Keep Looking: The 60th anniversary of the death of C.S. Lewis

If you become a writer you’ll be trying to describe the thing all your life: and lucky if, out of dozens of books, one or two sentences, just for a moment, come near to getting it across.

—C.S. Lewis

C.S. Lewis died 60 years ago today.

Hundreds (if not thousands) of times I've read a sentence of his, and said, "Oh...I see."

And I've really meant it.

I think what Lewis is getting at here is the idea that to truly describe the *thing*, you must describe it with all its transcendental notes of being: how it is true, and good, and beautiful. Some writers can show one or the other, but to truly see the thing, we have to understand all these notes together. Done well, there emerges a harmony where each transcendental note shows more clearly each of the others, and in this harmony, at last we see the thing.

Do we see as clearly as we ought? No, for now we see through a glass, darkly. But Lewis brings us to the window and implores us: "Look! Come further up, come further in."

Keep looking, if you wish to see the thing.

Keep looking.

That's the lesson. The glass slowly, very slowly, undims.

But keep looking.

That's why Lewis tells us, "No book is really worth reading at the age of ten which is not equally – and often far more – worth reading at the age of fifty and beyond."

As I come nearer to 50, I would tell my 10 year old self, "Keep looking."

"Oh...I see."

Yes, truly. But darkly. My 90 year old self would no doubt say the same to me now. With hope though I believe that outside of time, I do see. Face to face.

“For all find what they truly seek.

Thank you, Mr. Lewis. Rest assured, there were more than one or two sentences. There were whole paragraphs. Yes, and even dozens of books where you got at the thing.

But I'll keep looking.

Requiescat in pace, Clive Staples Lewis.

29 November 1898 - 22 November 1963