Memories

A storm Wednesday night knocked out our internet router, and thus my ability to post until a moment ago when my husband replaced it with a previous router. We had been waiting for a service technician to come out on Tuesday, but George has saved the day. I'm not sure that I was clear in my last post about going to the airport to pick up our guests, not that I was leaving. The Assembly next week is in near-enough-by Dallas. As it turned out I found enough time though to write three blog posts while our service was out. (Here's the first),

At the end of 'Out of the Silent Planet' I mentioned that C.S. Lewis wrote about not having to keep repeating experiences, that the memory lives on. Of course we don't relate that to Liturgics, music, drinking coffee, or things like that, but more to unique experiences like traveling or meeting someone outside our daily lives. The thing that occurred once can leave a lasting impression. Mystical me (waves to Professor Lockhart) likes to think of this impression as a more substantive lasting presence. That it will live on in our hearts, as they say about someone who has passed away.

But often we like to repeat an experience. This clinging to a pleasant thing, if it is not God's recommended daily allowance, is what leads people to have an unhealthy addiction to drugs, sex, adrenaline inducing video games, "Extreme" sports and high-risk activities, shopping, applause, traveling, high carbohydrate foods, or a romantic feeling of being in love. We become restless and suffer withdrawals if we aren't able to have our "fix". And we feel entitled to it.

We also build up a tolerance to an experience and require an upgrade to something more intense to give us the same feeling of pleasure. This may not be a completely bad thing. If the experience were a worthy one, then perhaps it did its work and changed us for the better. We become accustomed to this change, it doesn't feel new anymore, and we lose consciousness of it. Like when we come into a brighter room, as soon as our eyes have adjusted, it does not seem so bright anymore. But this does not mean the light left us, just because we are no longer hyper-aware of it. Here is where I am encouraging myself. Perhaps the seeming withdrawal of the positive feelings we get during a new experience, of the worthy sort, maybe even of the illicit, does not indicate a lack of the presence of the inducer, but that a permanent change took place to which we become accustomed. Then new experiences beyond that, new perhaps because of repetition, it was a new experience to repeat a prayer for example, keep adding to the growth and formation. So that a feeling of consolation, for example, is not a repeat of the first experience, but a consequence of new growth. A sensitivity to light returns when we go to an even brighter area, provided we hadn't retreated to a darker one first. But mainly this is to say that when we are not aware of a feeling, it does not necessarily mean that the cause is gone, but that we have adapted to it. Unless we have backslidden.

Concerning illicit feelings from a disobedient or imbalanced use of or attention to the things listed above, perhaps the withdrawal of those feelings does indicate a substantive loss of an unhealthy thing, which we need to learn to get used to in order for healthy growth from healthier habits to occur.