CS Lewis, in response to Harry about Joy Gresham: "Not my wife. No, how could she be? I'd have to love her, wouldn't I? She'd have to be more important to me than anything in the World. I'd have to be suffering the torments of the damned. The thought of losing her..."
CS Lewis, in his sermons about pain: "Pain is God's megaphone to rouse a deaf world."
Write about these quotes, or other ones that particularly stood out to you. Reference and quote from the three other works that we've read this semester; what C.S. Lewis seems to be expressing about love, pain, and/or any other motif/idea that comes to mind.
"I pray because I can't help myself. I pray because I'm helpless. I pray because the need flows out of me all the time- waking and sleeping. It doesn't change God- it changes me." – C.S. Lewis
ReplyDeleteI observed in many of C.S. Lewis’ writings a strong connection between pain and prayer. The movie Shadowlands describes the loss of his wife, Joy, recalling much of the suffering he felt as child when his mother died. The movie portrays C.S. Lewis as a very intellectual man who loved looking for answers. As a Christian, he knew that God was under control and all things happened for a reason. Thus, suffering held no exception. When going through the process of watching his new wife suffer from cancer, Lewis faced the idea of losing loved one again. However, this time around Lewis used suffering to build his spiritual character. The above quote amazes me and reminds me of the power of prayer. Screwtape sums it wonderfully when he says, “Sooner or later He withdraws, if not in fact, at least from their conscious experience, all those supports and incentives. He leaves the creature to stand up on its own legs—to carry out from the will alone duties, which have lost all relish. It is during such trough periods, much more than during the peak periods, that it is growing into the sort of creature He wants it to be. Hence the prayers offered in the state of dryness are those, which please Him best.” So often people can become so wrapped up in their daily lives that we seem to forget what truly satisfies them – God. It is in the state of suffering that man is humbled and he can cry out to God in prayer for strength, finding that in our weakness, God’s glory is shown.
I think the quotes actually go quite well together. Having Joy as his wife made C.S. Lewis realize the plan that God had for him, and having her die made him recognize the existence of this love. In this case, the two went hand in hand. Even though Lewis talked about real Joy in his book Surprised by Joy, it is impossible to deny a connection of some sort between this ideal and the woman that he eventually married. In his sermons, Lewis seems to enjoy examining the more judging and hardened attributes of God rather than his compassion, and it almost becomes ironic and poetic when he finally finds love and loses it. However, I think another question raised by the film is the true definition of love. I do not think that I would say that Lewis and Joy were in love, or experienced a romantic love, but I think they had a deeper connection than most people do with others. Shadowlands seems to promote the idea that romance or sexual feelings do not mean that love is present, but devotion and caring do. It is an important lesson to remember, and I am interested to see how the film will end.
ReplyDelete"Not my wife. No, how could she be? I'd have to love her, wouldn't I? She'd have to be more important to me than anything in the World. I'd have to be suffering the torments of the damned. The thought of losing her..."
ReplyDeleteWhat I found significant about this quote is that it shows how Lewis is taken by surprise by his feelings, and also that he could have such feelings. He seems to have led a life of comfort and become somewhat ossified in the process. This life also seems as self-contained as perhaps be a little selfish. His personal bubble arguably stops any relationship with Joy developing naturally. It is also significant that Lewis is only made aware of his love of Joy through pain he feels when he might lose her. "Pain is God's megaphone to rouse a deaf world.” The pain serves to break Lewis free from his self-satisfied coma. In this way I thought there were some parallels between what enfolds in Shadowlands and what happens to the patient in the course of the Screwtape letters . In both accounts there is a strong emphasis on love and (if this doesn’t sound too corny) the power of love, as something divine. In the Screwtape letters, it is arguably the patients love for the good Christian which led him thwart, and eventually completely overcome wormwoods’ influence on his life. Lewis love for Joy, discovered thorough pain, seems to make him live more truly than he did before.
"Pain is God's megaphone to rouse a deaf world."
ReplyDeleteC.S. Lewis talks a great deal about general yet powerful themes in life, such as joy and pain. In many of his other works he sets up joy as the greatest goal to attain, yet says it is also the most elusive and difficult to achieve. When he talks of pain as the wake up call that so many in the world so desperately need, it is perhaps pain that shakes a person awake enough to realize that it is the joy that they should be looking for. At the close of the movie, Lewis is quoted as saying “The pain then is part of the happiness”. Once awoken and grown up, one must choose. Though as a boy he chose to seclude himself to keep himself safe from hurt, as a man he chose to love and endure the suffering that came with that decision. Roused by pain to seek after joy, yet perhaps the pain never quite leaves. Yet again Lewis captures life issues in a profound and widely applicable way.
CS Lewis, in his sermons about pain: "Pain is God's megaphone to rouse a deaf world."
ReplyDeleteThis is a really great quote because it puts pain and everything that is equated with it on a different level of understanding. We see that if there were no pain in the world and or in our lives, then how would we know what needs to be changed, what need growth or even more importantly, what needs protection? If our nerves never felt pain, then when we would simply scrape our knee, we would be unable to feel it and it may become infected and cause an even serious injury to occur. If we never felt the pain of failure or loss (not of a loved one but in competition), then how would we determine where we need to improve or even get the motivation to improve? There would be content cause more often then not, pain turns into motivation, which is the motivation we need to become greater at what we do.
"I pray because I can't help myself. I pray because I'm helpless. I pray because the need flows out of me all the time- waking and sleeping. It doesn't change God- it changes me." – C.S. Lewis. This quote really rocked my world regarding prayer. The thought of many is that prayer changes the way God feels about us or changes his mind but in fact prayer changes us. Prayer is the most difficult thing for humans to do. i mean real prayer not prayer before a meal or quick nighttime. But the fervent effectual prayer of a heart crying out for God. This kind of prayer allows you to communicate with Him and allows him to begin to change you from the inside out. Prayer is a revealing of your inner person to God and allowing Him to come and conform you to his image. The Apostle Paul said to pray without ceasing, this means that prayer is not merely just yelling out words towards the heavens but it is a lifestyle that is centered around intimacy and communication with the Father, it is making your petitions,desires, etc known and being silent to allow him to speak to your spirit.
ReplyDeleteThe quote that I took away from the portion of the movie that we watched was from the young passionate Irish student – when C. S. Lewis surprised him in his room and confronted him about his stealing, the boy defended himself by saying that he truly appreciated the books, and that his father had told him that “we read to know we are not alone”. This resonated with me on a personal level, as I have always felt most connected to people and emotions through literature, more so than in real life. Relating this back to C. S. Lewis, the movie portrays him to be a rather lonely figure, noted by Joy when she accused him of keeping a distance from everyone so as to not get hurt. His seclusion into literature seems to be an attempt at connecting, to know that he is “not alone”. This loneliness reminds me of the loneliness found in The Great Divorce, where the characters display a detached behavior. In The Screwtape Letters, the objection of Screwtape is to weaken humans – he specifically states that an absence of logic is required, and fears all knowledge/thinking, believing it to cause humans to shun the devil and embrace faith. In a sense, reading is doing the exact opposite of what Screwtape wished. In addition, the childhood portions of Surprised by Joy carry this sense of loneliness – even if it is in the happy seclusion that C. S. Lewis enjoys with his brother. Their rejection of the little neighbor boy is evidence of Lewis’ desire to be left alone to his own devices.
ReplyDelete“Personal experience isn’t everything.”
ReplyDeleteAnthony Hopkins as C.S. Lewis says this in a conversation with Joy in the movie. C.S. Lewis, who teaches to others that ‘pain is God’s megaphone,’ doesn’t seem to understand, at first, the importance of personally experiencing pain and learning from it. Joy, who was a mother of two and was married to an alcoholic, unfaithful husband, was suffering before she met Lewis, and suffered more later in life when she developed bone cancer. Lewis, as Joy points out in the movie, was untouchable as a famous writer and teacher, and did not really experience true pain or suffering in his adult life, until Joy’s illness. I don’t think it is a coincidence that the person who first calls Lewis out on his sheltered life eventually becomes the person whose illness challenges Lewis and forces him to experience pain. And it’s no coincidence that he falls in love with her, because there was a purpose for his pain. It’s only after he experiences this suffering that he can live out what he preached, that the blows from God’s chisel are what make us perfect. I can see this in my own life, and I can see that some personal hardships were necessary to make me into the person I am today. But it’s only in hindsight that everything becomes clear.
I will be presenting on the first part of the movie "Shadowlands." A theme that I want to focus on is suffering, and I want to compare Lewis's experiences with his mother's death and Joy's illness. I will talk a little bit about Joy Gresham's life as well. There are some excerpts from Surprised by Joy and articles that I will be talking about.
ReplyDelete“Pain is God's megaphone to rouse a deaf world.” There is no other feeling of pain that that experienced during the grieving process. About a month ago I lost a high school friend to a fatal car accident. I got news of her death on a Thursday, which is my most busiest days of the week. A friend informed me right before I went to work. The new was tragic but it did not hit me immediately. It was not until I was working that I began to breakdown into tears. Experiencing death is a sobering process. Though it I realize the true value in my life; love which is exercised through the relationships we have with one another. In the same instance I realize how trivial some of my daily worries and concerns all to the bigger picture of life. One scripture that sticks out to me is Matthew 6:19-21(NIV) “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. 20 But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moths and vermin do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. 21 For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” To me this scripture highlight the importance of extending our desires, our efforts, time and energy into that which is transcendent and divine. In my case I am learning not to worry about day to day challenges because Matthews 6:25-34 (NIV ) assures me, “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? 26 Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? 27 Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?” For God has already set our paths and it is up to us to seek His face in all we do to make sure that we are working in accordance with Him. But what I can do is instead of worrying about things I cannot control, I can make the conscious effort to enjoy the diverse host of people that God has placed in my life and to exercise the love that God has for us.
ReplyDelete"I pray because I can't help myself. I pray because I'm helpless. I pray because the need flows out of me all the time- waking and sleeping. It doesn't change God- it changes me." – C.S. Lewis
ReplyDeleteThis quote really stood out to me, as prayer is something that I always have trouble with. When I was younger, I always thought of prayer as something you had to do if you wanted to talk to God. I thought it was something that He wanted you to do. As time has progressed, I’ve began to realize that prayer is completely different. As C.S. Lewis states, I believe that prayer should be for yourself and for no one else. I find that being someone still unsure about religion, prayer is something that is helping me find myself. I find that when I feel helpless and want to get answers. I really would like to try and pray more like C.S. Lewis says. I’d like prayer to be something that I do because it just happens and it flows, not sometime I try to do because I feel I need to. It’s such a difficult topic, but I think it’s something that can be an amazing benefit if it is used accordingly. I’ve heard so many stories about prayer changing people, and I think that’d be an amazing feeling, I just want to reach it.
I think that the moment in which C.S. Lewis cries and says the first quote was one of the most important parts of the movie. It was the moment that he finally realized that he was in love with Joy and wanted to truly marry her. Up to that point it felt as if Lewis was trying to keep her at a distance, he had been so used to being a bachlor that he did not seem to give very much thought to marriage and children. The fact that he was willing to marry Joy on paper seemed like an indication that he had no thought of marrying in reality for the future. It took Joy getting cancer and having to face the thought of losing her to wake Lewis up to how he actually felt. I liked the quote that "Pain is God's megaphone to rouse a deaf world." in relation to this scene in the movie. It makes sense that pain can be used to make people realize what is most important to them. If you think about it many people clutch on to their loved ones and find that the petty grievances become less important in the midst of hard times. Thiis reminds me of chapter 13 in the Screwtape Letters. In this chapter Lewis as Screwtape says "The characteristic of Pain and Pleasures is that they are unmistakenly real, and therefore, as far as they go, give the man who feels them a touchstone of reality.... five minutes' genuine toothache would reveal the romantic romantic sorrows for the nonsense they were..." For Lewis pain seems to be a tool that puts your life into perspective and makes you realize what is most important and what is in the end nonsense.
ReplyDelete"Pain is God's megaphone to rouse a deaf world."
ReplyDeleteAfter reading this quote, I think it really rang true with me. Without pain, the world would be a place full of even more selfish people. People who live their privileged lives, only looking to themselves as the provider of everything. They would have no reason to praise God and no reason to think that there is even a need of anyone other than themselves. God allows pain in the world because as it says above, it wakes the world up and reminds them of what they deserve; eternal pain and punishment in hell because of their rebellion against God. When we experience pain, we are reminded of how good things are, of how on a normal day basis, we are so blessed and have very few problems in comparison to others. Many of us wake up healthy, have food to eat, a bed to sleep in and a roof over our heads. A lot of people in the world cannot say that they have those things. However, when these things are taken away from us and we experience pain, we are reminded of the many blessings we receive every day even though we don't deserve it. This pain truly gives us perspective and and humbles us by showing us how small we are in comparison to the almighty God.
I was pleasantly surprised about how much I enjoyed the film. Seeing a couple fall in love without any form of physical relationship was refreshing, especially after watching romantic comedies from today’s day and age. The chemistry that C.S. Lewis and Joy shared could be seen right off the bat, and their relationship serves as a model for what all relationships should be like. Before anything, they were the best of friends. As a couple, Joy brought out qualities in C.S. Lewis that he could not bring out in himself. Not a shy bone in her body, Joy sees that C.S. Lewis blocked himself from experiencing any pain in human relationships. She teaches him to feel love in life, versus writing or reading about it in his novels. C.S. Lewis’ trouble with loving can be seen in the quote, “Not my wife. No, how could she be? I'd have to love her, wouldn't I? She'd have to be more important to me than anything in the World. I'd have to be suffering the torments of the damned. The thought of losing her..." When Lewis finally comes to terms with his love for Joy, it shows that sometimes the most unlikely love stories are the ones with the most unexpected, happy endings. I can definitely say, I was surprised by joy.
ReplyDelete