A Love Observed

I just finished "A Grief Observed" by C.S. Lewis and enjoyed it immensely. The book consists of notes taken from his journals following his wifes death. What impressed me most is that Lewis and his editors did not feel the need to smooth over the text Lewis goes back and forth and does not make steady progress but rather struggles in his relationship with his wife and with God.

The most striking aspect was Lewis yearning for his wife and not the idea of his wife that he has left. "All reality is iconoclastic. The earthly beloved, even in this life, incessantly triumphs over your mere idea of her. And you want her to; you want her with all her resistances, all her faults, all her unexpectedness. That is her foursquare and independet reality. And this, not any image or memory, is what we are to love still, after she is dead". This calls to mind the scene in Good Will Hunting where Sean remarks to Will that what he remembers of his dead wife is that she uses to fart in her sleep.

Truly one of the greatest gifts of God is to be joined to another person and not merely to seek the satisfaction of the idea of the other person. If Lewis only really loved what his wife gave him he would not have grieved so but he grieved because a part of him was missing. This is a tremendous gift from God that two broken imperfect creatures can become one, not whole or perfect because we can't be but one. And that oneness is human, hard, and ugly but it is the reality that oneness is true that makes the difficulty a gift as well because you know that you are truly with your beloved.

The reality that in our difficulties we find our truest grace and love for each other has been haunting me in regard to God. I have long desired to be orthodox. and I still do I still desire to be faithful to what God has revealed and to the spirit of Christ. But I am realizing more and more how thoroughly protestant I am both in church polis and in epistemology. To be protestant in this regard is to affirm that truth comes to the individual and the community of believers anew through a daily relationship with Go.

The connection is that God in his faithfullness and the spirit shatters our strict idolatries, our attempts to codify the love of God. God is a God of pathos, not that he is the victim of whimsy like the Greek or Roman Gods, but rather we can have an actually relationship with him. A romantic relationship where one is so constantly worried about maintaining the relationship that he can't let his gaurd down and be weak is not a healthy one. If we do not share our doubts, pains, and fears with God then we are not truly living in a relationship if all we think God wants is our praise and thanks (he wants and deserves these things) then we are not truly entering in a relationship with the one who loves us.

In the last few months I have been more and more realizing what it means to trust someone with my faults and to feel exposed and to feel safe and secure in that and this place of nakedness is not only the place to find love with another and with God but a place to learn the truest theology.