Alright. So this is it. My first post on CS Lewis! And not only that, my first blog post in general. WOO! But, as the audience of these posts will likely consist solely of Professor Young and my Mother, I'm not too worried about casting my thoughts to the intellectual swirl of the blogosphere. So! Here goes.

Through interchanges between Divine Spirit and Ghost, Lewis paints in two instances the importance of keeping our childlike quest for beauty and knowledge. In the first instance, a Spirit converses with a Ghost-artist, recently arisen from Hell. As the ghost looks around at the radient expanse of Heaven, he desires to paint it. The Spirit insists that this is unnecessary, as Heaven is the epoch of beauty, with the need only to be seen, not reproduced and communicated. As the communicate, it becomes clear that this Ghost, instead of painting as a means to access heaven, has converted painting from a means to an end. He is now wrapped up in his role as a painter, unable to see that he started in that profession in the first place because "light itself was [his] first love" (pg 84). In response to the Spirit's accusation that he's lost his sense of priority, the Ghost replies "Oh, that's ages ago...one grows out of that." He's compromised his child-like thirst for light and beauty for reputation and social status.

A similar instance occurs in chapter five, where a different Spirit confronts an intellectual Ghost about his insistence on questioning and intellectualizing everything. This Ghost insists on the value of "inquiry", "honest opinions fearlessly followed", and hopes by coming to heaven that he will find "a wider sphere of usefulness--a scope for the talents that God has given [him]" (pgs 39-40). The Spirit, however, asserts that there is no longer a need for fierce questioning, for liberal theology, for inquiry and doubt. Instead, he promises that his "thirst will be quenched" (40). The ghost, however, rejects this alternative, doesn't seem to even recognize the promise he's refusing, and chooses instead to go back to Hell where he is the head of a Theological Society. This interchange was fascinating to me--the reassurance that our questions, concerns, thoughts--these inquires we have are "made for truth" (41). The promise that one day there will be no doubt, no theories...only certainty. Light, darkness and a perfect judge. The ghost's resistance was also compelling to me--the fact that his inquiry was not really sincere. That he didn't really want answers, just the pompous position of posing the questions.

Both of these examples speak to the loss of innocence we experience as we grow. It takes so much humility to remain as a child when you are the famous author, you are the renown professor, when you are the one who's supposed to have all the answers. But through these examples in The Great Divorce, Lewis encourages us to cast aside poise and position, to do away with what we thought was the end purpose of our lives and admit our innocence and helplessness before him. These ghost-men did not even have the faith or interest to follow the angels a little further into the mountain, to the fount of all joy and sustenance. I just hope that when this decision is placed before me, I will be able to cast off my paltry solutions and yield to the center of complete truth.