Made for Another World?

Last updated on: November 22, 2012 at 11:45 pm by Leah Libresco

Made for Another World? 2012-11-22T23:45:13-05:00 Leah Libresco

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

While travelling this weekend, I finally got around to reading Freud’s Last Session – a play that imagines a dialogue between Sigmund Freud (shortly before his death) and C.S. Lewis (not long after his conversion). The show played recently off-Broadway, but I still haven’t seen it.

I have to say, I wasn’t that impressed by the script. The arguments Lewis presents are a lot more complex and compelling in the books he’s written (and I assume the same goes for Freud as well). I did think Lewis came off better in the debate, but that’s largely because the arguments Freud musters are more of the angry-at-God type, and I think I’ve got a better one to offer.

In the script, Play!Lewis expresses a though I’ve seen elsewhere in Real!Lewis’s writings:

None of us are born with desires unless satisfaction for them exists… A baby feels hunger; well, there is such a thing as food. A duckling wants to swim, water exists to do it. So if I find within myself a desire which no experience in the world can satisfy, the most likely explanation is that I was made for another world

First, to give Lewis his due, I do experience some of the passionate desires for unworldly things that led him to become a Christian. But I don’t believe that Christianity sates them or that powerful desires necessitate a satisfaction.

So let me cop to part of the reason I’m taking ASL lessons. A large part is that I like learning a new language to keep my mind sharp and that (as a total math/topology geek) I’m thrilled to learn one that’s so visual spatial. But a not insignificant proportion of my reasoning was “maybe this is the closest I can get to being a wizard.”

Let me explain. Whether it’s the difficult hand positions of Lev Grossman’s castings in The Magicians or the forged-in-muscle magic of Spellbound, fantasy novels have taught me that doing magic is all about imbuing your words with meaning (possibly physically). Diane Duane writes in her Young Wizards series:

Wizards love words. Most of them read a good deal, and indeed one strong sign of a potential wizard is the inability to get to sleep without reading something first. But their love for and fluency with words is what makes wizards a force to be reckoned with. Their ability to convince a piece of the world – a tree, say, or a stone – that it’s not what it thinks it is, that it’s something else, is the very heart of wizardry.

So learning ASL felt like getting closer to wizardly language, where words don’t just express ideas, they embody them. My desire for language-magic is a pretty passionate one, and it’s attraction isn’t just wish-fullfilment. When I read the paragraph above in So You Want to be a Wizard, it felt true, it felt like a glimpse of the hidden order under the world. It felt exactly like a longed for desire finally finding it’s object. And clearly I’m not the only one with this intuition, or it wouldn’t pop up in so many novels.

But, although I made a leap of faith and took the Wizard’s Oath that night, I haven’t gotten any more adept at pulling whatever levers I imagine underlie reality. I’d like anyone who accepts Lewis’s assertions as valid to explain why his Christ-seeking desires do logically require a source of fulfillment and my language-magic yearning does not. And try not to do it by no-true-Scotsmanning my desires as not passionately felt enough.

P.S: If you’re looking for a play that deals with philosophy and religion at a high level without sacrificing plot, you should come to DC in February and see New Jerusalem: The Interrogation of Baruch de Spinoza at Theatre J. I saw last summer’s production and it was stellar. The revival is keeping the two leads: Spinoza and his rabbi.

Apologetics

Reviews/Recommendations

CS Lewis

sunday's good book

Previous Post

November 4, 2011

7 Quick Takes (11/4/11)

Next Post

November 8, 2011 The Damnation of the Foolish Virgins

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category 7 Quick Takes Apologetics Atheism Book Conversion Debate Tactics Debates Epistemology/Philosophy Housekeeping Ideological Turing Test Marriage Morality in Practice Parsing Catholicism Possibly Heretical Radio Reviews/Recommendations Sequence Index Spiritual Practice Uncategorized

Select a Month April 2017 March 2017 January 2017 December 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 April 2012 March 2012 February 2012 January 2012 December 2011 November 2011 October 2011 September 2011 August 2011 July 2011 June 2011 May 2011 April 2011 March 2011 February 2011 January 2011 December 2010 November 2010 October 2010 September 2010 August 2010 July 2010 June 2010

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

What does "Gideon" mean in Hebrew?

Select your answer to see how you score.

God is my Strength Redeemer Warrior Hewer