No time

No time to read.  No time to see friends.  No time to cook dinner.  No time to exercise.  No time to get everything done that needs to be done.  Why does it always feel like there is not enough time?  Why am I always in a hurry, always frantic, always late, always behind, always overwhelmed, always stressed?

My Spring Break began at 3:30 on Friday.  As I drove away from school, I began to think about how to spend this newly acquired time.   My first thought was to get rid of my watch, that bossy old man that ticks away my life, chides me for not submitting to his deadlines, and who cheerlessly moves forward whether I want him to or not. 

As I looked down at my wrist to get rid of this merciless taskmaster, I discovered that I had already haphazardly flung the watch into my school bag.

Before the the thoughts had become words in my mind, my heart must have cried out for no time.  No deadlines.  No hurry.  No rush.  No more minutes to watch disappear.  No more crushing despair and sense of constant failure.

My soul was crying out for the endless summer days of childhood.  For time-free moments with family and friends.  For laughter and joy.  For a peaceful heart.

We were not made for time.  That is why it feels so uncomfortable and strange to us.  Like a garment too small, we adjust and readjust trying to make it fit.  But time will always feel too small because we were made for eternity, life outside of time.

'We are so little reconciled to time that we are even astonished at it. 'How he's grown!' we exclaim, 'How time flies!' It's as strange as if a fish were repeatedly surprised at the wetness of water. And that would be strange indeed; unless of course, the fish were destined to become, one day, a land animal'.  - CS Lewis

 He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end.  Ecclesiastes 3:11

Spring SPRAIN (not break)

Sad! Saturday some friends and I went to play ultimate frisbee at Freedom Park....after about 10 minutes of the "Clemson team" beating us non Clemsonites, I jumped up to catch the frisbee and landed on my left foot, rolling my ankle and dashing my hopes of running in the Cooper River Bridge Run in Charleston.

I would like to jokingly echo the cry of the Prince, who after falling while fleeing Queen Orual in Til We Have Faces, said "curse the gods who made man's ankle.

Once again I will repeat, "SAD!"

out of the silent planet

"Yes," said Oyarsa, "but one thing we left behind us...:fear. And with fear, murder, and rebellion. The weakest of my people do not fear death. It is the Bent One, the lord of your world, who wastes your lives and befouls them with flying from what you know will overtake you in the end. If you were subjects of Maleldil (God) you would have peace."
Out of the Silent Planet, 139
C.S. Lewis

the true sun

" This is how I distinguish dreaming and waking. When I am awake I can, in some degree, account for and study my dream. The dragon that pursued me last night can be fitted into my waking world. I know there are such things as dreams...I know that a man of my reading might be expected to dream of dragons. But while in the nightmare I could not have fitted in my waking experience. The waking world is judged more real because it can thus contain the dreaming world; the dreaming world judged less real because it cannot contain the waking one. For the same reason I am certain that in passing from the scientific points of view to the theological, I have passed from dream to waking. Christian theology can fit in science, art, morality and sub-Christian religions. The scientific point of view cannot fit in any of these things, not even science itself. I believe Christianity as I believe that the Sun has risen, not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else. "

CS Lewis, The Weight of Glory, 139-140

Forever

I am taking a class at UNCC called Murder, Marriage, and Mayhem: The Golden Age of Spanish Theatre. Interesting title, right? Actually, it has been a really interesting and very challenging class. We read whole plays in Spanish. YIKES :)

So, tonight, we were talking about an the last play that we read called El Burlador de Sevilla (the play that is the basis for the famous opera Don Juan). In it there is an allusion to the myth of Cupid and Psyche. When I was in elementary school, I used to check out Greek mythology books to read just for fun (nerd = needs extra reading daily). Anyways....so I was familiar with the myth. The brief version is this:

There was a young girl named Psyche who was very beautiful. The goddess Aphrodite was jealous of Psyche and sent her son Cupid to pierce her with one of his arrows so that she might fall in love with an ugly man. Instead, Cupid himself fell in love with her. He married her and came to her every night, but told her she must not see him, because he was a god. Out of jealousy, her own sisters warned to that he might be a dangerous serpent and that she should light a lamp while he slept to find out his true form. Disobeying, she lit a lamp and at once was saddened by what she had done because she realized that it was the god of love himself, and she had betrayed him. A drop of wax fell on him, and he awoke and fled.

The idea that we discussed in class was that of in one instance seeing paradise and then losing it. My mind flashed back to CS Lewis' book Till We Have Faces, which is a retelling of the myth of Cupid and Psyche with a lot of variations. Although certainly a work of fiction, Lewis is a master of capturing and conveying true truth through story.

And if it was a dream, Sister, how do you think I came here? It's more likely that everything that had happened to me before this was a dream. Why, Glome and the King...seem to me very like dreams now...You could see it was a god's house a once. I don't mean a temple where a god is worshiped. A god's house, where he lives. I would not for any wealth have gone into it. But I had to...for there came a voice so sweet-sweet? oh, sweeter than any music, yet my hair rose at it too- and you know what it said? It said, "Enter your House" (yes it called it my house), "Psyche, the bride of the god." Till We Have Faces, CS Lewis, 112-113.

Cupid and Psyche are a myth.

This is the truth: those who belong to Christ are His bride, and one day, they will be invited to spend all of eternity with Him....in paradise! In a place more beautiful than we can imagine!

No eye has seen,
no ear has heard,
no mind has conceived
what God has prepared for those who love him Isaiah 64:4

All of this flashed through my mind in an instant when she mentioned Psyche glimpsing paradise and then losing it.

My heart cried out: I want paradise! I want an eternity with God! I want to spend eternity with Christ, the lover and savior of my soul! I want to hear Him say well done and invite me into His house to live and enjoy and glorify Him forever. I don't want to miss that...

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ!
In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living
hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead,
and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade—
kept in heaven for you! 1 Peter 1: 3-4

I will praise you, O Lord my God,
with all my heart; I will glorify your name forever. Psalm 84: 12

thoughts from cs lewis and the bible

It seems to me that we often, almost sulkily,
reject the good that God offers us because,
at the moment, we expected some other good.
- CS Lewis, Letters to Malcolm

LORD, you have assigned me my portion and my cup;
you have made my lot secure.
The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places;
surely I have a delightful inheritance.
- Psalm 15:5-6

favorite CS Lewis Quotes

Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that our Lord finds our desires, not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mudpies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far to easily pleased.
Weight of Glory

The term is over: the holidays have begun. The dream is ended: this is the morning." And as He spoke He no longer looked to them like a lion; but the things that began to happen after that were so great and beautiful that I cannot write them. And for us this is the end of the all the stories, and we can most truely say they all lived happily ever after. But for them it was only the beginning of the real story. All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read: which goes on for ever: in which every chapter is better than the one before.
The Last Battle

If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.
Mere Christianity