I just finished re-reading C.S. Lewis’ Surprised By Joy. I was a few chapters in before realizing that I had read it before. It’s a funny thing how I resist re-reading books, but at the same time I know how much I gain from it. Perhaps I am not an overly thoughtful reader, and so much gets passed by, or forgotten.
The story is of Lewis’ conversion from atheism to deism, and ultimately to Christianity. In the story he tells of his childhood, the death of his mother, his strained relationship with his father, boarding school, and all the things that led him to feeling a sense of satisfaction in his own pride and self-sufficiency. But he tells of moments in his childhood that he now recognizes as moments of joy. They were simple moments, reading stories of Norse mythology, making an “Animal Land” with his brother, observing the beauty, which he says was missing from his childhood, that surrounded him on an outdoor walk.
Lewis defines joy as “an unsatisfied desire which is itself more desirable than any other satisfaction … sharply distinguished both from Happiness and from Pleasure.”
The moments he remembers in his childhood were completely ordinary, except that they instilled in him a desire to re-find the experience. He spent his life searching for moments of joy, but unable to find them, except in brief, unsatisfactory ways. This search for joy, which he so longed for but could only experience in such fleeting encounters, became an aching desire that ultimately led him to God.
Have you ever taken inventory of moments of joy in your life? I am often amused at the seemingly silly things that have brought me true joy. Of course my children are not silly, and their existence itself is a reason for joy, but it is also tangled with terror. I take it for granted that all parents will understand what I mean by that. I take joy in their faith, in their beauty, their souls, but the joy is mixed with concern, and the exhausting work of keeping them alive and morally sound. But the silly moments are sometimes the ones that cannot be understood by others.
My patient editor will certainly shake his head when I share that one of those moments was the simple discovery of a colony of bumblebees living under the pine tree by our pond. I was like a little child, enraptured by the little doorway they had made through the needles, and I would stand by the tree, silently, waiting for them to fly in and out.
I have true joy when I pull the shades up at the kitchen window and see a variety of birds flitting from branch to branch and bathing in the puddles on our deck. When the season changes and I can again see Orion’s Belt my heart and mind lift. These things remind me of the closeness of God. His world, that he made for me, is whimsical, and beautiful, and mysterious.
I feel, honestly, that he put those fuzzy little bees under that tree simply to please me. They could have been in any yard, under any other tree, but he put them there for me to find, and simply, for me to think of and remember him. The birds he made are not in my neighbour’s yard, they are in mine, flitting and chirping and shaking out their down for me. The stars stand still for that moment so that I can find them. I am loved.
The “unsatisfied desire” that Lewis speaks of adds such a melancholy note to joy, but I cannot deny that it is true. Like the terror that is mixed with joy in the raising of children, unfulfilled longing is mixed with a great sense of God’s love. He loves me, yet I cannot fully reach back out to him in perfect love. He is near, and I cannot see him perfectly. There is something more to come, and I long for it in the midst of all the joy.
All of these thoughts have come to me because I have been thinking of the joy of Christmas. Of course, the fleeting moments of pleasure (butter tarts, turkey, gravy, Bailey’s Irish Cream) and happiness (new toys, new clothes) are superficial. They are a sign of something more, but they remain momentary for the most part. Christ is there in the nativity scene, but I cannot hold him, or kiss his forehead.
The Incarnation, when meditated on, and on again, thoughtfully and with the desire to remember is a magical thing. The joy Lewis felt when he read the great stories of the Norse gods was a taste, a sign. The little animal kingdom he created with his brother was like a distant memory of his soul, something whimsical, and mysterious.
God coming to be with us, as a little infant, lying in his mother’s arms and surrounded by animals while the stars cried out is the true moment of joy. Yet, until we pass into eternity there is something still unfulfilled. We are left longing for it. But this joy of Christmas is a promise that we are loved and will one day see the God who loves us face to face.
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