Saturday, January 28, 2017

Light shining through darkness (Myth vs fact)



   "A believed idea feels different from from an idea that is not believed . And that peculiar flavor of the believed is never in my experience without a special sort of imaginative enjoyment" This struck me as very unique perspective, yet there is another sense of the meaning C.S. Lewis goes on to describe "On the contrary though, we spoil a mythology for imaginative purposes by believing in it. Fairies are popular in England because we don't think they exist. The contemplation of what we take to be real is always, I think with a certain level of aesthetic satisfaction-a sort which depends solely on its supposed reality. There is dignity and poignancy in the bare fact that a thing exists" -Lewis. This is why mythology and spiritualism in my mind is more popular than rigid Christianity. "It looks as if the confusion between imaginative enjoyment and intellectual assent, of which Christianity is accused, is not nearly as common as people suppose".

   For to me a story resonates within the myth, that which was told became incarnate (Jesus) or fact. A living breathing organism, no longer unbound by the constraints of time, space and matter, but fused the divine with the mortal, to share our fleshly fate. I mean is this not what we all wish for? Is this not why Harry Potter, Star Wars and Peter Pan to certain minds become so fulfilling. There is an enjoyment of that which is uncannily and strictly imaginative which pleasantly suits our imaginations. This kind of free range imagination without rules of gravity, laws and finite limitations is what we all inherently long for. The undoing of a particular "unpleasant" curse is the very idea we so nobly agree as heroism, (beauty kissing the beast), the beast tells the princess of his life before the curse, of his noble splendor before he was damned to his hairy fate. What motivated her in this movie? Was it nothing utter than compassion? Michaelangelo was once asked as he chiseled a small chink in each statue; why are you not focusing on just one whole statue at a time? "Because he said, I'm trying to set the angel free in each one" Like the grand artisian himself, God visualizes a perfect angel inside all the covered up layers of sin, pride and narcissism, the real you is a hidden internal beauty. Another example of heroism that has moved me is Gandalf abysmal fall in the moria mines against the Balrog, and his subsequent return stronger than ever. Darkness cannot quench out light however hard it may try to do so, or how it appears, even the darkest blackness, the black flame itself cannot hold the lightest light. Because when it does attempt to quench, the light just comes back and shines brighter than ever.

"The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness can never extinguish it." -John 1:5