Thought for food [book excerpt]

C.S. Lewis had something to say to me today. I have been reading The Problem of Pain on/off for a few months now. Here's a bit from the chapter titled "HEAVEN."

"There have been times when I think we do not desire heaven; but more often I find myself wondering whether, in our heart of hearts, we have ever desired anything else. You may have noticed that the books you really love are bound together by a secret thread. You know very well what is the common quality that makes you love them, though you cannot put it into words: but most of your friends do not see it at all, and often wonder why, liking this, you should also like that. Again, you have stood before some landscape, which seems to embody what you have been looking for all your life and then turned to the friend at your side who appears to be seeing what you saw- but at the first words a gulf yawns between you, and you realise that this landscape means something totally different to him, that he is pursuing an alien vision and cares nothing for the ineffable suggestion by which you are transported. Even in your hobbies, has there not always been some secret attraction which the others are curiously ignorant of- something, not to be identified with, but always on the verge of breaking through, the smell of cut wood in the workshop or the clap-clap of water against the boat's side?
You have never had it. All the things that have ever deeply possessed your soul have been but hints of it- tantalising glimpses, promises never quite fulfilled, echoes that died away just as they caught your ear."

Lewis, C.S. The Problem of Pain. New York: HarperCollins, 1940. p. 149-151.

Again, here "Jack" puts our own muddled thoughts into words where the meaning is much clearer. This is the reason for the times I make music and think about art: for a bit of heaven! Funny, I've always connected that bottomless pit of longing with the flesh. So, I've no more hard feelings about staying in a box anymore, because I won't be in it for very long!