Spiritual Sunday
I share today a C. S. Lewis poem about the difference between human and angelic perspectives. If angels represent pure spirit, then they are not impeded from touching the divine. By contrast (to draw on Paul), humans “see through a glass darkly” and miss out on a “face to face” encounter.
In “On Being Human,” however, Lewis finds consolation for our limitations. For instance, while angelic minds may achieve the Platonic ideal of grasping “the Tree-ness of the tree,” having no skin they cannot revel in a tree’s shade. Likewise, while they see the very form of air, having no noses they don’t know what it’s like to
Drink the whole summer down into the breast.
The lavish pinks, the field new-mown, the ravishing
Sea-smells, the wood-fire smoke that whispers Rest.
Nor is that all that angels miss by not having noses. They also cannot experience the memories triggered by smells:
The tremor on the rippled pool of memory
That from each smell in widening circles goes,
The pleasure and the pang…
To be sure, angelic minds are “far richer.” It’s as though our minds function as surge protectors against celestial overload. Or as Lewis puts it, our senses’ witchery guards us from “heavens too big to see.” We need protection from the dazzling beauty of the divine, which Lewis calls “barb’d sublimity” and compares to the edge of an unsheathed knife.
Yet within this protective cocoon—this “tiny charmed interior,/ This parlor of the brain”–we are granted secrets that are denied angels. We have a special privacy that is “forever ours, not theirs.”
Angelic minds, they say, by simple intelligence
Behold the Forms of nature. They discern
Unerringly the Archtypes, all the verities
Which mortals lack or indirectly learn.
Transparent in primordial truth, unvarying,
Pure Earthness and right Stonehood from their clear,
High eminence are seen; unveiled, the seminal
Huge Principles appear.
The Tree-ness of the tree they know-the meaning of
Arboreal life, how from earth's salty lap
The solar beam uplifts it; all the holiness
Enacted by leaves' fall and rising sap;
But never an angel knows the knife-edged severance
Of sun from shadow where the trees begin,
The blessed cool at every pore caressing us
-An angel has no skin.
They see the Form of Air; but mortals breathing it
Drink the whole summer down into the breast.
The lavish pinks, the field new-mown, the ravishing
Sea-smells, the wood-fire smoke that whispers Rest.
The tremor on the rippled pool of memory
That from each smell in widening circles goes,
The pleasure and the pang --can angels measure it?
An angel has no nose.
The nourishing of life, and how it flourishes
On death, and why, they utterly know; but not
The hill-born, earthy spring, the dark cold bilberries.
The ripe peach from the southern wall still hot
Full-bellied tankards foamy-topped, the delicate
Half-lyric lamb, a new loaf's billowy curves,
Nor porridge, nor the tingling taste of oranges.
—An angel has no nerves.
Far richer they! I know the senses' witchery
Guards us like air, from heavens too big to see;
Imminent death to man that barb'd sublimity
And dazzling edge of beauty unsheathed would be.
Yet here, within this tiny, charmed interior,
This parlor of the brain, their Maker shares
With living men some secrets in a privacy
Forever ours, not theirs.
