After several years of living in the concrete paradise of gray Warsaw, Poland, I longed for a place utterly ‘other.’ I was unable to put my finger on exactly what I was looking for, but I knew I needed BEAUTY, a place where I could get lost in creation, where I could breathe fresh air and completely slip away from the hustle and bustle of city life; in a word, a place of peace.

 

Kazimierz Dolny, a small town in central Poland, was the closest I came to finding this ideal. For this reason, I loved visiting there. It was an artsy town, set right on the Wisla river, with hiking trails and interesting landmarks. As I walked the trails and soaked in the climate, I felt as if I were getting glimpses of that ‘other’ I longed for.

 

Quickly, however, the feeling would fade and I would be disappointed. Kazimierz was often crowded, my accommodations usually left me flat, the streets were dirty. I got the sense that something was missing. I enjoyed going there but I was still longing for that ‘other.’ My heart knew what I was looking for, though it was keeping the secret from my head.  

 

        When I came to Vancouver, I felt like I had found that ‘other’ -- like I had come home. It had the beauty, the raw nature, ocean, mountains and the peacefulness I was looking for. It even had an arts venue, something I thought I would have to give up after living in Europe. After a couple of months of living here, I realized that Vancouver is precisely the place I had longed for when I was in Warsaw, not knowing at the time that such a place existed.

 

        My story gets to the heart of one of the central themes of C.S. Lewis’s view of heaven. We long for a place that is just outside of our experience. Somehow we know ‘it’ is out there, just beyond our grasp, and so our longing propels us to search.

 

At times we catch glimpses of it and for a moment think we have found what we were looking for, only to find that the moment is a fleeting one and we are once again disappointed. We aren’t able to articulate it, but once we arrive at the destination we will know in our heart of hearts that we have finally found that Something. And we’ll exclaim, “Yes, this is my home, this is the place I was looking for.” 

 

        Lewis very much believed in a real heaven and hell. Walter Hooper, Lewis’s personal secretary, said that the reality of the immortality of man was a central premise to all of Lewis’s works.[1] The theme permeated his writings, regardless of the subject. Despite the popularity of The Screwtape Letters, Lewis wrote much more about heaven than hell. For Lewis, heaven was a main tenet of Christianity, as opposed to being one separated from it. Lewis says:

 

…If that other world is once admitted, how can it, except by sensual or bustling pre-occupations, be kept in the background of our minds? How can the ‘rest of Christianity – what is this ‘rest’? –be disentangled from it? How can we untwine this idea, if once admitted, from our present experience, in which, even before we believed, so many things at least looked like ‘bright shoots of everlastingness’?[2]

 

        Answering those who claimed that talk of heaven was a form of escapism, Lewis said that the pie in the sky either exists or it doesn’t. If pie in the sky does not exist, then Christianity is false because, he believed, the doctrine of heaven was woven into the whole fabric of Christianity.[3]

 

        Lewis’s early development     

 

Lewis’s brother’s toy garden made out of a simple biscuit tin covered with moss and garnished with twigs and flowers played an important role in the boy’s initial understanding of heaven. Lewis admits that his early aesthetic experiences were romantic in nature rather than formal, and so the toy garden provided him with something the real garden never did: the first glimpse of beauty. For the rest of his life heaven would continue to retain something of that toy garden.

 

        Lewis also learned early on about the nature of longing, a feeling that was to become central to his pursuit of heaven. Because of the view of the distant Castlereagh Hills, which were visible from his nursery window, he learned there were things beyond his reach, places he could never go and things he would never attain. The theme of the unattainable and elusive followed him into adulthood as he experienced desires for a Something that couldn’t be identified in his present existence.[4]

 

Longings fulfilled

 

        The crux of Lewis’s perception of heaven is based on the understanding that earth is not our home and that there is a desire, a longing, which nothing on this earth will satisfy.  The fact that we are made for heaven is evidenced by our desire for it, even if our desire is not yet attached to its true object. Sometimes our desire is not only not attached to its true object, but even rivals it by attaching itself to other objects, which we mistakenly identify for the real thing.[5]

 

        Although some may question whether we desire heaven, Lewis wondered whether, in fact, we have ever desired anything else. What makes us know we desire heaven? Lewis calls it the “secret signature of the soul.”[6] The signature of our soul reveals itself for example, as we are standing overlooking a landscape we have been searching for all of our lives. We turn to our friend to share with her our joy, only to find that a chasm has engulfed us. To our dismay, we realize she doesn’t understand what we find so inviting about this particular landscape. She’s simply not moved by it the way we are.

 

Or the signature reveals itself when we recognize that a certain thread runs through all the books we love, the meaning for which evades us. Our friends find it puzzling that we would love those kinds of books and not others. The reason we love those books or that landscape is because our souls represent a unique individuality that only God understands fully.

 

Just like a key is made to fit a particular lock, so our souls are made to fit a particular place in the “infinite contours of the divine substance.” Our place in heaven will be made for us and us alone because we were made for it like a glove is made for a hand.[7]

 

        We are homesick, though we don’t realize we are sick for that home, our real home. Lewis says our sickness is like a secret inside of us that hurts so much we take revenge by calling it things likes Nostalgia, Romanticism, Adolescence or Beauty. The secret within us can’t be told and can’t be hidden, though we would like to do both. It can’t be told because it’s a desire that has never actually appeared in our experience and therefore we are at a loss as to how to articulate it. At the same time, the secret can’t be hidden because our experience is constantly suggesting it, both in the joys and delights of life but also in the pains and sorrows.[8]

 

Lewis emphasizes that we have never actually had this thing that we so long for, this thing that has come to so deeply possess our soul. We have only seen glimpses of it, like an echo that dies away just as it catches our ear, or a promise not quite fulfilled.[9] If we were ever actually to hear the tune, we would recognize it immediately. We would know that we have found the thing we have been looking for, because the reality of it is written on our souls.

 

Whether books, music or landscape, they are not the thing itself, they are only reminders of the thing for which we are longing. They disguise themselves as messengers to tell us that we are really made for another place. Through them we know we’re not yet home.

 

These things – the beauty, the memory of our own past – are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself, they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshippers. For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited.[10]

 

        On earth we have only the scent, the echo, the news…In heaven we will finally find that flower, we will recognize the tune immediately and we will not only visit the distant country but remain there for all of eternity.

 

        One of the most unusual characteristics of our longings, said Lewis, is the actual moment when we discover we don’t belong to that other world. The moment is a bittersweet one, usually as the music is ending or the sun is going down on the glorious landscape.

 

“For a few minutes we have had the illusion of belonging to that world. Now we wake to find that it is no such thing. We have been mere spectators. Beauty has smiled, but not to welcome us; her face was turned in our direction, but not to see us. We have not been accepted, welcomed, or taken into the dance.”[11]

 

        There is a pang that occurs within us after we have experienced a moment of exultatation. An emptiness. We felt for a moment as if the ecstasy would never end, but it inevitably does, and we are left with an emptiness in our souls. We find to our dismay that our sense of belonging was fleeting. Delighting in it for a moment, we weren’t invited to enter into the full joy.

 

Lewis says that the truest index of our real situation is our longing to be reconnected with that from which we were cut off. We are standing on the outside of a great door, and to be summoned in would be both glory and honor as well as the healing of an old ache.[12]

 

 

Shadows vs. reality

        This life is only a shadow of the real life that awaits us, says Lewis. He refers to the analogy of the shadow as compared to reality extensively in his writings. Heaven in The Great Divorce is referred to as the “Valley of Shadow of life.”[13]  

 

In The Chronicles of Narnia, Edmund and Lucy’s home in England is called ‘Shadowlands.” Narnia was “as different as a real thing is from a shadow or as waking life is from a dream.”[14] Aslan, telling the children they would be able to stay in Narnia forever, declared, “The dream is ended: this is the morning.”[15] In The Great Divorce, one of the solid people explains to one of the transparent ghosts, “All that is fully real is Heavenly.”[16]

 

        Heaven will be a continuation of what we know, and yet at the same time altogether different, altogether better. Lewis said that this life differs from heaven not “as a copy is to an original, nor as a substitute is to the genuine article, but as the flower to the root, or the diamond to the coal.”[17]

 

In The Last Battle, Lewis has the reader picture a room with a window overlooking a beautiful view of the sea or a valley set among mountains. A mirror stands in the room reflecting the view, but in the mirror the sea or the valley reflect a greater beauty than the real sea or mountains. He says the greater beauty resembles an unknown story that beckons us to read.[18]

 

It’s evident that Lewis’s use of the concepts of shadow and reality was strongly influenced by Plato, especially his Republic-in particular the “Four Stages of Cognition” and the “Allegory of the Cave.” In Surprised by Joy, Lewis includes Plato as one of the seven main influences that led to his decision of faith – alongside J.R.R. Tolkien and George MacDonald[19] (who is considered by John Eldredge as having more to say about heaven than almost any other author).

 

Platonism draws a sharp distinction between the material world, which represents partial knowledge and the spiritual world represented by pure ‘forms’ or ideas. According to Platonism, that which is unseen is the reality and that reality is found in the spiritual realm. The material world is illusion, a ‘shadow’ or reflection of the spiritual realm.[20]

 

        In the “Four Stages of Cognition,” Plato explains to his pupil the soul’s ascent from the material to the spiritual world through the illustration of mathematicians and their use of mathematical symbols, which serve as visible forms of an unseen reality.

 

Although mathematicians utilize the visible forms represented by numbers, they are focused not on the numerical symbols, but rather the mathematical ideals which they resemble. The numerals that are drawn are only shadows or reflections, which are then converted into images. Plato says that the mathematicians are seeking to behold the ideals themselves, which are only seen with the mind’s eye.

 

        Lewis was clearly inspired by Plato’s concept of the visible vs. the unseen reality. For Lewis, Plato’s material world represented our present life while the spiritual one represented the unseen reality of heaven. Just as Plato’s numerical symbols resemble their ideals, so our experiences in this life resemble, reflect, or echo the reality of heaven. Similarly, as the mathematician seeks to behold the mathematical ideals, so we seek to behold the true reality of heaven, which can only be seen by the mind’s eye, or rather the ‘soul’s eye’.

 

Fully human

For Lewis, heaven involved the development of our whole self and contained all that is meant by a human life that has been glorified.[21] As we surrender all of our lives to God through the process of sanctification, we become more and more fully who God has created us to be.

 

Heaven will be the culmination of our personhood, in which we become more human than we ever were on earth.[22] Instead of being absorbed into Deity, or transformed into angels, our humanity will be fully expressed and completely fulfilled, like musicians playing different instruments according to his or her own unique abilities.[23] Lewis provides a glimpse of this fulfilled humanity through the portrayal of the solid people in The Great Divorce. They are completely selfless and benevolent, possessing a unique individuality while at the same time remaining recognizable to their old friends, those represented in the story as transparent ghosts.

 

Joy

 

          “Joy is the serious business of heaven,” Lewis says in response to an objection that the use of games and dance are a frivolous way to describe heaven. In a culture where Christianity was so serious (and still is!), Lewis knew that these examples might be a stumbling block to some, yet he felt justified in using the analogy.

 

To him, play bore no resemblance to frivolity whatsoever. Only in comparison with the tasks, worries, pain, humdrum and routine of everyday life does play seem frivolous or unimportant. In reality, it is only in our off time that heaven has a chance to peer over our earthly horizon.

 

Play is spontaneous, free and utterly devoid of the routinization of this life. Play is the reconciliation of freedom with intricate and beautiful order. Dance and games only seem frivolous to us now because play was not ultimately made for this world, but was given to us as a chance to rest from the weariness of the world that we experience. Lewis goes so far as to say that what we would consider in this life as acts of truancy, will just possibly be the ‘End of ends,’ in the life to come.[24]

 

A place of adoration

 

        Heaven will be a state of perpetual adoration. We have an innate desire to praise beautiful things, even when our expression is inadequate. How much more glorious our praise would be if we were able to praise to perfection, at the same time loving and delighting in the worthiest object of all! This is what heaven will be like, says Lewis.

 

In order for us to grasp the quality of the adoration described, we have to suppose ourselves in perfect love with God, “drunk with, drowned in, dissolved by, that delight which … flows out from us incessantly again in effortless and perfect expression.”[25] Because of our fallen state, it is difficult for us to imagine an eternity of perpetual adoration. In heaven, however, we will be transformed and fully glorified and therefore able to join in on the ‘union of reciprocal loves’ that flows from Father to Son to Holy Spirit and back again. As we enter into that union, love that is given and received from the Trinity spills out into love given and received by and for others. Lewis calls this the Eternal Dance, “making heaven drowsy with its harmony.”[26]

 

Purgatory

        Lewis unabashedly believed in purgatory, as evidenced by the story of The Great Divorce, as well as his response to a letter in Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer:

I believe in purgatory… My favorite image on this matter comes from the dentist’s chair. I hope that when the tooth of life is drawn and I am ‘coming round,’ a voice will say, ‘Rinse your mouth out with this.’ This will be Purgatory. The rinsing may take longer than I can now imagine. The taste of this may be more fiery and astringent than my present sensibility could endure. But [it shall not] be disgusting and unhallowed. [27]

 

Lewis believed that our souls actually demanded purgatory, since we would need to be purified before we could enter God’s presence. Part of that purification would include suffering.[28]

 

        Lewis carries this idea of purification and suffering in heaven into the story of The Great Divorce.  In the story, the transparent ghosts who have first arrived in heaven have to learn to walk on grass as hard as diamonds. It’s very painful for them, because they have feet of shadows and haven’t become accustomed to reality.[29] The suffering was however, momentary, if they were willing to persevere.  Trying to encourage a ghost, one of the solid people says of the pain, “An hour hence and you will not care. A day hence and you will laugh at it.”[30]

 

        Lewis believed that heaven was a place of continual betterment, as seen through the example of the solid people who lived for the purpose of journeying further and further into the mountains.[31] There is no sense of arriving at the destination, only a continual process of moving upward and inward. This theme is repeated in The Last Battle, where the children, in reaching the new Narnia, are encouraged to go “further up and further in.”

 

        I find it so refreshing that Lewis considered the doctrine of heaven a main tenet of Christianity, a tenet which permeated his writings. Lewis is unique in this regard, as today’s writers tend to become so specialized in their subject matter. As an example, how many books about pain and suffering have a chapter about heaven, as Lewis’s does? I imagine not many.

 

        As I read about Lewis’s heaven, my heart and soul are stirred to worship like very few other writings. Lewis has helped me put words to my experience as he talks about a desire we have which is not attached to its true object. Thanks to Lewis, I have identified those pangs of being cut off from something for which I was born to be a part of. I had smelled the scent of the flower, heard the echoes of the tune, and received the news from the faraway land. I thought that’s all I was experiencing because I hadn’t learned to attach my desire to its true object. Now when the Curtain of Beauty falls in front of me, leaving me outside of the drama, I know how to properly respond.

 

Lewis’s ‘frivolous’ use of games and dance as a way to describe heaven continues to be a word for our serious Christian culture, fifty years later. It’s humorous to me that he would use these analogies since he despised games and disliked dancing! And yet, he knew that these activities contained a breath of heaven, because through them the yoke of work, chores and routine is lifted, and heaven has, for a moment, the chance to peer through. 

 

        I find it perplexing that Lewis felt so strongly about purgatory. Besides the fact that there is no scriptural basis for it, I don’t understand why he thought we would still need to be purified once we entered heaven. What was the purpose of Christ’s blood shed for us if we still needed purification? I wonder what he believed about forgiveness of sins both in the Hebrews once-and-for-all sense and in the I John 1:9 moment-by-moment sense?

 

Lewis was clearly not a universalist and so didn’t believe that all would end up in heaven, as opposed to Catholics who believe in purgatory as a way to reconcile all going to heaven. It’s unclear to me why, for a man who purposely focused on the “enormous common ground” of Christianity, he chose to include his concept of purgatory as part of heaven in The Great Divorce. Granted, it is true that he does not mention purgatory in any of his other writings that I know of, and even in The Great Divorce the idea could be understood in different ways. But images of dentist’s chairs and fiery and astringent rinsing don’t seem at all to correspond with the concepts, images and word pictures he uses to define and describe heaven in his other writings.

 

        Returning to my initial illustration, as wonderful as Vancouver is, it is not idyllic. The streets are congested, the homeless still beg for money, cars are broken into, it rains frequently. There is no idyllic place on earth. I will only be disappointed if I expect that from this life. One day, one day, I will go home…forever. And I will enter into the Cosmic Dance with the Lover of my soul. The One who has waited for me to come home even longer than I have waited to go home.