catching up on sleep

I've been sleeping 12-14 hours a day. It feels so good. I always tell myself I'm going to reflect and get some rest and relax when I go home, and this is the first time I'm really starting to follow through with it. It feels so good.

I've been trying to read "Letters to Malcolm" by C.S. Lewis for the whole semester, and I'm finally getting around to it. Speeding through the chapters. Unfortunately, so much of his thinking is so deep (and his vocabulary so archaic) that I don't actually absorb all of the stuff that's in it. I'd probably have to read it when I hit age 70 to actually get it.

But yesterday there was a page that struck me as such applicable truth. Page 65.

"I do not at all regard mystical experience as an illusion. I think it shows that there is a way to go, before death, out of what may be called 'this world' - out of the stage set. Out of this; but into what? That's like asking an Englishman 'Where does the sea lead to?' He will reply, 'To everywhere on earth, including Davy Jones's locker, except England.' The lawfulness, safety, and utility of the mystical voyage depends not at all on its being mystical - that is, on its being a departure - but on the motives, skill, and constancy of the voyager, and on the grace of God. The true religion gives value to its own mysticism; mysticism does not validate the religion in which it happens to occur.
I shouldn't at all be disturbed if it could be shown that a diabolical mysticism, or drugs, produced experiences indistinguishable (by introspection) from those of the great Christian mystics. Departures are all alike; it is the landfall that crowns the voyage. The saint, by being a saint, proves that his mysticism (if he was a mystic; not all saints are) led him aright; the fact that he has practiced mysticism could never prove his sanctity.


...


There can be a desire (like mine) with no carnal element in it at all which is nevertheless, in St. Paul's sense, 'flesh' and not 'spirit.' That is, there can be a merely impulsive, headstrong, greedy desire even for spiritual things. It is, like our other appetites, 'cross-fodder.' Yet, being crucified, it can be raised from the dead, and make part of our bliss."

I had this conversation with someone at one point in the semester. And this is after I had a bunch of spiritual "experiences," so I was excited because God seemed so real in my life. But he was talking about some special kind of Zen Buddhism or something (in fact, it was so obscure I don't even remember), and he was talking about spiritual experiences he's had and what he'd seen. But what this small excerpt talks about is that it's not the experiences themselves that are important. And people will emphasize that.

"Christianity's so much like Islam."

"Yeah, I've had experiences like that, too."

"Yeah, we have the same values."

But when it comes down to it, it's not the thing itself, but what gives it meaning. For what gives all the good things we do (and the spiritual experiences we have) meaning? Surely not us, surely they don't innately have meaning in themselves.

"...you also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ."
- 1 Peter 2:5

Things only have meaning when they're lifted up in faith through Christ. We are only saved and restored to God when we have faith in Christ. Our spiritual experiences only mean something because they show we have been drawn closer to the God who was, is, and is to come, through Christ.