This is Part 2 in a series about Innocence, and it's relation to my life as a brand new eighteen-year-old. Click here for Part 1.
I ended my last post with the J.R.R. Tolkien quote, “We all long for Eden, and we are constantly glimpsing it: our whole nature at its best and least corrupted, its gentlest and most human, is still soaked with the sense of exile.”
Think about the word exile for a moment, and all the weight that it carries.
Adam and Eve had perfect innocence, and they blew it. By the time they realized their mistake, it was too late; they were exiled from Eden, and the gates have been barred ever since. The flaming swords of cherubim are blocking the way (Genesis 3:24). Now, as adults in this modern society, when we catch "glimpses of Eden," or have sudden nostalgia or remembrance for perfection (an aching in the marrow of one's soul that insists, "This isn't how it's supposed to be!"), instead of stretching back into the far collective memories of humanity, we cast the net to a more recent time: childhood.
But ask any child, or even observe them, and it'll become obvious that childhood is far less pure, happy, innocent, and idyllic than we ask adults remember. What we need to realize is that the longing we all feel isn't for childhood; childhood is just the messenger of a greater truth. Once we understand that, not only will we be able to recognize the true nature of our Ache, but it will be easier to let go of childhood. Arrested development and prolonged childhood doesn't equate to innocence, but rather chosen ignorance, and that's not okay.
Let me interject and say that I'm actually writing this for myself at this point. I myself an admittedly clinging unto my childhood like it's a barrel I'm riding to Laketown; at this exact moment, it's 1:30, the morning of my college orientation, but instead of being asleep, I'm blogging (because YOLO). As someone who recently turned eighteen, and is about to start college in a few months, I will readily admit that I'm having trouble "growing up" (You see how hard it is for me to go more than two paragraphs without making a Lord of the Rings reference). So all of this stuff about being responsible and not choosing to ignore the darkness of the world just because it's painful- those are reminders to myself. Now, where were we?
Ah, yes. Childhood, like many things, is an echo or an image of some great truth, but not the thing in itself. If we're not careful, we could turn things like childhood or naïveté into idols, or even addictions, that we try to cling unto to the point of denial. Not only that, but everywhere we look we see reminders of that true beauty and goodness that's currently unattainable to us, or inevitably fleeting- gone before we fully realize their worth, like in Robert Frost's poem "Nothing Gold Can Stay". Perhaps the most expert work on this longing, and why it's so fundamental to us as human and yet so difficult to pin down, is C.S. Lewis's famous essay The Weight of Glory. In it, he explorers the nature of heaven and future paradise in relation to our current situation here:
I ended my last post with the J.R.R. Tolkien quote, “We all long for Eden, and we are constantly glimpsing it: our whole nature at its best and least corrupted, its gentlest and most human, is still soaked with the sense of exile.”
Think about the word exile for a moment, and all the weight that it carries.
Adam and Eve had perfect innocence, and they blew it. By the time they realized their mistake, it was too late; they were exiled from Eden, and the gates have been barred ever since. The flaming swords of cherubim are blocking the way (Genesis 3:24). Now, as adults in this modern society, when we catch "glimpses of Eden," or have sudden nostalgia or remembrance for perfection (an aching in the marrow of one's soul that insists, "This isn't how it's supposed to be!"), instead of stretching back into the far collective memories of humanity, we cast the net to a more recent time: childhood.
But ask any child, or even observe them, and it'll become obvious that childhood is far less pure, happy, innocent, and idyllic than we ask adults remember. What we need to realize is that the longing we all feel isn't for childhood; childhood is just the messenger of a greater truth. Once we understand that, not only will we be able to recognize the true nature of our Ache, but it will be easier to let go of childhood. Arrested development and prolonged childhood doesn't equate to innocence, but rather chosen ignorance, and that's not okay.
Let me interject and say that I'm actually writing this for myself at this point. I myself an admittedly clinging unto my childhood like it's a barrel I'm riding to Laketown; at this exact moment, it's 1:30, the morning of my college orientation, but instead of being asleep, I'm blogging (because YOLO). As someone who recently turned eighteen, and is about to start college in a few months, I will readily admit that I'm having trouble "growing up" (You see how hard it is for me to go more than two paragraphs without making a Lord of the Rings reference). So all of this stuff about being responsible and not choosing to ignore the darkness of the world just because it's painful- those are reminders to myself. Now, where were we?
Ah, yes. Childhood, like many things, is an echo or an image of some great truth, but not the thing in itself. If we're not careful, we could turn things like childhood or naïveté into idols, or even addictions, that we try to cling unto to the point of denial. Not only that, but everywhere we look we see reminders of that true beauty and goodness that's currently unattainable to us, or inevitably fleeting- gone before we fully realize their worth, like in Robert Frost's poem "Nothing Gold Can Stay". Perhaps the most expert work on this longing, and why it's so fundamental to us as human and yet so difficult to pin down, is C.S. Lewis's famous essay The Weight of Glory. In it, he explorers the nature of heaven and future paradise in relation to our current situation here:
"Apparently, then, our lifelong nostalgia, our longing to be reunited with something in the universe from which we now feel cut off, to be inside of some door which we have always seen from the outside, is no mere neurotic fancy, but the truest index of our real situation. And to be at summoned inside would be both glory and honour beyond all our merits and also the healing of that old ache."
Before I'd read The Weight of Glory, I'd never realized that my longing for paradise was really an inherent longing for God and the glory of heaven; for years, I (and others) labeled it as "really wanting to live in Narnia," or being "too idealistic," but there was a reason the feeling never went away. It's lingered for my whole life, but I often found other objects I thought would fill soothe the Ache, but again they were only echoes. Finally, I realized there must be a reason that this world could never completely seem like home (a reason other than the fact that I'm really strange, or escapist, or a fantasist); actually, it was Lewis again who said, "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).
My true home is that Holy Mountain, where the lion will lay down with the lamb and the hobbit will dance near the viper's den without fear that his big wooly feet will get bitten. That's what's so painful about the matter; at times the weight of exile is so heavy and obvious, we can't help but say to ourselves, "But I don't belong here!"
But that's the nature of exile.
Click here for the third part in this series, "Innocence, Pt. 3: Come Back Soon"
My true home is that Holy Mountain, where the lion will lay down with the lamb and the hobbit will dance near the viper's den without fear that his big wooly feet will get bitten. That's what's so painful about the matter; at times the weight of exile is so heavy and obvious, we can't help but say to ourselves, "But I don't belong here!"
But that's the nature of exile.
Click here for the third part in this series, "Innocence, Pt. 3: Come Back Soon"
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