seasons
The horror of the Same Old Thing is one of the most valuable passions we have produced in the human heart—an endless source of heresies in religion, folly in counsel, infidelity in marriage, and inconstancy in friendship. The humans live in time, and experience reality successively. To experience much of it, therefore, they must experience many different things; in other words, they must experience change. And since they need change, the Enemy (being a hedonist at heart) has made change pleasurable to them, just as He has made eating Pleasurable. But since He does not wish them to make change, any more than eating, an end in itself, He has balanced the love of change in them by a love of permanence. He has contrived to gratify both tastes together on the very world He has made, by that union of change and permanence which we call Rhythm. He gives them the seasons, each season different yet every year the same, so that spring is always felt as a novelty yet always as the recurrence of an immemorial theme. He gives them in His Church a spiritual ear; they change from a fast to a feast, but it is the same feast as before.
Now just as we pick out and exaggerate the pleasure of eating to produce gluttony, so we pick out this natural pleasantness of change and twist it into a demand for absolute novelty. This demand is entirely our workmanship. If we neglect our duty, men will be not only contented but transported by the mixed novelty and familiarity of snowdrops this January, sunrise this morning, plum pudding this Christmas. Children, until we have taught them better, will be perfectly happy with a seasonal round of games in which conkers succeed hopscotch as regularly as autumn follows summer. Only by our incessant efforts is the demand for infinite, or unrhythmical, change kept up.
--C.S. Lewis, Chapter XXV of The Screwtape Letters (1941)
Apologies for the lengthy quotation, but the words C.S. Lewis places here in the mouth of the diabolical Screwtape, servant of the Devil, have been much on my mind of late. In context, Screwtape is delivering instructions and dispensing advice to his nephew Wormwood, who is attempting to win the soul of a young man. More broadly, however, Lewis is making a point about human nature that is, for me, both comfort and caution.
Humans need change. We also require stability. God sees and understands these qualities within us--after all, he created us in the first place. From the four seasons of the year to the seasons of our lives, these periods of predictable change were crafted by God to fulfill our deepest needs. When we live "in season," experiencing the change and the order he has given us as it comes, we are in sync with the life our Creator has planned for us. When we move out of sync, succumbing to the "horror of the Same Old Thing" that Screwtape so aptly describes above, we fall into trouble. We no longer allow the order God has created to sustain us, and we fall into the grasping despair of our limitless striving after that Thing somewhere, out there, that will fill the hole in our souls.
A previous homeowner planted a row of lilac bushes in our parking strip. Throughout the summer and into the fall they are a green, leafy, unpretentious barrier between us and the road. In the winter they move into dormancy, although a careful look at the tips of each branch will reveal the promise they hold in store. In the spring, they burst into their glory, covered in fragrant purple cones for a fleeting period of weeks before the flowers wither, the scent fades and the bushes must be trimmed to make way for next year's sets.
One of the more conscious acts I have undertaken in the years we have lived here has been to carefully sniff the lilacs each time I get the newspaper or check the mailbox. I know they are a predictable, reliable--but temporary--gift, an opportunity for me to experience the season God has given me. If I fail to take advantage of this gift, they will be gone, and it will be another 11 months' wait before the gift is offered once more. The lilacs are a reminder to me that I should be pursuing this path in so many more areas of my life. I seek and I grasp... and then I find a photograph of my beautiful daughter at 2, joyfully helping me stir cookie dough, and I realize that she is now 5, those days are long past, and while a life without regrets is not possible for fallible humanity I need to ensure that I am living in this season of being her mother, of experiencing all that Meredith-at-5 has to offer.
Some gifts are harder to experience than others. In this spring of nearly endless rain, many of us who are Pacific Northwesterners have felt the oppression of gray skies and constant damp. In the seasons of our lives, there will be times that are oppressive or painful, troubling or profoundly difficult. Thankfully, we have the promise of a God who has created seasons. Change within the never-changing stability of the most permanent Gift of all--an eternal life crafted especially and specifically for us by the One who loved us enough to go through his own darkest of seasons.
The author of Ecclesiastes was right: "For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven (3:1)"--and now you'll be humming The Byrds for the rest of the day--but my favorite verses from Ecclesiastes are these:
This is what I have seen to be good: it is fitting to eat and drink and find enjoyment in all the toil with which one toils under the sun the few days of the life God gives us; this is our lot.
--Ecclesiastes 5:18
A man may beget a hundred children, and live many years; but however many are the days of his years, if he does not enjoy life's good things, or has no burial, I say that a stillborn child is better off than he.
--Ecclesiastes 6:3
There are some things that are simply out of our control. What we do control is our capacity to accept the seasons God has given us--to enjoy the miracles of the seasons' change and accept his help through the darker seasons of our lives, understanding that nothing is permanent but his love. Enjoy the snippets of spring weather. Smile when you see a cat on a porch or a bird on a fencepost. Be the Jesus-with-skin-on that someone going through a darker season might need in their lives. Smell the lilacs (if you're local, I'll give you our address so you can come smell ours).
Now just as we pick out and exaggerate the pleasure of eating to produce gluttony, so we pick out this natural pleasantness of change and twist it into a demand for absolute novelty. This demand is entirely our workmanship. If we neglect our duty, men will be not only contented but transported by the mixed novelty and familiarity of snowdrops this January, sunrise this morning, plum pudding this Christmas. Children, until we have taught them better, will be perfectly happy with a seasonal round of games in which conkers succeed hopscotch as regularly as autumn follows summer. Only by our incessant efforts is the demand for infinite, or unrhythmical, change kept up.
--C.S. Lewis, Chapter XXV of The Screwtape Letters (1941)
Apologies for the lengthy quotation, but the words C.S. Lewis places here in the mouth of the diabolical Screwtape, servant of the Devil, have been much on my mind of late. In context, Screwtape is delivering instructions and dispensing advice to his nephew Wormwood, who is attempting to win the soul of a young man. More broadly, however, Lewis is making a point about human nature that is, for me, both comfort and caution.
Humans need change. We also require stability. God sees and understands these qualities within us--after all, he created us in the first place. From the four seasons of the year to the seasons of our lives, these periods of predictable change were crafted by God to fulfill our deepest needs. When we live "in season," experiencing the change and the order he has given us as it comes, we are in sync with the life our Creator has planned for us. When we move out of sync, succumbing to the "horror of the Same Old Thing" that Screwtape so aptly describes above, we fall into trouble. We no longer allow the order God has created to sustain us, and we fall into the grasping despair of our limitless striving after that Thing somewhere, out there, that will fill the hole in our souls.
A previous homeowner planted a row of lilac bushes in our parking strip. Throughout the summer and into the fall they are a green, leafy, unpretentious barrier between us and the road. In the winter they move into dormancy, although a careful look at the tips of each branch will reveal the promise they hold in store. In the spring, they burst into their glory, covered in fragrant purple cones for a fleeting period of weeks before the flowers wither, the scent fades and the bushes must be trimmed to make way for next year's sets.
One of the more conscious acts I have undertaken in the years we have lived here has been to carefully sniff the lilacs each time I get the newspaper or check the mailbox. I know they are a predictable, reliable--but temporary--gift, an opportunity for me to experience the season God has given me. If I fail to take advantage of this gift, they will be gone, and it will be another 11 months' wait before the gift is offered once more. The lilacs are a reminder to me that I should be pursuing this path in so many more areas of my life. I seek and I grasp... and then I find a photograph of my beautiful daughter at 2, joyfully helping me stir cookie dough, and I realize that she is now 5, those days are long past, and while a life without regrets is not possible for fallible humanity I need to ensure that I am living in this season of being her mother, of experiencing all that Meredith-at-5 has to offer.
Some gifts are harder to experience than others. In this spring of nearly endless rain, many of us who are Pacific Northwesterners have felt the oppression of gray skies and constant damp. In the seasons of our lives, there will be times that are oppressive or painful, troubling or profoundly difficult. Thankfully, we have the promise of a God who has created seasons. Change within the never-changing stability of the most permanent Gift of all--an eternal life crafted especially and specifically for us by the One who loved us enough to go through his own darkest of seasons.
The author of Ecclesiastes was right: "For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven (3:1)"--and now you'll be humming The Byrds for the rest of the day--but my favorite verses from Ecclesiastes are these:
This is what I have seen to be good: it is fitting to eat and drink and find enjoyment in all the toil with which one toils under the sun the few days of the life God gives us; this is our lot.
--Ecclesiastes 5:18
A man may beget a hundred children, and live many years; but however many are the days of his years, if he does not enjoy life's good things, or has no burial, I say that a stillborn child is better off than he.
--Ecclesiastes 6:3
There are some things that are simply out of our control. What we do control is our capacity to accept the seasons God has given us--to enjoy the miracles of the seasons' change and accept his help through the darker seasons of our lives, understanding that nothing is permanent but his love. Enjoy the snippets of spring weather. Smile when you see a cat on a porch or a bird on a fencepost. Be the Jesus-with-skin-on that someone going through a darker season might need in their lives. Smell the lilacs (if you're local, I'll give you our address so you can come smell ours).
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