I, like C. S. Lewis, did not start my life with a robust sense of the afterlife. So, when I became a Christian a college--and even many years thereafter--this key question loomed (and still does at times): What do I do when I stand before my own death? And what do I really hold to when someone dies whom I truly love? Lewis grappled profoundly with that question when his wife, Helen Joy Davidman, died. (Need I add that it's a question we all will face.) You can see the poem Lewis wrote in response on his wife's tombstone.
While on a post-college celebratory vacation to France, I can remember reading Lewis’s insights about the afterlife from Reflections on the Psalms, that knocked me off my metaphorical feet. He pointed out human beings are not made for time, but instead, for eternal life. And I remember several years later in 1997--when I had to preach my first Easter sermon and sought to somehow make our hope for another, better life something real and vital for the congregation--I turned to Lewis to help me demonstrate where our recurrent human experience resonates resurrection. Here's that passage:
We are so little reconciled to time that we are even astonished at it. “How he’s grown!” we exclaim, “How time flies!” as though the universal form of our experience were again and again a novelty. It is as strange as if a fish were repeatedly surprised at the wetness of water. And that would be strange indeed; unless of course the fish were destined to become, one day, a land animal.That passage is transcendent for me. Through it, I feel the reason and importance for the afterlife. But does it work for you? I'm curious....
4 comments:
Interesting subject. I am 70 years old and this is something I think about more often than not. I don't dwell upon it and I am not afraid of it; I simply think about death philosophically as it were. I remember quite clearly the time that, at the age of 35, I underwent exploratory surgery for suspected lung cancer. I was panicked! But as the hour for surgery approached, I felt a deep calm come over me. (No, it wasn't the drugs) I simply knew that my life, or my death, was in God's good hands.
There was no cancer and I have lived an additional 35 years, yet that moment of clarity remains. I think I am blessed by it as death holds no fear for me. In fact I find the whole aging process to be interesting. I may have another ten years, even twenty plus...yet it could happen tomorrow.
True; physical limitations and pain are part of aging (mine are minor) and they wear you down at times, making the thought of heaven very attractive and you can see why some might want to leave this life early and you wish them Godspeed. And His blessing...
Do I have doubts at times? I'm human and I do. But at the end of the day, figuratively, I can't imagine life or death without God.
I am rediscovering Lewis (now reading "Lewis' Dangerous Idea"). Your comment are echoed in my eulogy for my mother. I post only a part of it here.
:http://billswondershow.com/blog/poetry/eulogy-for-my-mom
...Grief swallows all other hungers.
My heart has been as a balled fist
poised in tension to pound
but never finding that uncoiling relief.
People mean well when they say,
“She’s in a better place,”
but there is no comfort in believing someone is
“better off without you”....
But perhaps she is not with out me.
Perhaps it is only I that am without her.
Perhaps, at our journey’s end things look differently.
The most precious moments to remember are the ones full of the ordinary and mundane…but our lives were never meant to be merely mundane. Life is change. And my mom’s middle name Enid is about that.
As she and I grew older, our relationship changed even though I was always her son. Looking back over the decades, it seems at each stage of our lives, one person had passed away and another was before us. Ruth, the young girl had been swallowed up by the woman and the woman was swallowed up by the mother and each time she was always becoming something more…and we are told the Death shall be swallowed up in final Victory. Relationships change as people change. What she has become now has changed our relationship drastically, but has not ended it.
For even though these bodies are a part of nature
death gives evidence these bodies are not the source of life itself.
Life. Her middle name Enid was Life
The essence of life has never been a passive union with the universe. Rather it pushes back the weight of earth. It alters natures patterns irrevocably and LIFE supersedes nature with it’s force of passion. As Jesus told Martha, Resurrection is NOT something waiting for us in some future time after death. Resurrection is the constant transforming power from the one source of Life itself. And my mom was full of passion for life. She would not embrace death as some friend, but saw it as Saint Paul did in I Corinthians 15:26, “Death is an enemy.” Ruth embraced LIFE and she embraced Jesus. For my mom’s middle name was ENID.
She was full of faith and full of fears…but in her that was no contradiction. She cared deeply about things. She cared until it hurt. She cared with anger, and tears and joy and silly songs and worry and every fiber there was. Ruth’s middle name was Enid—she was a force of life itself and of loving.
When she was so frail I had to feed her, she still found ways to care for me. I didn’t understand it at the time, but she would always remind me, “be careful..don’t bump your head” even when the object was of little danger. She needed to watch out for me and care for me. My mom’s middle name was Enid.
Each of us must find our balance with death…but we don’t need to live in accordance with it’s dictates. Death need not rule over us.
Death is not a part of Life. Life has no part in death.
Death cannot contain life. My mom’s life is evidence of that.
Death has shown it’s hand empty.
My mom’s middle name was Enid.
And I will forever see her dancing with her toes singing:
“I get to go home…I get to go home…”
Bill Jackson
-Oroville CA
A friend directed me to your blog. I am rediscovering Lewis (now reading "Lewis' Dangerous Idea"). My best response to this post is what I said at my mother's funeral. You can read it on my blog, but a few quotes from it are:
Looking back over the decades, it seems at each stage of our lives, one person had passed away and another was before us. Ruth, the young girl had been swallowed up by the woman and the woman was swallowed up by the mother and each time she was always becoming something more…and we are told the Death shall be swallowed up in final Victory. Relationships change as people change. What she has become now has changed our relationship drastically, but has not ended it.
For even though these bodies are a part of nature
death gives evidence these bodies are not the source of life itself. The essence of life has never been a passive union with the universe. Rather it pushes back the weight of earth. It alters natures patterns irrevocably and LIFE supersedes nature with it’s force of passion...
Each of us must find our balance with death…but we don’t need to live in accordance with it’s dictates. Death need not rule over us.
Death is not a part of Life. Life has no part in death.
Death cannot contain life. My mom’s life is evidence of that. Death has shown it’s hand empty.
http://billswondershow.com/blog/poetry/eulogy-for-my-mom
Thanks for this insightful post. I happened to find it because you included the picture of Joy's tombstone.
I'm currently doing quotes from A Grief Observed at my daily readings from Lewis blog called Mere C.S. Lewis. You might like it if you'd like to start your day with a daily jolt of java from Jack!
Post a Comment