Epiphany: CS Lewis

There some moments in life when this world is seemingly penetrated by another. As though there were a chink in space-time and something flashes through the gap, which instantly closes again and we are left with an indescribable longing. We may try to dismiss these experiences, but no amount of rationality can fully erase or subdue the ache that has been planted deep in our souls. 

In his biography, "Suprised by Joy", CS Lewis records two such moments from his childhood when he was about 7 or 8 years old.

As I stood beside a flowering currant Bush on a summer day, there suddenly arose in me, without warning, as if from a depth not of years but of centuries, the memory of (an) earlier morning at the Old House where my brother had brought his toy garden into the nursery. It is difficult to find words strong enough for the sensation which came over me. It was a sensation, of course, of desire. The desire for what? Not certainly for a biscuit tin filled with moss. And before I knew what I desired, the desire itself was gone, the whole glimpse withdrawn, the world turned commonplace again. Or only stirred by a longing for the longing that had just ceased. It had taken only a moment of time, and in a certain sense, everything else that had ever happened to me was insignificant in comparison.

One day he was casually reading and came to these words:

“I heard a voice that cried, Balder The Beautiful is dead, is dead.” 

He writes: 

“I knew nothing about Balder, but instantly I was uplifted into huge regions of northern sky. I desired, with almost sickening intensity, something never to be described … and then, as in other examples, found myself at the very same moment already falling out of that desire and wishing I was back in it.

Lewis had been reading Longfellow's Tegner's Drapa.

I heard a voice, that cried,
"Balder the Beautiful
Is dead, is dead!"
And through the misty air
Passed like the mournful cry
Of sunward sailing cranes.

I saw the pallid corpse
Of the dead sun
Borne through the Northern sky.
Blasts from Niffelheim
Lifted the sheeted mists
Around him as he passed.

And the voice forever cried,
"Balder the Beautiful
Is dead, is dead!"
And died away
Through the dreary night,
In accents of despair.

In his twenties he was a student at Oxford and on  train journey:

I and one porter had the long, timbered platform of Leatherhead station to ourselves. …Turning to the bookstall, I picked out an Everyman in a dirty jacket. Phantasies, a faerie Romance, George MacDonald. Then the train came in. I can still remember the voice of the porter calling out the village names, Saxon and sweet as a nut--"Bookham, Effingham, Horsley train". That evening I began to read my new book.

It is as if I were carried sleeping across the frontier, or as if I had died in the old country and could never remember how I came alive in the new. …I did not yet know (and I was long in learning) the name of the new quality, the bright shadow, that rested on the travels of Anodos. I do now. It was Holiness. .. .. I had not the faintest notion what I had let myself in for by buying Phantastes.

At the end of Suprised by Joy, Lewis has this to say about those early epiphanies:

But what, in conclusion, of Joy? for that, after all, is what the story has mainly been about. To tell you the truth, the subject has lost nearly all interest for me since I became a Christian. .... It was valuable only as a pointer to something other and outer. While that other was in doubt, the pointer naturally loomed large in my thoughts. When we are lost in the woods the sight of a signpost is a great matter. He who first sees it cries, "Look!" The whole party gathers round and stares. But when we have found the road and are passing signposts every few miles, we shall not stop and stare. 

Lewis's Spiritual Journey is His alone

It is a big mistake to read CS Lewis' spiritual journey and wish to emulate it. I fell into this trap time and time again, reading biographies of Christians who had amazing tales to tell and longing to stand in their shoes. I have at last learned such longings are futile and lead only to disappointment and a sense of failure.

Every person is not only unique physically but also spiritually - if you allow such a term. The stories told about Jesus are nearly all encounters with a single person and his response to that individual, man or woman, rich or poor, Jew or Roman, was unique to them. When Peter, asked him, “But Lord, what about this man?” Jesus replied, “If I will that he remains till I come, what is that to you? You follow Me."

Finally, being spiritual and embarking on a spiritual journey does not require being religious or joining a religious faith. Trying to conform to a set of doctrines may hamper rather than hinder your unique journey.

CS Lewis (29 November 1898 – 22 November 1963) was a scholar of Literature, Philosophy and Medieval English at Oxford and Cambridge Universities. He was a prolific writer, including the Narnia stories and many books of Christian theology and apologetics.