C.S. Lewis: What We Want

We do not want merely to see beauty, though, God knows, even this is bounty enough. We want something else which can hardly be put into words--to be united with the beauty we see, to pass into it, to receive it into ourselves, to bathe in it, to become part of it. --C.S. Lewis

I was contemplating Clive's words as I drove up the California coast with the munchkins on Saturday toward William H. Hearst State Beach. The hills are alive with the sound of music (Sorry, Julie Andrews is a staple in our home. . . ). Luminiscent green grass. Bright blue sky. Waves crashing, one after the other. Breathtakingly gorgeous.

I believe C.S. Lewis is right. I want more than to see, I want to experience deeper. Seeing is part of experience, but it feels like there is something more beyond a barrier I can't get through. Perhaps it is my fallen faculties that keep me from it. There is yet an unsatisfied longing. I know that this beauty of the Central Coast is but a derivative beauty, a reverberation from the Source, an echo of the one who is truly BEAUTIFUL.

In Your presence is fullness of joy; In Your right hand there are pleasures forever. --Psalm 16:11

One thing I have asked from the LORD, that I shall seek: That I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, To behold the beauty of the LORD. . . --Psalm 27:4

One day. . .
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The C. S. Lewis Foundation, as part of the C.S. Lewis Summer Institute, is hosting a conference this summer, July 24-August 5, entitled Making All Things New: The Good, the True, and the Beautiful in the 21st Century. Susie and I so badly wish we could go, but alas, this is not the season for such frivolities. Not with three little ones and another on the way. Someone should go!