What I've been Reading

Like I said in my last blog--this summer (well, July and some of August) I have filled just about all of my spare time with reading (not blogging), so I thought I'd share with you the books I've read just in case anyone's interested.

I of course read Bonds that Make us Free (July's book of the month), which again everyone should read. It was absolutely incredible. Just out of curiosity, has anyone else finished it yet?

I read Blood Brothers by Elias Chacour, which Bruce recomended to me. I wouldn't call it a fast read, but I found it completely fascinating. It goes into the details of the unrest in the middle East while following its author, Chacour (the first Palestinian to earn a degree from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem who believes that Jews and Palestinians can live in peace), as child through adulthood.

Next, I found Khaled Hosseini's latest book, A Thousand Splendid Suns at Costco and had to buy it after what Wendy said about it being better than The Kite Runner (is that possible?). It was again another book I could not put down. Up until reading A Thousand Splendid Suns, I had never cried while reading a book, but this book broke me--it was absolutely heart wrenching, possibly more so than The Kite Runner. The book goes through the lives of two women whose paths start out very differently but become entangled by circumstance. It is not a feel good kind of book, however it had a profound affect on me--when Noah and I lived in China (2001), we bordered Afghanistan during the time that a portion of this book was written and I was completely oblivious to what was happening so close, and to how different my life was in comparison to the women I neighbored. It sure made me re-examine a few things. It was a brilliant book, though I still prefer The Kite Runner, however I am so glad I read it.

After A Thousand Splendid Suns, I took a bit of a break from the life-changing novel and read some fun no-brainers:

Harry Potter VII: Just because: who didn't. It was fun, filled a lot of the gaps that some of the previous Potter books hadn't and it brought into question for me--why are these books such a big deal? I mean, don't get me wrong, they're fun and J.K. Rowling got a whole lot of kids reading, but what is it about this story that made it a world-wide sensation? It's honestly beyond me.

Twilight: this is the part of my summer reading that I'm honestly embarrassed by. After a bunch of people told me that I had to read it, I picked it up (again at Costco). The premise is that a girl falls in love with a vampire (I know, I know, I go from reading Khaled Hosseini's brilliant novels to a mild harlequin romance novel). To be quite honest though, I was hooked! I am quite the sap apparently but I could not (and did not--ask Noah) put it down until I had read it and bought the next book in the series, New Moon (which I also couldn't put down and stayed up till 5 AM to finish). Apparently these books are quite the national sensation (the author, Stephanie Meyer, who graduated from BYU, was interviewed by Good Morning America, will be featured in People Magazine, the books are #1 national best sellers and Twilight is in discussion to become a movie). You can download excerpts here to see if you're as much as a sap as I was. The third book of the series came out just last Wednesday, Eclipse (finished that one in a day as well), and every book store in Utah Valley (but BYU--thank goodness) sold out in the first half hour. At Barns and Noble, they had even sold books that had been reserved for months (there were a lot of unhappy people). So, if you're up for a supernatural love story that will not make you a better person, but will keep you entertained (and slightly on edge), look no further.

One of the Most Life Changing Books I have EVER read!

I started reading this book last week and have been completely blown over by it! It honestly may have changed my life. Every couple should read this, everyone who thinks they're a victim of their circumstance should read this, everyone who thinks they are incapable of change should read this. Seriously, EVERYONE should read this!

So the book of the month for July is C. Terry Warner's Bonds that Make us Free. It is available on Amazon, or at any major bookstore. Read it, you'll be so glad you did!

The Kite Runner

Finally, the long awaited discussion on The Kite Runner! I must say, for weeks after reading it, I couldn't stop thinking about it. I tried picking up other books but they all seemed bland to me after reading such a well crafted novel. I read the book in a total of about 2 days (Noah was a single parent during that time--sorry Noah).

So what makes it so great? I acknowledge that it's not exactly a feel-good kind of book (although I love the redemption of the main character at the end), it has some rather graphic imagery and some difficult subjects. However, you can't help but become captured by the characters, scenery (much of which brought me back to the portion of China where Noah and I lived shortly after getting married--we bordered Afghanistan) and the themes (friendship, betrayal, lies, escape, and finally redemption).

Do you who have read the book agree that it was an incredible book, or did you hate it?

Some Last thoughts on The Measure of a Man

Hopefully everyone has had a chance to finish The Measure of a Man because I'm ready to move in, but first, some last thoughts . . .
Reading this book has given me immense respect for Sidney Poitier and his role in narrowing the racial divide--not that we're finished, but we're leaps beyond where we were, and I do think a large part of that is due to Mr. Poitier.

I loved the passage on page 125,

"If I were asked for an evaluation of myself, I would readily admit to my sins, such as they are, to my weaknesses, my frailties, my shortcomings. I do that all the time, and the reason I can do that and not be ashamed is that I'm willing almost always to try my best. And when I fall short of my reach for something after having tried my best--even when I fall so short that my attempt winds up in sinful behavior--or when my weaknesses tug at my ankles, I accept that. I mean, I accept that failing, but I can't accept my sinfulness, my weaknesses, my frailties unless I've really tried to reach above them."

I would say that the only things I really had a problem with in this book were two things: 1) for being as self respecting as he is, I was often surprised with his frequent use of the "F" word and 2) I had a really hard time with the portion of the book when he discusses leaving his wife because he fell in love with another woman. I know this happens all the time--especially in Hollywood--but I just ached for that woman! I'm now seeing friends of mine going through divorces because their husbands (I'm waiting on seeing any wives do this but I know it happens) fell out of love with them and it truly makes me mad because in most cases, there are young children involved. Don't get me wrong, I will be the first to admit that divorce has its place, but come on! Falling out of love is not something that just happens, it's a choice (sometimes two-party). I was, however, impressed with the stance Mr. Poitier took on his divorce--he in no way glorified it, he showed the rift it put between him and his children, and I think put it in a light where you could see that it was one of the big regrets of his life. Going back to the quoted passage, I think it is one of those flaws he cannot accept but that he is continually trying to move beyond and I appreciated that.

Now onto the next book . . .

I picked this book up yesterday and have had a hard time putting it down. Here's a brief summary by the New York Times Book Review:

"This powerful first novel . . .tells a story of fierce cruelty and fierce yet redeeming love. Both transform the life of Amir, [a] privileged young narrator, who comes of age during the last peaceful days of the monarchy [in Afghanistan], just before his country's revolution and its invasion by Russian forces. But political events, even as dramatic as the ones that are presented in The Kite Runner, are only a part of this story. In The Kite Runner, Kaled Hosseini gives us a vivid and engaging story that reminds us how long his people have been struggling to triumph over the forces of violence--forces that continue to threaten them even today."

The Kite Runner is available here or at any major bookstore.

Back in the Groove . . . Hopefully

If you haven't already guessed, the last few weeks have been abnormally chaotic, hence my slacking in the blogging arena.

Update: My new kitchen is in! We decided to go for granite tile instead of the slab to save a little money, time and energy and so far it's looking pretty sweet (it's not completely finished, but it's functioning and after 3 weeks without a kitchen, that's a blessing in itself). We've still got a few things left to do (Noah's going to make me a stainless steel hood vent to save $600, we've still got to tile the back splash and finish the elevated bar on the island). I'll post on the kitchen when it's completed which hopefully won't take too long.

In regards to this month's book, Sidney Poitier's The Measure of a Man, I've decided to extend the book into April because quite frankly I haven't had much free time available because of all the remodeling going on. For those of you who are on the ball and have begun (or finished) the book, feel free to leave your comments to get the rest of us excited about reading the it!

A Few Last Words on Asher Lev

I have finished reading My Name is Asher Lev and a few things have struck me. First of all, is it wrong to focus so much on one talent that we lose sight of other gifts we have been given? Second, should our art (what ever it may be) be all consuming regardless of the barriers it puts up between us and others (Asher and his father)? Last of all, the portion of the book that stood out most to me is where Asher paints a "fasle painting" and is told by his mentor, "it reeks of cowardice and indecision. In art, cowardice and indecision can be seen in every stroke of a brush. If you hate him [Asher's classmate], paint your hatred or do not paint him at all. One must not paint everything one feels. But once you decide to paint something, you must paint the truth or you will paint green rot."

I found this to be true just last saturday when I was asked to sing a song that in my oppinion is not good music and should not ever be sung. I had to sing it a dozen times before I could get through it without laughing. Would it have been better for me to be snooty and refuse to sing the song once I found out who the composer was or should we allow ourselves to deliberately paint green rot when others ask us to so we aren't seen as being elitist?

In art, I don't immagine that I will ever own a Thomas Kinkade (or any of the hundreds of knockoffs), because to me (I know this may be quite controversial as his prints are in every other house in America) he paints green rot. I don't believe he started out that way, perhaps it was his popularity that pushed him there, in any case, it is when an artist stops painting what is important to him, and paints only what is appealing to the consumer that he creates a "false painting."
To me Van Gough is a true artist. He is able to convey emotion in a way few other artists have been able to capture.
One of my favorite artists is Mary Cassatt. Most of her paintings depict mothers with their children in every day life--no glammor, no forced emotion, no improving on God's work and yet to me her paintings are far more moving than Kinkade will ever be.

My father-in-law who is also a very gifted artist did a painting of his wife holding their son Zach as a child that I absolutely love for the same reasons I love Cassatt. Some day, you'll be able to buy his prints online, but for now only a select few are privey to his art work.

Finally: My Name is Asher Lev

Well, seeing how it's already the middle of February, I hope all those who are participating in the book club have received their copy of My Name is Asher Lev. Also, I have decided on next month's book so you can go ahead and order it online and save a little $$$. My father-in-law (at least I think that's who it was--after having two kids, my memory is kind of shot) told me he was going to start reading Sidney Poitier's The Measure of a Man: A Spiritual Autobiography and I thought that would be the perfect book for next month's book. Go here to find the best deal.

Now I am by no means a Chaim Potok expert, just an interested reader, so I'm afraid this month's book blogs will be far less informative than they were when guest blogger Bruce Young took on the C.S. Lewis discussion.

My Name is Asher Lev has been a very relaxing read for me. It's not what I'd call a page-turner, but I've loved reading it none-the-less. The imagery is so vivid (I would argue sometimes over-the-top), that you litterally see the world through new eyes along with Asher as he goes through the process of becoming an artist.

In my own life, through studdying music, I have developed new ears--I hear music and sounds in a way I was unable to before studying it. For example, when I hear someone sing, I no longer just hear a "pretty voice," I hear wobbles in vibrato, nasality, lousy interpretation, I hear when someone goes slightly off key--things I certainly didn't notice or care about prior to studying. So in a sense, my education brought new aspects of music to life for me while destroying others so that I can no longer just sit back and enjoy a piece of music (unless it's really good).

My question to you: Have you had to trade in your eyes for new ones as you've become educated? Are there problems with this--does Asher devote too much of himself to his art and to seeing detail? Do musicians focus too much on critique and not enough on pure enjoyment?

Many Thanks to Bruce Young

I don't think I can say enough about what a fantastic job our first guest blogger has done. I have enjoyed the posts so much and will really miss them. Thank you all for your insightful comments (keep them coming, we haven't started My Name is Asher Lev yet).

Closing Thoughts on The Great Divorce

C. S. Lewis

I'm feeling a bit sad thinking of leaving The Great Divorce for a season. I've truly enjoyed sharing my thoughts and hearing other people's comments. I've especially enjoyed getting to know The Great Divorce again, seeing things I hadn't seen before, and being impressed again by the book's power.

This, my last blog of the series, will focus on some of the book's limitations, some of my doctrinal differences with Lewis, and the personal meaning and value the book has acquired for me. Some readers may find parts of this week's blog a bit negative and nitpicky. But I hope you will not exaggerate the importance of my nitpicking but will instead view it in the context of all the positive things I've said about the book.

I'm tempted to do what Lewis sometimes does and invite you to skip any sections you find unappealing or unhelpful. But be sure to read at least from the section I've called "Back to the title" on to the end of this week's blog.

The book's limitations

Yes, The Great Divorce has a few limitations. I say "limitations" rather than "weaknesses" because no book can do everything, and any book will certainly do some things better than other things. For me, the book's limitations include its oversimplified characters (maybe necessarily so), its emphasis on characters who fail to enter heaven, its episodic structure, some questionable doctrines, and some imbalance (I think) in its picture of heavenly joy.

Wisely, Lewis chose to focus on a dominant problem and a single issue or set of related issues with each character. That's part of what makes the book so effective. But it's good to remember that real people are more complicated than the ones we meet in The Great Divorce. Or maybe another way to put it is that if the characters in the book were real people and we were able to spend more than a few pages with them, we'd likely find more dimensions and complications than are revealed in the book as it stands.

Perhaps a more serious limitation is the book's emphasis on failing to enter heaven. Of all the visitors from hell, only one that we know of (the man with the lizard) chooses to enter into joy. Possibly another one or two do as well. But the book emphasizes the tragic inclination to choose something other than joy and submission to God. Some readers have found the book frightening or even depressing--apparently including Lewis himself. In a letter he wrote the following: "I was rather frightened myself [by the book]--condemned out of my own mouth" (The Collected Letters of C. S. Lewis, volume 2:790).

But I'm sure the negative emphasis is intentional. Lewis's aim in the book was apparently to wake us up to the seriousness of our spiritual condition and especially to the hard fact that misery will inevitably result from clinging to our sins and even from insisting on our "rights" and our dignity. Apparently Lewis wants us to worry--just as he has himself as a character in the book worry--about our own choices and our own spiritual state. That worry may motivate repentance. My main response to the book's emphasis is that it serves a useful purpose but that we also need other books to remind us of other important truths--as, in fact, many of Lewis's other books do.

When I call the book "episodic," I mean it is made up of episodes that are somewhat loosely strung together and that could, in at least some cases, have been put in a different order. Lewis recognized that the book was somewhat episodic: to a degree "the dialogues succeed one another arbitrarily and might have come in any other order and might have gone on a longer or shorter time." Then he says: "Spiritual unity I hope it has: but a book needs musical or architectural unity as well" (Collected Letters 2:648).

I believe the book does have spiritual unity--and a good deal of architectural unity as well. Despite the episodic nature of much of the book, it has something of a plot structure. The earlier episodes are significant but less intensely engaging than the later ones. As the character Lewis begins to question what is going on and to worry over issues of salvation and damnation, he meets--almost exactly half way through the book--a teacher and guide, George Macdonald, who can respond to his concerns. The episodes that follow raise serious questions--why would God condemn a loving mother to hell; should we pity those who choose to be damned--on which Macdonald comments.

The final series of episodes bring the book to a climax as Lewis's questions rise in intensity and as important truths are revealed in response. Lewis learns that God does not arbitrarily condemn anyone to hell--in essence, people do that to themselves. He learns that the mother who wants her son doesn't love too much but too little; that no natural loves--in fact no elements in our natures as they stand--are holy in themselves, but that all of them can be raised to a heavenly state if they are submitted to God. (As Macdonald tells Lewis: "Nothing, not even the best and noblest, can go on as it now is. Nothing, not even what is lowest and most bestial, will not be raised again if it submits to death." And elsewhere: "Every natural love will rise again and live forever in this country: but none will rise again until it has been buried." Lewis has Macdonald explain that if the lizard, i.e., lust, can be turned into something glorious, we can hardly imagine what motherly love might become if it is turned over to God.)

Finally, with the Tragedian and the Dwarf, Lewis learns of the dangers of pitying the damned--the implication being that God, in his wisdom, mercy, and justice, allows people finally to choose misery or joy and that we should not let the wrong choices of others prevent us from choosing joy. This climactic revelation is followed by a kind of vision in which Lewis is shown, in symbolic form, the essential nature of our existence: our eternal selves are like chess players; our choices are the moves we make on the chessboard of time. Then after this vision, the sun begins to rise over the mountains of heaven--with Lewis afraid he is not ready for it--and suddenly he wakes up to find himself back in England of the 1940s, back, that is, on the chessboard of time, working out his eternal destiny through his earthly choices.

And so the book is, in fact, only superficially episodic. There really is an overall shape and unity to the book, especially when we focus on the character Lewis and his journey not only toward understanding human existence generally but toward waking up to the true nature of his own life.

Questionable doctrines?

The limitations I've just noted are mainly ones Lewis himself recognized and maybe are necessary to the purposes of the book. I see a few further limitations that arise from fundamental differences between my understanding of Christian doctrine and Lewis's (as if the two of us belong in the same sentence!).

While almost all of Lewis's points can be translated into terms compatible with Latter-day Saint doctrine, it's good to remember that Lewis and Latter-day Saints differ in important ways. Lewis believed that God (though a specific personal being) created everything out of nothing and is absolutely and eternally different from any of his creatures, including us. Latter-day Saints, by contrast, hold that God became God ("As we are, God once was; as God is, we may become"); that he organized the worlds out of already existing materials; that even our own essential natures are eternal and uncreated, certainly not created out of nothing; and that, though perfect in wisdom, love, power, and goodness, God is the same kind of being we are (as the apostle Paul puts it, "We are the offspring of God" [Acts 17:29]).

This fundamental difference--at least part of which could be summed up in Lewis's emphasis on God as our creator and on Latter-day Saints' emphasis on God as our Father--leads to subtle differences in how we might understand some of the issues raised in The Great Divorce. In many cases, though, the differences will be negligible.

Related to Lewis's view of God is his conception of time. Though he acknowledges that his view does not have a clear basis in the Bible (see Collected Letters 2:775-76: "so far as I know, there are no 'unescapable texts' in Scripture supporting my view of Time"), he holds to the traditional, especially medieval, Christian view, which in turn derives from some strands of Greek philosophy. This view holds that time is essentially an illusion, that in some sense all that we see happening in time has always already happened, and that God--who is outside of time (and outside of space and material conditions in general)--sees all that we think of as happening through time in an eternally unchanging present. I believe Lewis leaves room for ways in which this view could accommodate the reality of choice and change, but he doesn't attempt an explanation, except for the symbolic image of chess players near the end of the book.

In the course of tackling the issue of time and eternity, Lewis has Macdonald try to reconcile freedom of choice, predestination, and universalism (the possibility of universal salvation). The real George Macdonald would probably not have said some of the things Lewis has him say in The Great Divorce. Lewis was aware that Macdonald did not believe in predestination: that he rejected, in other words, the view that God, from all eternity, has selected some for salvation and some for damnation. In fact, Macdonald raised the possibility that God's love might finally bring about the salvation of all of his children. For Lewis, the main problem with Macdonald's view is that it underestimates how crucial human choice is to any possibility of eternal happiness. Some, Lewis believed, will eternally reject the possibility of joy, and that makes hell a necessary, eternal reality. Yet, with his view of time, Lewis also believed that God knows--in a sense, sees, from all eternity--the choices we will make and so in a sense has already determined our destiny. Hence, Lewis allows for a kind of predestination, though a kind he doesn't believe we can currently understand.

One problem with Lewis's view--a problem he has Macdonald acknowledge-- is that "every attempt to see the shape of eternity except through the lens of Time destroys [our] knowledge of Freedom." And the feeling that freedom is only an illusion can lead us to despair or to apathy. Yet, though I believe Lewis's view of time is flawed, even in ways he would not have acknowledged, I find one of the ways he tries to convey it--the chessboard image--appealing. Lewis has Macdonald quote the scripture that says we are "gods" and then uses the chessboard image to suggest that we are much more than the temporal beings we appear to be. Though we may appear to ourselves and to each other like chess pieces on the chessboard of time, we are in reality eternal beings making choices with eternal consequences. Our choices express our "inmost nature." In a sense, we live simultaneously in time and in eternity--or maybe put better, what we think of as time is our temporarily limited view of the true nature of our existence, limited purposely so that we can experience faith, choice, and independent action without being overwhelmed by too much awareness. It is almost (Latter-day Saints would say) as if a veil of forgetfulness has been put over our minds.

Did Lewis misrepresent the nature of heavenly joy?

Besides (according to Lewis) being beyond our full understanding, the ultimate nature of time, eternity, freedom, and destiny is maybe not the concern most relevant to our daily choices, and so most of the book focuses on other things.

But there is one other issue of more present concern on which I think Lewis may be wrong. As the episode of the Tragedian and the Dwarf comes to an end, Lewis suggests that we must not accept the invitation of the damned to pity them, that we must not allow those who finally choose to be miserable to pollute the perfect joy of heaven by manipulating us into feeling miserable along with them.

On the one hand, I think Lewis is making a profoundly true and important point. Yes, self-chosen misery, especially the kind of self-pity displayed by the Tragedian/Dwarf, invites others to join in an unhealthy state of mutually self-destructive co-dependence. Yes, we must resist that invitation. And yes, we show true compassion through the "action of pity," as Lewis puts it, rather than through the "passion of pity," at least the kind of pity the Tragedian/Dwarf is asking for. Still, when Lewis has Sarah Smith say she cannot love what her husband has become and, with the lines "nothing can trouble her joy," suggests that, once the damned have made their final choice, we must forget about them, I think he is overlooking a third possibility: besides either being sucked into the misery of the damned or cutting the strings and letting them go, we can continue to experience godly love and godly sorrow, even for those who have chosen eternal misery.

My difference with Lewis here is probably a matter of emphasis, maybe even a question of tone. In this book, at least, Lewis's picture of heavenly joy seems to me a bit too cheery, even superficial, and maybe, in the end, too focused on one's own joy. I think Lewis does a better job elsewhere: for instance, showing Aslan capable of tears in the Chronicles of Narnia. Maybe in The Great Divorce Lewis wanted to make an important point emphatically and clearly and so exaggerated or oversimplified it a bit. Or maybe he wanted us to understand that goodness consists of much more than indulging in tender emotions (here as in other books, Lewis makes love more an action than an emotion). Still, I believe he gives an incomplete view of godly joy and love.

In one scriptural account, Enoch sees the Lord weep, and he too wonders how the divine nature can be compatible with sorrow. Of those doomed to misery, the Lord asks in response, "wherefore should not the heavens weep, seeing these shall suffer?" (Moses 7:37). It appears that God's joy somehow encompasses grief for those who are lost--they are, after all, his children, not simply creatures who didn't "turn out." To me, it seems that such joy--encompassing compassion and grief, along with stern justice--is deeper and more truly godly than a joy that focuses entirely on the positives and says, in effect, "Well, they made their choice. I need to not let it bother me."

Back to the title

In the first blog in this series, I explained where the title came from. It was Lewis's response to William Blake's The Marriage of Heaven and Hell--or more exactly, to the idea that we can somehow embrace both good and evil. No, says Lewis. We must make a final, decisive choice. If we are to experience joy, we must let go of all that is not heavenly. The "divorce" of the title is thus a great divorce between good and evil. Or perhaps (since this divorce must take place within our own souls) it is our own divorce--our absolute separation--from all that is not godly. The title also points to the great separation between the saved and the damned that will finally be revealed as time fades away and human choices become final. Those who have submitted themselves to God will experience heavenly joy and ultimate reality forever; those who have refused to submit themselves will be locked up forever in their own minds and will have lost, not only heavenly joy and reality, but the realizing of their own potential.

Is Lewis right about this ultimate "great divorce"? In part, but perhaps not entirely. I believe the eternities will be more dynamic, more variegated, and more hopeful than this "great separation" idea suggests--there will be progression, degrees of glory, and ultimately very few condemned to eternal misery. (I'm grateful for Boyd K. Packer's assurance that, "Save for those few who defect to perdition after having known a fulness, there is no habit, no addiction, no rebellion, no transgression, no offense exempted from the promise of complete forgiveness.") Maybe a further dose of George Macdonald's views would make Lewis's picture closer to the truth.

Yet I also believe that Lewis's stark picture of our choices and their consequences is helpful--maybe like those scriptures that warn us of the horrific consequences of sin. As long as this stark picture doesn't make us unhealthily anxious, as long as it is balanced by an assurance of God's love, it can help produce "godly sorrow" that "worketh repentance unto salvation" (2 Corinthians 7:10). It is crucial for us to recognize that our eternal condition will depend on our choices and that we cannot forever "procrastinate the day of our repentance." One of the most valuable elements of The Great Divorce is its emphasis on what we must do now: "There is no meantime. . . . We are not playing now. . . . There is no other day. All days are present now." These lines from the book remind us that the choices we are making now--today, this very moment--are creating the future we will experience.

That leads me to some closing words on the book's value and impact. Despite its limitations, The Great Divorce remains one of my favorite books by Lewis, one worth rereading at least every few years. The episodes and descriptions are vivid and memorable. The style is delightful, ranging from beautifully crafted paragraphs to brief statements packed with wit and insight. Though we spend only a few pages with each character, Lewis's analysis is so penetrating and perceptive that we feel we truly know the characters and find it almost impossible to forget them. The book encompasses a range of emotions, including humor, horror, anxiety, hope, compassion, frustration, and transcendent joy. Its symbolism possesses mythic depth and power. And it has brilliant insights about the most important eternal and earthly matters, presented with startling clarity.

The book's greatest value, I believe, is its power to provoke self-awareness and a desire to change. I see my own flaws, to one degree or another, in most of the characters, and Lewis succeeds in making those flaws so ridiculous, so obviously destructive, in some cases so horrifying or so hauntingly pathetic, that I feel an intense desire to be rid of them. By his emphasis on total submission, on the need to undergo a kind of death in order to experience a resurrection of all that can be good in me, Lewis encourages me to turn to God humbly and penitently and seek that perfect submission. There is much in my character, habits, and desires that I have a hard time letting go of, but reading The Great Divorce keeps the need to do more letting go present in my mind.

And though much of the book emphasizes the characters' failure to submit, the occasional moments of submission and their glorious results encourage hope and increase my desire to change. In the last pages of another of his books--Mere Christianity, originally written for radio broadcast in the early 1940s, shortly before he embarked on The Great Divorce--Lewis affirms that giving up ourselves will make possible the unfolding of our true selves. "But," Lewis concludes, "there must be a real giving up of the self. . . . Your real, new self . . . will not come as long as you are looking for it. It will come when you are looking for Him," that is, for Christ. "Give up yourself, and you will find your real self. Lose your life and you will save it. Submit to death, death of your ambitions and favourite wishes every day and death of your whole body in the end: submit with every fibre of your being, and you will find eternal life. Keep back nothing. Nothing that you have not given away will be really yours. Nothing in you that has not died will ever be raised from the dead. Look for yourself, and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin, and decay. But look for Christ and you will find Him, and with Him everything else thrown in."

With its memorable specific examples and engaging symbolism, The Great Divorce can be read as an expanded commentary on that passage, translated into narrative form.

Last call for comments

With only a few days now before another book will replace The Great Divorce as the focus of this online book club, I hope many of you will add your comments. Do you agree with my assessment of The Great Divorce? Are there passages you'd like to comment on or anything you'd like to share about how you have connected with the book or how it has affected you?

In addition to making this last call for comments, I want to thank all of you who have participated for the enjoyable, instructive, and inspiring time we've spent together.

Bruce Young is Awesome!

Thank you so much Bruce for these amazing blogs, I don't know what we'll do with out this breath of fresh air after next week.

Hope you've all read the book by now, otherwise you're missing out on one Hell of a discussion (I mean that literally by the way).

The Great Divorce: Later Episodes and Major Themes

In this, my third guest blog on The Great Divorce I'll be saying a few things about the later episodes in the book (that is, mainly after the appearance of George Macdonald as a character) and about some of the major themes. We're nearing the end of our time with The Great Divorce. I'll be doing just one more guest blog after this one. I hope to post it by Sunday so you'll have time to make some final comments and then move on to February's book (Chaim Potok's My Name Is Asher Lev).

Later episodes in The Great Divorce

In last week's blog I discussed a few of the earlier episodes: the Big Ghost who wants his "rights," the Episcopal Ghost, Ikey (who is trying to take apples back to hell), and two women (the embarrassed one and the flirtatious one) who appear just before and just after George Macdonald's entry on the scene as a guide and teacher for the character Lewis.

This week we'll turn to later episodes in which we meet an artist, a woman who wants her husband Robert, a woman who wants her son Michael, an oily man with a red lizard on his shoulder, and the Tragedian and the Dwarf (husband of Sarah Smith, who has already been mentioned admiringly in readers' comments over the past couple of weeks). Of course I'll only be scratching the surface of what could be said about these episodes.

The artist obviously has an ego problem: despite his claim not to be concerned about his reputation, he explodes with indignation when he learns that his "side" in an artistic controversy on earth is losing, and he says he wants to go back to write an article or start a journal to promote his cause. Lewis uses this episode to make some profound points about art and humility. The Spirit who meets the artist doesn't demand that he give up his art, though he needs to stop clinging to it like a possession; rather, he needs to give up worrying about himself. He needs to remember what first stirred his interest in art: a love of light, which of course is part of the glorious reality God has created. He exemplifies a problem that can afflict any artist: becoming more interested in artistic technique than in the realities that technique can convey and then sinking even lower to be among those who are less interested in the art itself than "in their own personalities" or "reputations." He has to reacquire his original love of God's creation and lose his sense of ownership over his own works of art. Then, we are told, he can enjoy his own works "just as if they were someone else's: without pride and without modesty."

That remarkable closing phrase suggests that true humility doesn't mean refusing to enjoy our own creations or insisting that they lack value--in fact, thinking about how poor our work is can be another way of focusing on ourselves. Rather, we should appreciate our own work as if it were not ours, glorying in whatever is good about it simply because it is good, not worrying who has captured a bit of divine beauty or truth in their art but simply enjoying the beauty and truth themselves. As Lewis puts it in an essay titled "Christianity and Literature," the Christian will ask "of every idea and of every method" "not 'Is it mine?', but 'Is it good?'"

When I mentioned the woman who wants her husband Robert and the woman who wants her son Michael, I hope you noticed the chilling implications of the word "wants." It almost suggests devouring; there is certainly something controlling and possessive about this kind of "wanting." Both episodes show the dangers of a false kind of love in which a person fails to truly desire the welfare of others but "wants" those others in order to satisfy a craving for someone to control or possess. Despite the self-justifications (which they apparently believe) these two women's motivation is in fact selfish--they are using others to try to give meaning to their own lives. As Lewis puts it somewhere else, such people live "for others"; you can tell the others "by their hunted look."

Besides Lewis's insights, one thing that makes these episodes memorable is the authenticity of the two characters' language--their manner and tone is frighteningly familiar and realistic. We have heard people who talk--or have heard ourselves talk--just like this. By creating such vivid, recognizable characters, Lewis helps us see the horrible reality that sometimes underlies what we call "love." The woman who wants her husband Robert, for instance, has convinced herself that she is the unselfish one, always doing her duty and ready to forgive her resistant husband. But the reality is that she made his life on earth miserable, prevented him from following his real inclinations and gifts in order to make him what she considered "successful," and drove him to a nervous breakdown--all, supposedly, for his own good. Now she wants him back because, without him, her life is empty. Near the end of the episode she pronounces the chilling, revealing words, "I must have someone to--to do things to."

The episode with the mother who wants her son raises some additional issues. If God loves us, why would he take away people we love? Why in this case does a mother lose her son? Through the character George Macdonald, Lewis gives at least the beginning of an answer: God's love for us doesn't necessarily guarantee we'll have everything we want as soon as we want it, but it does mean he'll give us, at the right time and in the right way, what is for our ultimate good. And he may--for our own and for their good--have to separate us from those we love. In this case, it appears God knows this woman does not truly love her son and will never learn to love him until she learns to love (and submit to) God first. She needs to become godly in order to love with a godly love. Given that God is her creator (her relation with Him is "older and closer" than her relation with her son) and given that God's love is perfect, she cannot become godly until she puts aside her desires--even powerful and natural ones--and trusts in Him. Unfortunately, the mother in The Great Divorce is so entrenched in the demanding, possessive, self-centered state she thinks is love that she sees God as an enemy. The true nature of her "motherly love" is revealed when she says of her son, "He is mine, do you understand? Mine, mine, mine, for ever and ever." We're even told she might demand to have him with her in hell rather than allow him to be happy in heaven.

One of my favorite episodes--partly because it is the only one that without question ends happily--is the one with the "dark and oily man" with "a little red lizard" on his shoulder. The lizard may represent any kind of sin we cling to, especially a sin that has become addictive (as all sin is to some extent). The oily man is embarrassed by the sin but can't let it go. He's afraid the process will hurt, and the sin has become so much a part of himself he's afraid he'll be losing part of his own identity if he loses it. He wants to think about giving up the sin (but wants to put off having that actually happen) or let go of it gradually. But he is told he must make a choice now: "There is no other day. All days are present now" (Latter-day Saints may be reminded of scriptures that talk about the fatal effect of "procrastinating the day of our repentance"). When the man gives in, the lizard is violently killed--the process of wrenching it from the oily man apparently does hurt. But then the lizard turns into a glorious stallion, the oily man becomes bright and solid--in other words, he becomes for the first time truly a man--and the "new-made man" mounts the horse and rides off joyously toward the mountains.

The point should be clear: when we give up our sins, though the process may be painful, we will be more than compensated by being enabled to experience true joy. But not only that--something in the sin itself, or in the confused desires that led to it, will be transformed into something glorious. We will be freed from our addiction, from the enslaving power of sin, and the true and innocent desire that had to be twisted to become sinful will be magnificently fulfilled.

Lewis's point may be clearer if we notice that the oily man's sin is specifically identified in the book as being lust. Lewis is suggesting that God does not want to annihilate our desires, including our sexual desires, but wants to transform them into something holy. "Lust" is our name for what happens to sexual desire when it becomes self-involved, disconnected from genuine love, anxious, and secretive--and addictive as well, since (under these conditions) it can't be truly satisfied. Though lust produces self-loathing, we may find it hard to give up because, in our confusion, we think giving it up means losing part of what makes us human. (Isn't sexual desire "natural"?) Yet the truth is that if we turn our sexual desires (in whatever imperfect or distorted shape they've gotten into) over to God, he can make them into a source of life, power, joy, and love. (As Lewis puts it, "Lust is a poor, weak, whimpering whispering thing compared with that richness and energy of desire which will arise when lust has been killed.") If I'm understanding him aright, Lewis is saying that God doesn't want our natural desires and energies to be weak or lifeless; he wants them to be powerful. But they can be powerful--and positive and productive--only when we submit ourselves to God and let Him kill and heal all that is twisted and sickly in us.

The last major episode--and to me one of the most chilling--is the one in which we meet the Tragedian and the Dwarf (on earth, his name was Frank). (The accompanying picture is from a dramatic version of The Great Divorce performed by the Lamb's Players. I've seen them do it--the performance was stunning.) I respond as I do to this episode because this is a character I especially identify with. In his voice I recognize my own. I think I've gotten a lot better over the years, but I have a problem with self-pity and with getting a perverse substitute for happiness from letting other people know what they've done to make life difficult for me. I see the "Tragedian" as the way Frank habitually presents himself to others--the dramatic embodiment of his sense of being wronged. The word "Tragedian" suggests both Frank's self-imposed misery and the posturing and dramatizing he displays through this false "self" he has created. The real Frank is called a "Dwarf" because he has become less and less himself--and less and less of a real person--the more he has let the false self take over. The two seem connected by a chain to suggest that Frank has allowed himself to be enslaved by this false, manipulative, even destructive way of trying to get people's attention and love. Frank almost gives in more than once, but his self-centered craving for pity is so strong that he would apparently rather be miserable than give it up.

I find two moments in the narrative especially heartbreaking--Lewis's words, "I do not know that I ever saw anything more terrible than the struggle of that Dwarf Ghost against joy" (in other words, something in the Dwarf wants to give in and open himself to joy, but he struggles against it), and the Dwarf's disappearance, "perhaps . . . somehow absorbed into the chain," as if Frank ends in total bondage, total self-deception, and total misery, having lost his true self and having in effect become the craving he couldn't give up. This episode helps make clear why we must lose ourselves in order to truly find ourselves.

Sarah Smith may seem almost too good to be true--but keep in mind that she is in heaven and has turned herself over to God. I see her as embodying Lewis's idea that even the most ordinary human being, with a common name, living in a small and unknown corner of the world, can become a glorious and godlike being. Lewis expresses the same idea in these famous words from "The Weight of Glory": "It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship. . . . There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilisations--these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit--immortal horrors or everlasting splendours."

Lewis also gives Sarah Smith what, in my opinion, is one of the best lines in the book: "What we called love down there was mostly the craving to be loved." Ah, yes! We truly do need divine help for our human love to turn into the pure love of Christ.

Another photo from the Lamb's Players production of The Great Divorce

Some major themes

I've already touched on many of the book's themes: the nature of sin, the nature of love, the joy that God has in store for us, the dangers of valuing a religion of the mind over a real encounter with God (think of the Episcopal Ghost here), and--especially in the book's symbols and imagery--the transcendent reality of heaven that makes hell and even earth seem insubstantial by comparison.

This last idea--that heaven is not less but more real and substantial than earth--seems to me especially important. In another book (Miracles) Lewis goes so far as to say that, even though he accepts the creeds that claim God is "without body, parts, and passions," he interprets them to mean "without body, parts, and passions" of the sort that we humans are currently capable of understanding or experiencing. But to whatever extent having a body and having passions are positive realities, God must incorporate those realities to a transcendent degree. And so Lewis would prefer to call God "transcorporeal" rather than "incorporeal," for God certainly does not lack some reality we possess. If God "exists at all," Lewis writes in Miracles, "He is the most concrete thing there is, the most individual, 'organised and minutely articulated'"--one way of saying that God is the most real, definite, and specific (and by implication, solid and substantial) being there is.

Two other themes that seem to me especially important relate to agency and selfhood. According to The Great Divorce, God doesn't arbitrarily assign people to heaven or hell; people end up being where they choose to be. The bus driver tells his passengers they don't have to return to hell; they can stay in heaven as long as they want. George Macdonald (as a character in the book) says, "All that are in Hell, choose it. Without that self-choice there could be no Hell. No soul that seriously and constantly desires joy will ever miss it. Those who seek find. To those who knock it is opened."

So why would anyone not choose Heaven--that is, a fullness of reality and a fullness of joy? Again, the character Macdonald says, "There is always something they prefer to joy--that is, to reality." And what, we may ask, would that be? As far as I've been able to figure out, it turns out that, in every explanation and example given in the book, what is chosen instead of Heaven has something to do with self or with one's image of or feelings about oneself--with one's dignity or sense of being in control or of being properly appreciated or fairly treated. The Big Ghost wants his "rights" and doesn't want to have to depend on anybody else. The Episcopal Ghost wants to be free to think whatever he wants rather than open himself to a reality outside of himself. The flirtatious ghost wants to be noticed. The Dwarf (speaking through the Tragedian he has created) wants to be loved, needed, appreciated, and pitied--but all in a needy, clinging, self-involved, and ultimately false and unhealthy way that doesn't allow him to be open to others or to offer himself to them. The woman who wants Robert and the mother who wants Michael are focused entirely on their own cravings to possess and control. The artist wants to be appreciated. He also wants to be "right"--that is, he wants his side to win in the ultimately insignificant arguments going on on earth.

In every case, the characters seem to be choosing self over God and over joy--which ironically means a diminishment of their true selves. As the character Macdonald puts it (quoting Milton), they would rather "reign in Hell than serve in Heaven." Instead of their saying to God, "Thy will be done," God has to say to each of them, "Thy will be done," even when that means their choice to be miserable. They end up being so shut up in themselves (in their own minds and desires) that they cannot receive the blessings God would gladly give them: "Their fists are clenched, their teeth are clenched, their eyes fast shut. First they will not, in the end they cannot, open their hands for gifts, or their mouths for food, or their eyes to see." Lewis's point here has scriptural support, including this remarkable passage: those who are finally cast out "shall return again to their own place, to enjoy that which they are willing to receive, because they were not willing to enjoy that which they might have received. For what doth it profit a man if a gift is bestowed upon him, and he receive not the gift? Behold, he rejoices not in that which is given unto him, neither rejoices in him who is the giver of the gift" (Doctrine and Covenants 88:32-33).

How do we avoid this kind of resistance to heavenly joy? Since the problem has something to do with self, we must (according to Lewis) willingly submit ourselves to God. The embarrassed lady in The Great Divorce is asked, "Could you not, only for a moment, fix your mind on something not yourself?" We are told of a man who had invested so much of himself in the question of life after death that he can't give it up even in heaven, where the question has been answered. The solution would have been to have "had a good laugh at himself" and "begun all over again like a little child and entered into joy." But he won't do it. Michael's mother is told she just needs to admit she's been wrong: "We've all been wrong! That's the great joke. There's no need to go on pretending one was right! After that we begin living." But she's offended--that is, her prickly, dignified, self-justifying ego is offended--at the suggestion she might be wrong, and so she refuses to give in.

Lewis explores these issues in other books, for instance, describing his own resistance to "interference" in Surprised by Joy and discussing "the great sin" of pride and the need for total submission in Mere Christianity. In The Four Loves Lewis examines why our "natural loves," including familial affection, romantic desire, and even friendship, are part of what we have to submit to God. Left to themselves, he says, they go bad--become obsessive and destructive. We must offer them to God, in a sense allow them to be killed, so they can be resurrected and transformed by God's grace into the transcendently good and godly realities them have it in them to become.

The Great Divorce thus presents themes that appear throughout Lewis's works. But they appear here in an especially memorable way. What The Great Divorce contributes is a series of vivid examples showing how these principles (choice, self, submission to God, etc.) might work themselves out in individual cases.

Between now and the final Great Divorce blog

In my final blog I'll have a few more thoughts about the book, including what I feel are some of its limitations. But what I'm most looking forward to now are readers' comments. I hope you'll post comments before the weekend to assure a good discussion before my final blog and the end of our current adventure with The Great Divorce. I'd like to know if there are other themes you think are important or if there are any significant episodes you think I've overlooked. I'd like to hear additional thoughts on the episodes I have discussed or on the themes I've brought up. Was Lewis right? Do you see any personal applications? Have you had experiences--or do you know of other people's experiences--that relate to what you've read in The Great Divorce?

Or feel free to bring up anything else that strikes your fancy, preferably something that occurs to you in the course of reading or thinking about Lewis's book.

Welcome Back Bruce Young!

Before we get going on another amazing look at C.S. Lewis's The Great Divorce, I wanted to briefly announce the book for next month so everyone can purchase their copy. Kako recommended My Name is Asher Lev by Chaim Potok (author of the Award-winning The Chosen) and I've decided on it to be next month's book. You can buy your copy here or at any major book store. Here's a synopsis to get you interested:

Asher Lev is a Ladover Hasid who keeps kosher, prays three times a day, and believes in the Ribbono Shel Olom, the Master of the Universe. Asher Lev is an artist who is compulsively driven to render the world he sees and feels, even when it leads him to blasphemy. In this stirring and often visionary novel, Chaim Potok traces Asher's passage between these two identities, the one consecrated to God, the other subject only to the imagination.

Asher Lev grows up in a cloistered Hasidic community in postwar Brooklyn, a world suffused by ritual and revolving around a charismatic Rebbe. But in time, his gift as an artist threaten to estrange him from the world and the parents he adores. As it follows his struggle, My Name is Asher Lev becomes a luminous portrait of the artist, by turns heartbreaking and exultant, a modern classic.

Now back to The Great Divorce. Much thanks to our guest blogger Bruce Young.

The Great Divorce: Symbols, Influences, and Some Early Episodes

In this week's guest blog on The Great Divorce, I'm going to discuss three things: symbolism and imagery, George Macdonald and other influences on the book, and some of the early episodes. I hope those of you who still don't have a copy of the book will get one soon so you can take part in the discussion.

Symbolism and imagery

The symbols and images Lewis uses in The Great Divorce include the "unbendable, unbreakable" objects of heaven (and the fact that everything in heaven is incomparably more solid, hard, and heavy than things on earth or in hell); the beauty and vitality of heaven; the relative size of heaven and hell (not only is heaven larger than hell, but Lewis encounters in heaven "a larger sort of space"); and various uses of light and darkness. Comments people have made over the past week have included wonderfully illuminating insights on some of these items. Here's my try at offering some additional insight.

The grass that is hard as diamond (it hurts the feet of the visitors who walk on it), the apple that is almost impossible to pick up, the waterfall that sounds "like the revelry of a whole college of giants": these memorably symbolize Lewis's view that heaven is infinitely more real than hell or even than earth. Weight, solidity, and hardness, along with beauty and intense vitality, are thus symbols of a heightened degree of realness. The fact that the inhabitants of heaven are solid and bright while the visitors from hell are ghostly and vaporous symbolizes Lewis's belief that those who have submitted themselves to God will experience reality more fully. (But note that the ghosts are told they will get used to the hardness, heaviness, and solidity of heaven if they stay there long enough--in fact, they will themselves become more solid; in other words, more real.)

In addition to weight, solidity, and hardness, Lewis also uses light and size as symbols. The "grey town" is pervaded by a misty twilight that will some day turn to utter darkness. Heaven, on the other hand, is filled with light, light that apparently increases as its inhabitants go further up and further in. The book ends with the sun rising (perhaps suggesting also the coming of the Son of God), but Lewis is afraid he is unprepared for the fullness of reality this light represents. "The morning! The morning!" he cries, "I am caught by the morning and I am a ghost." The light that comes seems hard and heavy, almost more than he can bear.

As for size, it turns out that the "grey city," though it seems vast (partly because everyone is always moving away from everyone else), is actually infinitely small compared to heaven. The man who wants to take an apple back there would find it wouldn't fit. According to Lewis (though of course he is presenting this only symbolically, as an imaginative supposal), hell is so small it fits in a crack in the floor of heaven. What he means by this is that, not only in terms of size and substance, but more importantly in terms of value, heaven is infinitely more real than hell, just as goodness is infinitely more real than evil. (As some of the discussion over the past week revealed, the difference between heaven and hell is like the difference between light and darkness. Darkness is less real than light because it is essentially the absence of light. Likewise, hell or evil is essentially an absence or twisting of what is good and real.)

As the character George Macdonald explains, "All loneliness, angers, hatreds, envies and itchings that [hell] contains, if rolled into one single experience and put into the scale against the least moment of the joy that is felt by the least in Heaven, would have no weight that could be registered at all." The joy of heaven is infinitely real, powerful, and substantial; evil is nothing more than the destruction or perversion of what is truly real so that most of its reality is eliminated. If that is so, the question is why would anyone choose hell over heaven? What (to quote from the book again) could anyone possibly "prefer to joy--that is, to reality"?

The apparently vast size of hell gives a clue. In terms of the literal story, hell is so large because people keep moving away from each other, and they do that because they can't stand each other. Each one wants to live in his or her own world, unhampered by the irritating presence of others. Note that George Macdonald rebukes Lewis in the story for suggesting that heaven and hell are both "states of mind." Yes, hell is "a state of mind" because in it all are enclosed in their own imagination, ideas, and desires--notice that people in the "grey town" can create anything they want by just thinking it, but the things don't have any reality; the roofs don't keep out rain, for instance. But heaven by contrast is "not a state of mind"; it is "reality itself"--that is, those who are there are not experiencing projections of their own thoughts and desires but are experiencing a reality that is genuinely "other and outer": something other than themselves, something objectively real and valuable, and something they are capable of experiencing because they have "lost themselves" (their preoccupation with themselves, their clinging to their own ideas and desires) and submitted themselves to the glorious reality of heaven.

Thus, the "grey town" seems so vast because everyone lives in separate worlds, unlimited by reality or relationships with others. But for that very reason, it is infinitely small, because those in the "grey town" can experience nothing other than their own thoughts and feelings. "Every state of mind, left to itself," according to the character Macdonald, "every shutting up of the creature in the dungeon of its own mind--is, in the end, Hell." "For a damned soul," he says later, "is nearly nothing: it is shrunk, shut up in itself. Good beats upon the damned incessantly as sound waves beat on the ears of the deaf, but they cannot receive it."

George Macdonald and other influences

I've kept quoting things the character George Macdonald says in The Great Divorce. In a moment I'll explain why Lewis chose Macdonald as his teacher and guide in the book.

First, a brief list of other influences. Besides the unnamed science fiction story that gave Lewis the idea of the unbreakable matter of heaven, Lewis would have been influenced in general by many science fiction and fantasy tales, with their speculative and sometimes symbolic narratives. More specifically Lewis was influenced by Dante's Commedia (Divine Comedy), with its journey through hell, purgatory, and heaven, and Milton's Paradise Lost, with its treatment of good and evil, its emphasis on freedom of choice, and its picture of the beauty and glory of God's creation. When Lewis wonders about the angels accompanying Sarah Smith, Macdonald quotes Milton's description of Eve: "A thousand liveried angels lackey her."

One other work that had a bit of influence was John Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress. Though it is an allegory (remember that The Great Divorce is not an allegory--it's a "supposal"), Lewis learned something from Bunyan about how to use religious symbols. And, interestingly, both The Pilgrim's Progress and The Great Divorce have the same subtitle: "A Dream." (Both are supposedly dreams in which the author wakes up at the end--and notice the hint Lewis gives at the beginning of chapter 1 that this is just a dream when he says, "I seemed to be standing . . .") This idea of a story taking place in a dream was influenced not only by Bunyan but by a whole series of much earlier works called "dream visions," mainly written during the Middle Ages, in which an author describes remarkable and sometimes supernatural experiences supposedly seen in a dream.

The character George Macdonald appears at the beginning of chapter 9, almost exactly halfway through The Great Divorce, as a wise, stern, but benevolent guide, something like Virgil, who leads Dante through hell and purgatory. Just as Virgil was for Dante an esteemed literary model, so Macdonald is a writer Lewis admired and was influenced by. A Scottish novelist, fantasy writer, and minister, Macdonald lived from 1824 to 1905--thus, his life span overlapped briefly with Lewis's (Lewis was born in 1898), but the two never met. Macdonald began his career as a minister in Scotland but his rejection of some Calvinist doctrines (such as predestination) led to conflict with his congregation, and he ended up in England. He believed that God's love is universal and considered the possibility that all might eventually be saved. In England he came to know most of the leading literary figures of the day and in particular was a friend of and influence on Lewis Carroll, author of Alice in Wonderland. (For more information, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_MacDonald.)

C. S. Lewis first encountered Macdonald (indirectly, of course) when, at age 16, he read his symbolic fantasy novel Phantastes. In The Great Divorce the character Lewis describes this encounter as being for him what "the first sight of Beatrice had been to Dante": the beginning of a new life. (Lewis is alluding to a work by Dante titled La Vita Nuova--"the new life." But note also that Beatrice, a real woman that Dante idealized, became--after her death--Dante's fictional guide in his Commedia through paradise into the presence of God.)

In his autobiography Surprised by Joy, Lewis describes his reading of Macdonald's Phantastes as an event that "baptized" his "imagination." That is, by conveying a sense of "Holiness," and especially connecting it with the familiar atmosphere of everyday life, the book helped prepare Lewis's imagination for his eventual conversion to Christianity. As he emphasizes, it took many years after this baptism of his imagination for him to come to actual belief in, understanding of, and commitment to Christianity. But Macdonald helped prepare him, even during the time that Lewis still considered himself an atheist.

In The Great Divorce Lewis has Macdonald explain the nature of heaven and hell, free will and predestination, and other matters. These explanations are not actual quotations from the real Macdonald--in fact, they are closer to what Lewis believed than to Macdonald's ideas. (By the way, I find Macdonald's religious ideas very appealing and sometimes closer to my own Latter-day Saint understanding than Lewis's ideas are.) But Lewis was very influenced by Macdonald. He claims to have quoted him in every book he wrote. For instance, the famous parable in Mere Christianity of the house being turned into a palace actually comes from Macdonald, as Lewis notes. Lewis felt Macdonald had flaws as a writer but was a master of creating myth--meaning stories with deep symbolic power that convey universal or even supernatural realities in a concrete way. Obviously, many of Lewis's works, including The Great Divorce, do the same.

Some early episodes in The Great Divorce

My favorite episodes in The Great Divorce are in the second half. I'll have something to say about those next week. But for now I'd like to say a few things about some of the earlier episodes in the book.

While waiting at the bus stop in hell and during the bus ride to heaven, Lewis meets several characters: the Big Man, the tousle-headed youth (an aspiring poet), Ikey (the intelligent-looking man with the bowler hat), and a cultivated man (later called the "Episcopal Ghost") who sees the grey town as a lovely "spiritual" place, freed from matter and, with its half-light, always promising the dawn. (Lewis is satirizing a view of "spirituality" that makes it less real and solid even than earthly realities.)

We see most of these characters again in heaven. The Big Man (now called the Big Ghost) only wants "his rights" and doesn't want anybody's "bleeding charity." This sort of assertive individualism (of the "I am the master of my fate, the captain of my soul" variety) is common enough, but Lewis himself reports that, before his conversion, he hated the idea of anyone interfering with him. God, it turns out, is the "Transcendental Interferer." But a further problem with insisting on our "rights" is that none of us, on our own, deserves heaven. We need to humble ourselves enough to receive more than we deserve, through the "merits and mercy of Christ." And so the Big Ghost is told that he must ask "for the Bleeding Charity"--an allusion, of course, to Christ's atoning sacrifice.

The "Episcopal Ghost" illustrates the dangers of turning religion into a self-involved intellectual exercise. Reading about this ghost, some people may wonder what Lewis has against Episcopalians. But he isn't really referring to a particular denomination. "Episcopal" here means "relating to bishops" (the Latin for bishop is "episcopus")--in other words, this ghost was a bishop on earth, presumably a bishop in the Church of England. (The American branch of the Church of England is called the Episcopal Church because it is governed by bishops.) Though this ghost claims to have been honest and courageous in his convictions, in fact he went along comfortably with the popular views of his time. He resists anything "literal," "superstitious," or "mythological" in Christianity because he wants "free play of mind"--in other words, he wants to be in charge of creating his own reality (made up of lovely ideas and sentiments) instead of submitting himself to a reality outside himself.

The most frustrating, though also funny, parts of his conversation with the Bright Spirit who has been sent to save him are when he is invited to make a real choice, to experience something "other and outer," but keeps falling back into his world of sentiments and ideas. For instance, when the Bright Spirit asks him, "Will you, even now, repent and believe?," he responds, "I'm not sure that I've got the exact point you are trying to make." "I am not trying to make any point," says the Spirit. "I am telling you to repent and believe." And then the Episcopal Ghost, though tempted by the thought of getting to know heaven a bit better, remembers he has to be back in the grey town "next Friday to read a paper"--ironically, a paper he'll read to a Theological Society in hell about how Christ's views might have matured if he'd been more tactful and avoided the crucifixion. When the Spirit says earlier that "We know nothing of religion here" in heaven, what he means, I think, is that heaven is not a place for theology, for discussing and speculating about God, but is rather a place for encountering ultimate reality, for really coming to know God Himself, not indulging ourselves in ideas about Him.

Later we see the character named Ikey trying to gather apples to take to hell (he thinks material goods will help create an economy and bring people closer together). Lewis meets another ghost (the "Hard-bitten Ghost") who is cynical about everything in both heaven and hell. He also mentions Salt Lake City, one of many tourist traps (along with the pyramids, Niagara Falls, and the Taj Mahal) that don't live up to his expectations. I see this ghost as Lewis's image of the kind of person who, trying to be hard-nosed and "realistic," cuts himself off from love and joy, or even from a simple child-like appreciation of the world around him.

Two more of the early episodes, and then I'll be done. Lewis sees two women, one right before meeting Macdonald and one right after, who illustrate two contrasting but related problems: the first one is embarrassed at her insubstantiality and feels exposed and frightened; the other one is "unaware of her phantasmal appearance" and is ridiculously trying to flirt with the Solid People. The problem with both is a distorted view of themselves, or rather, an unhealthy focus on what each thinks of as her "self." The flirtatious ghost imagines herself as attractive, even seductive, and can think of interacting with others as serving no purpose except having them ogle at her. The embarrassed woman loathes her insubstantial "self," not realizing that her fear and self-loathing are the very things that are keeping her from becoming substantial. Her salvation can only come if, as a Spirit pleads with her to do, she can "fix [her] mind on something not [herself]"--if she can stop worrying about her deficiencies or thinking about herself at all. She is one of the few ghosts I think there is hope for in the book. We don't know what happens to her for sure, but she may either be trampled by a herd of unicorns or, in her fright, run to the Spirit who is talking with her. In either case, she may be induced to forget about herself and open herself to the terrifying joy of heaven.

One reason I love The Great Divorce is that--as these episodes attest--it is so vivid, memorable, and intensely engaging. I also love The Screwtape Letters, another popular book by Lewis in which he imagines a senior devil writing to a junior devil about their quest to gain a human soul. The Screwtape Letters brilliantly discusses a wide array of moral and spiritual issues, but it doesn't have much in terms of vivid images or even memorable characters or events. And as Lewis himself said, we may get a bit tired of getting everything filtered through a devil's mind. The Great Divorce, on the other hand, is filled with memorable episodes, characters, and images. Both are great books, but, happily, they are also very different.

Next week I'll discuss some of the later episodes and some of Lewis's themes in The Great Divorce. In the meantime, I look forward to all sorts of interesting comments from all of you out there. I especially invite comments on your favorite episodes and responses to the following question: What do you think are some of the important themes (ideas, insights, etc.) in The Great Divorce?