"A Grief Observed" by C.S. Lewis

Last night I was bored so I decided to read "A Grief Observed" by C.S. Lewis. It's no amazing feat: the book is less than one hundred pages. I believe this book is remarkable because it captures the interaction between a man in grief and his questions and contemplations on God and spirituality. He is raw and organic. I have a new respect for C.S. Lewis, and this work has put a glow around all his other writings in making you understand that, yes, he is a person, and yes, he had emotions, and yes, he knew what it was like to suffer. Here are a few quotes from the book, which is comprised of his journals:

Talk to me about the truth of religion and I'll listen gladly. Talk to me about the duty of religion and I'll listen submissively. But don't come talking to me about the consolation of religion or I'll suspect that you don't understand.

If God's goodness is inconsistent with hurting us, then either God is not good or there is no God: for in the only life we know He hurts us beyond our worst fears and beyond all we can imagine.

What is grief compared with physical pain? Whether fools may say, the body can suffer twenty times more than the mind.

What we want is to live our marriage well and faithfully through [the phase when we are separated by death] too. If it hurts (and it certainly will) we accept the pains as a necessary part of this phase. We don't want to escape them at the price of desertion or divorce. Killing the dead a second time. We were one flesh. Now that it has been cut in two, we don't want to pretend that it is whole and complete. We will still be married, still in love. Therefore we shall still ache.

There is something new to be chronicled every day. Grief is like a long valley, a winding valley where any bend may reveal a totally new landscape.

I don't agree with everything C.S. Lewis wrote, but neither did he. The above writings were spawned in grief and capture the cries of C.S. Lewis' heart. They are but glimpses of his heart and can easily be echoed by those suffering everywhere throughout the world. His thoughts, however, do turn to theological matters:

My idea of God is not a divine idea. It has to be shattered time after time. He is the great iconoclast. Could we not almost say that this shattering is one of the marks of His presence? The Incarnation is the supreme example; it leaves all precious ideas of the Messiah in ruins.

If you're approaching [God] not as the goal but as a road, not as the end but as a means, you're not really approaching Him at all.

When I lay these questions before God I get no answer. But a rather special sort of 'No answer.' It is not the locked door. It is more like a silent, certainly not uncompassionate, gaze. As though His head shook not in refusal but waiving the question. Like, 'Peace, child; you don't understand.'

How many hours are there in a mile? Is yellow square or round? Probably half the questions we ask--half our theological and metaphysical problems--are like that.

Finally he writes something very peculiar about the state of humanity:

[God's great enterprise:] To make an organism which is also a spirit; to make that terrible oxymoron, a 'spiritual animal.' To take a poor primate, a creature with a stomach that wants to be filled, a breeding animal that wants its mate, and say, 'Now get on with it. Become a god.'

A fantastic book, it comes highly recommended. Now I'm off to try to finish Chapter 4 in my new project, read some of "Just Generosity" for sociology, study some Colossians, then travel home to spend these last hours of the weekend with family and (hopefully) friends. Next week is going to be a living hell so let me enjoy the weekend's freedom while I can!