviction of wrongs only the arrival of hope that all paths will be made straight. This year my restless heart has found its true rest. As I jump back into busy life, I pray this peace will endure. But if not, I will speak praise for the more stately chambers my God will urge my soul to one day inhabit.
