Four of my happiest memories involve the combination of a reflection on some kind of literature and a deep immersion in creation. The conspiracy of nature and literature.
The first was during a snowstorm in the winter of 2007 or 2008. The “immersion,” in this case, was literal: we could not go outside. The blizzard outside was juxtaposed sharply with the warmth of our family’s fireplace, and it was in this setting that I read C.S. Lewis’s The Great Divorce for the first time. The experience changed my life: it began a lifelong friendship with “Jack” that has never waned.
The second happy memory was in 2015. My wife and I were on holiday in Florida for a “babymoon”; one last trip with just the two of us before the arrival of our firstborn. In this instance, the setting was a sandy beach, and the book—unsurprisingly—was another Lewis classic: Perelandra. Lewis’s description of that otherworldly ocean on Venus transfigured the Gulf of Mexico before my eyes. The biblical association with that word “transfigured” is fitting. Like in the case of the three disciples looking on at the transfiguration of our Lord, it was not an alien glory I saw when I looked up from the page to see the ocean lapping up on the shore in front of me; rather, like Peter and James and John, I was given eyes to see the grandeur that was already there. Lewis’s description of the wonder of Venus baptized my imagination, and I came up with my perspective shifted; sort of tilted slightly. The readjustment was, to mix metaphors, chiropractic. Lewis exposed the hunchback condition that made me see the world askew. From that off-kilter vantage, I imagined our world was mundane. But Lewis’s description of floating islands and sweet water and satisfying fruit snapped me into alignment so I could now see the world upright. Venus, in the literary hands of Lewis, was a deliciously wondrous place; but he was simply copying the Mind of the Maker, who has written us all into a story no less magical.
The third memory was the occasion for this piece I wrote a couple of years ago. As I mention in that post, the setting was the wide countryside of northern Virginia, as the hills and trees swallowed me up in a fire-fly-studded evening blanket to the chorus of tree frogs and crickets. As I listened to the praise of creation, offering up my own accompaniment with the “incense” of a pipe and tobacco, I contemplated Dante’s Divine Comedy. In this memory, like the in the others, I was stabbed with joy. God’s art (the natural world), and God’s art’s art (the words of man), once again conspired to raise me to the painfully aching heights of earthly happiness.
Experiencing Northernness
The last memory I have in mind occurred last month. The setting? The Scottish Highlands: a rocky cove with a mountainous slope leading to rolling hills and roving sheep to my back, and the crashing waves of the North Sea to my front. There on that stony beach, for maybe the first time, I think I understood what Lewis meant by “northernness”; the Scottish air roused it from somewhere deep in my chest. This particular memory is sweet because, despite it being August, the salty-wet breeze was brisk and chilly. Why is this fact so special? Well, I live in the Arabian desert. You have to understand, it’s no exaggeration to say that, with perhaps a couple of exceptions, I have not felt a naturally crisp breeze in three years. Every summer my family and I return to the U.S., but we are no less likely to feel cold in the U.S. during the summer months than we are here in Abu Dhabi in the winter months (which, in case it’s not obvious, is not very likely). But this year, we had a brief stint in Scotland before returning to the UAE. As it turns out, the hottest day in Scotland is not all that hot.
So, the Scottish Highlands and the Northern Sea was the setting for this happy memory. The book, in this case, was Thomas Treherne’s Centuries. As an aside, I should point out that Lewis haunts all four of these happy memories. It was his pen that stabbed me with joy in the first two memories, and the quills of two of his favorite influences—Dante and Traherne—that did the same in the last two. In fact, I had picked up Traherne at a bookstore in Inverness the day prior for no other reason than that I knew Lewis loved his writing. If he was good enough for Lewis, who was I to decline picking up the beautifully battered old volume? It didn’t take long before I found insights that suggested Traherne’s influence on old Clive. “Prize the first: and you shall enjoy the residue: Glory, Dominion, Power, Wisdom, Honor, Angels, Souls, Kingdoms, Ages.”[1] Of course, this is Lewis’s “First and Second Things” in a 17th century register.
Traherne on Contentment and the Gift of All
Traherne’s style is somewhat mesmerizing. He doesn’t really reason in a step-by-step way (unlike Lewis); rather, he sort of rhapsodizes. This makes Centuries the kind of book that resists any form of skimming. You can’t glaze over the top of his words, picking up the point as you go. If you try, you will go mad. But if you give in and let yourself melt into his pros, you are rewarded with the edifying reflections of a meanderer, who routinely and surprisingly makes his way into insights like this one:
For there is a disease in him who despiseth present mercies, which till it be cured, he can never be happy. He esteemeth nothing that he hath, but is ever gaping after more: which when he hath he despiseth in like manner. Insatiableness is good, but not ingratitude.[2]
Traherne goes on to say, in the same section of the book:
Can any ingratitude be more damned than that which is fed by benefits? Or folly greater than that which bereaveth us of infinite treasures? They despise them merely because they have them: And invent ways to make themselves miserable in the presence of riches. They study a thousand newfangled treasures, which God never made: and then grieve and repine that they be not happy. They dote on their own works, and neglect God’s which are full of majesty, riches, and wisdom.[3]
Such commentary is, of course, a cutting damnation for much of our world today. We would be hard-pressed to come up with a better description for our trans-everything age—with its hedonism, its abortion, its therapeutic navel-gazing, and its overall disposition to self-worship—than the one Traherne gives here. We “study a thousand newfangled treasures, which God never made: and then grieve and repine that we are not happy.” Contentment is an alien concept for our world.
This theme of contentment is really the secret to Traherne’s first “century” (a series of 100 reflections). In them, Traherne invites the reader to see the whole world—its parts and its sum—as a gift, hand-made and clearly addressed, from God to the individual soul. Eventually, he will flush out this idea with theological precision to show that he is not some proto-self-help guru. Traherne urges his reader to find in God, above all else, the absolute source of satisfaction. In loving God above all else, Traherne believes, the individual will love God in all else—he will come to enjoy God in and through all things. Thus, Traherne writes, in the spirit of celebrating the “communion of the saints:”
O let me so long eye Thee, till I be turned into Thee, and look upon me till Thou art formed in me, that I may be a mirror of Thy brightness, an habitation of Thy Love, and a temple of Thy glory. That all Thy Saints might live in me, and I in them: enjoying all their felicities, joys, and treasures.[4]
On that rocky beach in Scotland, I read these words, and my heart sang. They rang out with an “amen” to Traherne’s prayer. I looked up from the book and looked out at the endless ocean and cloudy sky, as Northernness beckoned forth from me something like bravery. And I thought, “This moment is mine—a gift from your hand, God. Thank you. In loving you I love what you love, and surely you love this.” I then looked over my shoulder and nearly burst into happy tears. The steep cliff in the distance was foregrounded by the bothy (the Scottish term for “little beach hut”); standing directly in front of it was my wife and my 17-month-old daughter, and between the rock on which I sat and my girls were my three sons, scattered across the beach collecting shells. My boys were heedless of everything but the next find, and my daughter’s rosy nose and wind-lashed cheeks were directed toward her daddy. Even from that distance I could see her little smile. Beauty upon beauty upon beauty. I thought I would burst. I was intoxicated with delight. The stab of joy was so sharp and sudden that the sound of my own laugh came as a surprise to me.
[1] Traherne, Centuries, I.21
[2] Traherne, Centuries, I.21
[3] Traherne, Centuries, I.31
[4] Traherne, Centuries, I.87