I know myself what others know far better — how unfailingly courteous Lewis was in answering letters. I think I corresponded with him on three or four occasions… But there was a reply every time — it might be quite brief, but it was always written for you and for nobody else. I think this was his greatest secret. He hated casual contacts; human contact must, for him, be serious and concentrated and attentive, or it was better avoided. It might be for a moment only, but that was its invariable quality. That is not only why so many people have precious memories of him; it is also why he couldn’t write three words without the reader’s feeling that they were written for him and him alone. It’s why his massive books of scholarship read as delightfully as his children’s stories, and why he’s one of the few preachers who can be read without losing their message.

Having read this, I find myself ashamed at the thought of my own inattention to others, at the very lack of effort I put into achieving quality in a shared experience. I find that I am vain and self-absorbed, wholly committed to the selling of myself on the stock market of the moment, more concerned with how I am perceived than with how I truly am. Even now, as I read back through this, I find myself thinking, what will people think of me when they read these things? Will they think me genuine? Perhaps if I tell them that I’m thinking about it they will… My only consolation is that I am not alone in my depravity, and that is almost no consolation at all.

How do you rate compared to Lewis?

I have seen the mother, the wife, the girl,
sitting at her bedside, her dead child in her hands
weeping on his upturned face.
There is nothing selfish there.
She is broken, and weary.
She is full of pain, and strangely, guilt.
It is something that I can barely know.

I am most familiar with the man in the room
the one who stands behind her,
who believes that because she is broken, he must be whole,
who cries, but silently
who looks down through tear filled eyes,
and loves them both.

The word mundane comes from the Latin word mundis, and means of the world or earthly and by implication, it has come to mean boring, banal, and unexciting. And that’s significant, because mundane has another meaning as well, one that backtracks a bit and unwinds itself, a meaning that in some ways, diminishes the borders of the word, and in other ways, sets it up as a ruler over an incredibly populous kingdom. Intrigued? The word mundane means of the world, and before you say, “you just said that”, let me explain that it means of the world in the sense that it does not mean, of heaven.

Mundane is a border word. It is half of a dichotomy. It is a line drawn through the middle of our minds. It is a firmament. It is a kingdom. And like all great kingdoms, it does not allow dual-citizenship. Nor does its counterpart, for Heaven is the other kingdom, the other country that borders the mundane, the demesne whose edges begin where mundanity leaves off. And it is concerning the nature of this border that the lie consists.

You have heard the phrase, “beauty is in the eye of the beholder”, and if you are like me, you have believed it. You have more than likely also believed by implication, that mundanity is in the heart of the partaker. That what one man loves, another hates; what one finds joyous, another finds dull and uninteresting; what one says is glorious, another says that it has no glory in it at all. And while this seems true to our relativistic minds, it is ultimately a lie.

Heaven is like light and the mundane, like darkness, in that just as light does not begin where darkness fails, but quite the other way around, so does Heaven draw out the borders of its kingdom and then gives to mundanity what terrain it has refused. Don’t be fooled though, this doesn’t make the borders of the mundane any less real. Or to be more specific, when we declare what we find to be mundane or heavenly, we are not, as we are tempted to think, changing the borders of those great kingdoms, but we are instead, declaring where it is we dwell.

We see this sort of thinking throughout Scripture, here for instance:

If we say that we have fellowship with him, and walk in darkness, we lie, and do not the truth: But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin. If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.
(1 John 1:6-10)

And the mundane deception is no different. It is about the misidentification of the earthly with the heavenly. It is calling evil, good and it is what we begin to do when we grow weary in well doing. It is what C. S. Lewis spent so much time writing about. It is, I think, worth thinking about.

And so it is written, The first man Adam was made a living soul; the last Adam was made a quickening spirit. Howbeit that was not first which is spiritual, but that which is natural; and afterward that which is spiritual. The first man is of the earth, earthy: the second man is the Lord from heaven. As is the earthy, such are they also that are earthy: and as is the heavenly, such are they also that are heavenly. And as we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly. Now this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; neither doth corruption inherit incorruption.
(1 Corinthians 15:45-50)

This is a love story. There is a girl. There is a boy. It is traditional.
I should warn you though, you have already been lied to.

She is twenty-one and she is beautiful. This is necessary.
Eighteen is no good, it’s too young, twenty-five is a bit too old.
She could be twenty-three, and things would probably end the same,
but even then, she would be less than perfectly prepared for what will happen to her.

She is unnoticed.
I said that she is beautiful, and that is true. She is fairy tale beautiful.
She is pale and thin with soft dark eyes,
and her black hair falls in what a poet could not fail to call “raven tresses”.
How could she be so beautiful and go unnoticed, you ask? A good question.
Ask the city. Ask the world. Ask yourself.
There are girls more beautiful than she in your own town.

Her apartment is tiny. Her walls are white and bare.
She lives alone – no pets, no friends. She calls her mother once a week and leaves a message on her answering machine. Her father is dead.
She has not cried since she was ten.

She has one pleasure in her life. She reads. Classics mainly, but contemporary works as well. She goes to the library every day at lunch, and most days after work.
She sits in an empty alcove and reads until closing time. She goes home. She falls asleep with a book on her chest.

Her story begins here, written in flaming letters and spoken with a tongue of fire.

What happens next. Where goes the tale?
Ask the city. Ask the world. Ask yourself.
There are girls more beautiful than she in your own town.

It was sometime after midnight as I was leaving his room, that the doctor that was proctoring me at the hospital stopped me and said quite simply, “Charles, I would not, at any time, turn your back on that man. You don’t know anything about him, and he may be quite dangerous.” And I did what any young, naive fool would do: I said, “Yes sir” and “Thank you” and immediately forgot what he had said.

It was maybe an hour later that he called me over and warned me a second time, and though I cannot remember his exact words, the idea of what he said has stayed with me to this day, and is the core thought that I want to leave you with. He said, in effect, “Charles, I was serious when I warned you before to not turn your back on that man. When you look at him, you think that because he is smiling, he is smiling at the sort of things that you might smile at. But he is not sane, and you have no idea what might make him smile and laugh.”

I still think about those words. Lately, when I am with my wife and children at the mall, it is no hard task for me to remember that we live in a world gone mad. The man that I nod to as he holds the door for me and my family, the man who is wearing the Chicago Bulls sweatshirt and who is smiling at me as we pass, he may very well be smiling at the thought of the pornography that he will watch tonight. The cashier at the fast food place, who may be stealing from his boss or his parents, wears, often enough, a smile on his face as well. The woman who almost runs into me, her arms loaded down with bags and boxes, she may be smiling about the affair that she is having, her face brought alive at the thought of the pleasure that sin provides for but a season.

And the man who is at the mall with his family, the one who holds his wife’s hand tightly and who holds her with his eyes, the one who looks at his children and wonders what they will become, and who prays for them all, the same one who even now is typing this very post: why is he smiling? We live in a world gone mad. A world where every man has deep within him, a darkened heart that is full of wicked things. Most days, we can scarcely afford to forget it.

We had a baby girl this past December, and while it was joyous, we’ve had a difficult time with postpartum depression. My wife had a bit with our first child but it wasn’t quite as bad. Some of it is just due to differences between the two children, but I think (from hearing the same thing from many women who have had 4+ children) that girls are harder on the woman than boys are (even the Torah says the period of rest after childbirth is longer after a girl). So it’s been difficult. I’ve spent a lot of time at night praying, dreading when our daughter would cry, knowing that each time she screamed that Susan was battling with how she felt, struggling with thoughts she did not choose to have. It would be foolish for me to suggest that she was the only one struggling.

There has been an aspect of humility in all of this; I realized that I had not prepared my family in some ways for the challenges of a new child, that I had not been spending time in the Word of God with my wife like I should have been. I had let the world inform our minds on the value of the home, and on the value of children. And so there were many hours spent in prayer: Dear God please help my child to have faith so that she will not demand to be held constantly, please help my wife to call upon you, to cast her cares upon you, to take the thoughts she is having captive. Please help me to be wise in my words, prompt in my actions. Help me to be not so foolish as I have been, Above all else, thank you for this child, thank you for these sleepless nights, thank you for showing me my failures before they cost me more than they already have. It is getting better, much better, but it is still on occasion difficult. The real difficulty is in not falling back into old habits as I see improvement, in believing that the crisis is over, that I can return to my foolish ways without consequence.

There is more about these things that I would like to say, but they can come later. For now, this is sufficient. For those of you who read this, how does this compare to your own experiences? How did you deal with similar struggles?

When you invite them in, they will stand awkwardly in your living room or den or foyer saying nothing until you ask them to sit. Then they will sit down on your couch and will accept the coffee that you offer them. They will make small talk with you, while your wife fills their cups, and then they will quickly drink it, no matter how hot it is, they will not let it cool, they will drink it down and then they will thank your wife and smile, baring straight white teeth.

They will have the records with them, printed on neatly folded paper in clean dark lines. You are free to have your own lawyers and accountants look at them if you wish, but no mistakes will be found. Others have paid more than you have ever owned looking for errors and have found none.

They will be patient with your questions, and will take whatever time is needed to satisfy you, but in the end, you will agree with them. You will hear yourself say, everything seems to be in order. You may think to ask if there is not a need for signatures and if you do, they will make a sound like laughter, high and tight in their noses. It is not a pleasant sound, but they will make it and they will say that no, there is no need for signatures today. That was taken care of years ago, are you quite sure that you don’t remember?

This is when you must be brave. The knock at the door will be the knifeman. He will be dressed in black as well, but his clothes are made of a coarser cloth. Under his arm he will carry a case, also black, and he will ask that you clear a place where he can unroll it. His knives are sharp and bright and there are so many of them. Do not worry about whether you will panic. You will not. You will stand still in your living room, your wife standing beside you, and you will ignore the scream that lodges in your throat, the voice of what can only be your soul as it tells you to fight, to turn and flee, to do anything but stand and watch this happen. You will ignore it. You have been trained well. You will stand still while your wife stands and watches, while the knifeman makes the incisions, while he flays the skin and drains the blood. You will not feel a thing is all that he will say to you and when you hear it, you will wonder, perhaps the very last thought you will ever have, have I ever?

Night and day, grief and peace,
between each there is a moment that is neither one nor the other,
where both fit neatly on the same horizon,
or in the same heart.

The broken child lies on the bed,
The morning sky grows soft and red,
Bathed in the glow it’s softly shed,
I hold my son and stroke his head,
And think on words that David said.
This precious child – not broke, nor dead,
I’m promised that he sleeps instead,
Thus grief and joy are ever wed,
My grief and joy are ever wed.