“I have come home at last! This is my real country! I belong here. This is the land I have been looking for all my life, though I never knew it till now…Come further up, come further in!”
With those words, so simple on the surface, but filled with such depth, C. S. Lewis captured my imagination, and I have never been able to free it since.
In Surprised By Joy, the spiritual autobiography of C. S. Lewis, he talks about how he picked up Phantastes, by George MacDonald, and how this caused the ‘baptism of his imagination.’ This ‘baptism’ was one of the stepping stones that led to Lewis’ salvation. While this quote didn’t lead to my salvation, it did sit with me, even though I didn’t know why.
“Come further up, come further in!”
I’m going to get into the depth of that statement later on, but right now, I want to sit on the idea of baptizing our imaginations. Baptism, in the religious sense, is symbolic of dying with Christ and being raised to life again. So, “baptism” means that our imaginations, which were dead or dormant, have been resurrected – they’re alive and active now.
The imagination is a marvelous thing, and I’ve always had a pretty active one. I remember coming inside several times and my dad asking me, “Out there protecting the farm from the bad guys?”
Of course, in my mind’s eye, it wasn’t the farm that I was protecting. It was a world far, far away. Probably Mossflower Wood, from the Redwall books. Another day, it might be Narnia. On another, it could be one I invented myself.
This is different from C. S. Lewis’ experience. For him, he had a lack of imagination. So, his baptism was one of death to life, while mine was instead a re-purposing. It’s difficult to describe the feeling I experienced after reading that quote, but I will try.
It’s the desire to go to a place that you’ve heard of, but haven’t seen.
It’s the feeling of anticipation when you’re standing in line to board a plane, having never flown before.
It’s moment before you dive into pool on a summer’s day.
It’s the realization that your friendship may be something much deeper.
It tells you that there’s more to life than what you know or what you can see.
And yet, I think all of these fall short when it comes to the feeling I was left with. The only explanation I can give is that this statement had a deep spiritual meaning, and therefore, left me with a spiritual longing that I couldn’t understand. It’s the longing that C. S. Lewis references when he says, “If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. If none of my earthly pleasures satisfy it, that does not prove that the universe is a fraud. Probably earthly pleasures were never meant to satisfy it, but only to arouse it, to suggest the real thing.”
I wouldn’t understand the true depths of this statement until more recently. But that initial feeling, would help me understand an astounding truth.
As far as my imagination could take me into a fantasy world of make-believe and wonder, true depth and meaning did not reside there. No, I realized – no matter what I imagined, reality would always be deeper.
This post was spot on…Further up and Further in, my dear friend!