CrystalHurd.com

Last week, the Hurds decided to get more aggressive with our exercise plan.  I typically use our Xbox Kinect to do this, but nothing replaces the beauty of the great outdoors. My husband Aaron pulled his old mountain bike out of storage.  I didn’t own a bike so we visited a friend’s bike shop and purchased one.

The reason I didn’t already own a bike is because I honestly don’t like them.  My aversion for bikes stems from a “traumatic” event in my childhood (*cue sad organ music*).

When I was nine or ten, I went cycling with a neighborhood friend Tammy one afternoon.  Tammy and I were riding on a neglected road behind my house, as was our habit.  There is an old childhood game called “Chicken” that we occasionally played.  Tammy descended a hill, while I pedalled toward her.  Usually, at the very last second, one of us would turn the bike out of the path of the other.  Now, as an adult, I don’t see why we didn’t compose some sort of contingency plan.  For example, what if we both decided to turn the same way?  Or what if neither of us decided to turn? But kids don’t consider those sort of questions.  Kids just love to feel the wind against their face, the ecstasy of motion, the intoxication of freedom. Plus kids know that Mom will fix them right up if something goes askew.

This particular day, the latter occurred.  Tammy and I went barreling toward each other.  Each of us expected the other to turn, but neither of us did.  We both ended up having a colossal accident (well, you can’t really consider it an “accident” because it was quite intentional), rolling in the road and laughing to mask our real pain (or maybe that was just me who did that…).  However, this event was the root of a fear that I nurtured unchecked for years – the fear of falling.  I am not referring to falling down a flight of stairs necessarily (which is equally embarrassing), but falling while in motion.  Sure, I had seen it a thousand times on Looney Tunes, but there was no ACME to fix me in the real world.  In the real world, haphazard choices can have long-term consequences.  Not long after that incident, I stopped riding bicycles.

Here I am nearly 25 years later gripping the handlebars with white knuckles.  From somewhere deep inside me, the fear was rekindled.  The day we bought my bike, I was cautiously test riding while groups of young children flew by me riding and giggling, smiles on their faces.  Ah, showoffs!  Of course, they had to ride by while some strange lady couldn’t commit a turn in the parking lot of the bike shop.

Back at home, Aaron and I began pedalling uphill.  I found myself indulging the urge to slow down.  My previous bikes always had handlebars with lovely, cascading streamers, not all of these complicated speeds and brakes. Aaron, who had passed me with ease while I grunted through an incline, yelled over his shoulder, “Honey, you have to KEEP PEDALLING!  If you are too slow, you will fall off the bike.”

Fall off the bike??!!  That was my worst fear!  But as soon as I started to pedal, my speed would increase.  Aaron explained once again that speed (not incredible speed) keeps the bike upright.  It is when we attempt to control speed too much that we are in danger of an accident.  The next day, we went out again, Aaron deftly cycling in front of me, repeating the chorus from the previous day, “Keep pedalling.   Keep pedalling.  Don’t stop pedalling.”

As a car approached, I panicked.  I pulled over to the side and attempted to jump off the bike while it was still in motion.  Thanks to the ole’ “tuck and roll” method I was uninjured, but the message was clear.  I, once again, was too busy trying to control too much.  I was over-thinking instead of just enjoying the experience.

There are times in life where we feel helplessly out of control.  We look for the brake but we continue to be carried on by the momentum of time.  Last year, when my Mom fought (and conquered) breast cancer, I did the same thing.  I wanted to pull the brake.  Nearly anesthetized with fear, I had to push forward, trusting God would carry me as He promises He would.

He did.

Whatever trial you face in life, brace yourself and keep pedalling.  This season will pass, and just as God did with me, He will make something beautiful out of the experience.  Keep pedalling and who knows, you might just enjoy the scenery you ignored while distracted by your fear.

As for me and my bike, I’m still struggling.  With every passing day, I slightly improve.  I’ll keep you posted.

I have a small confession: it is difficult to satisfy me at times.  I have a bad habit of questioning and requestioning.  Most people would say that this type of critical thinking is a good thing, but at times it nearly torments me. Casually, I call this “Greener Pastures Syndrome.”  We tell ourselves, It will be so much better once I have more money or My life would really improve if I just had X, or Y, or Z.  I personally don’t care for lifestyle changes (more money, etc.) rather it is difficult for me to trust the inconsistency of an idea that ebbs and flows.  Sometimes our jobs change or our relationships change, we find ourselves carried by the tide to unexpected places far away from the security of the shore.

I often couple this with the rotten world we inhabit today.  Senseless murders, drug and sex trafficking, and the oppression that is taking place worldwide.  It is enough to make you heartsick.  As Christians, we need to address these issues (and for many, continue to address these issues) in our culture.  We need to shun our sinful, selfish natures and learn to pour in to helping others (I am including myself here).  We should not simply help with our wallets, but with our hands, our minds, and our voices as well.

Despite all of this, I still have hope.  From what wellspring does my hope originate?  I assure you it is not of this world.

So what is the root of this traveler’s wanderlust?  Why do I often feel so unsatisfied when God has blessed me so richly?   It hit me:  I’m homesick.

Most casual readers are not familiar with C.S. Lewis’s first work of fiction The Pilgrim’s Regress.  As one could ascertain from the title, it is fashioned after John Bunyan’s famous work The Pilgrim’s Progress. The story follows the odyssey of John from Puritania.  He is aware of the overzealous “Landlord” who imposes rules and regulations on the people.  John attempts to escape the suffocating oppression of the Landlord by playing outside when he hears strange, beautiful music. Then a faint voice commands him to “Come.”  I’ll let Lewis’s words take over here:

“While he strained to grasp it, there came to him from beyond the wood a sweetness and a pang so piercing that instantly he forgot his father’s house and his mother, and the fear of the Landlord, and the burden of the rules. All the furniture of his mind was taken away.  A moment later he found that he was sobbing, and the sun had gone in: and what it was that had happened to him he could not quite remember, nor whether it had happened in this wood, or in the other wood when he was a child.  It seemed to him that a mist which hung at the far end of the wood had parted for a moment, and through the rift he had seen a calm sea, and in the sea an island, where the smooth turf sloped down unbroken to the bays, and out of the thickets peeped the pale, small-breasted Oreads, wise like gods, unconscious of themselves like the beasts, and tall enchanters, bearded to their feet, sat in green chairs among the forests.  But even while he pictured these things he knew, with one part of his mind, that they were not like the things he had seen – nay, that what had befallen him was not seeing at all.  But he was too young to heed the distinction: and too empty, now that the unbounded sweetness passed away, not to seize greedily whatever it had left behind.  He had no inclination yet to go into the wood: and presently he went home, with a sad excitement upon him, repeating to himself a thousand times, ‘I know now what I want.’ The first time that he said it, he was aware that it was not entirely true: but before he went to bed he was believing it” (12).

For those who are familiar with the story, you know that John traverses through several lands, discussing figures allegorically (Hitler and Mussolini among them) and is tempted by science to stray from his pursuit of the Island.  He even meets “Sigismund Enlightenment” who informs John that his strong desire for the island is “the pretence that you put up to conceal your own lusts from yourself” (41).  Throughout his journey, John is introduced to several different individuals who diagnose what “the island” actually represents.

When John finally speaks with Wisdom and Vertue, the moral is made clear:

“There is no man or no nation at all capable of seeing the Island, who have not learned by experience, and that soon, how easily the vision ends in lust: and there is none also, not corrupted, who has not felt  the disappointment of that ending, who has not known that it is the breaking of the vision, not its consummation…What does not satisfy when we find it, was not the thing we were desiring.  If water will not set a man at ease, then be sure it was not thirst, or not thirst only, that tormented him: he wanted drunkenness to cure his dullness, or talk to cure his solitude, or the like.  How indeed, do we know our desires save by their satisfaction? When do we know them until we say, ‘Ah, this was what I wanted’? And if there were any desire which it was natural for man to feel but impossible for man to satisfy, would not the nature of this desire remain to him always ambiguous?  If old tales were true, if a man without putting off humanity could indeed pass the frontiers of our country…then first, to his backward glance, the long roads of desire that he had trodden would become plain in all their winding, and when he found, he would know what it was that he had sought” (97).

I seek because I know good exists, perhaps not always in this world but in another.  At times, in such a fallen world as ours, someone will display bold altruism.  Because of a stranger’s generosity, people in the community are fed and clothed, Africans get clean water or a new pair of shoes, houses are built for those who cannot afford renovations.  In each display of generosity, there is a glimpse of goodness, a glimpse of God.  It is a preview, although brief, of the goodness that awaits us.  And that is why I hope.  I am homesick.

This is also why Lewis’s Mere Christianity affected me so deeply.  It was this passage that finally explained the restlessness I often experience:

“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.  If that is so, I must take care, on the one hand, never to despise, or be unthankful for, these earthly blessings, and on the other, never to mistake them for the something else of which they are only a kind of copy, or echo, or mirage.  I must keep alive in myself the desire for my true country which I shall not find till after death; I must never let it get snowed under or turned aside; I must make it the main object of life to press on to that other country and to help others to do the same” (76).

Let us seize every opportunity to serve.  Let us not sequester and essentially remove ourselves from our culture.  Society needs us.  It needs our hope and our light.  Most importantly, let us not grow weary by what Shakespeare called the “slings and arrows of outrageous forture” or by the threat of change. With each passing moment, we inch a little closer to home, but while we have breath, let us seek a higher purpose and perhaps share a peek at what awaits us.

**For more on this topic, read the article “Not So Fast: C.S. Lewis’s Legacy” by the brilliant Dr. Bruce Edwards.

http://www.cslewisreview.org/2011/01/not-so-fast-c-s-lewiss-legacy/

Picture taken with my mentor and chair Dr. Jasmine Renner at Taylor’s local eatery Ivanhoe’s

“Nothing, I suspect, is more astonishing in any man’s life than the discovery that there do exist people very, very like himself” – Surprised by Joy

Last weekend, I had the great pleasure of attending and presenting research at the Colloquium on C.S. Lewis and Friends at the beautiful Taylor University.

The experience was nothing less than amazing.  Most people who are casually acquainted with me are aware of my deep affinity for C.S. Lewis.  Lewis references spring from my lips quite unintentionally, and often to the disdain of those who have spent more than 30 minutes around me.  For example, while I was preparing backstage for graduation, I explained to a colleague that I wore heels but I did not want to suffer the same fate as Lewis did when he accepted his essay award as a student at Oxford (for the record, he fell attempting to walk across stage; thanks for that piece of info Will Vaus!)  In my world, nearly everything has a Lewis reference, either to Narnia, the science fiction trilogy, an essay, or Lewis’s own personal experiences.

Here, I found strangers who quickly became friends.  I imagine it would be no different if I were joining an Inklings meeting.  All of a sudden, we could quote, chuckle, or discuss with ease.  I quickly altered from “that annoying Lewis nerd” to “one of us.”  The transformation is quite exhilarating!  One website you absolutely MUST visit is http://www.essentialcslewis.com/ which is maintained by fellow Lewis fan William O’Flahtery.  The website features book reviews, Lewis facts, and podcasts with Lewis scholars.

Among meeting a plethora of Lewisophiles, I had the privilege to personally thank three of my research contributors: Devin Brown, Alan Jacobs, and Will Vaus.  Not surprisingly, they were incredibly kind, even to muttering, nervous fans like me.  All Lewis scholars moved among us, being personable and quite interested in engaging in conversation.  I had great talks with David C. Downing and met a new scholar and author of the book Light, Charlie Starr.  If you haven’t procured a copy of Light yet, I highly suggest you get one.  It is literary analysis with a generous dose of mystery concerning the “last” short story published by Lewis.  Great read!

If you ever have the opportunity to attend this conference, please do so.  The papers and plenary speakers challenge the mind and strengthen the faith.  Just as Jack would have wanted it.

In C.S. Lewis’s An Experiment on Criticism (2010/1961), he writes,

Literary experience heals the wound, without undermining the privilege, of individuality . . . But in reading great literature I become a thousand men and yet remain myself. Like the night sky in the Greek poem, I see with a myriad eyes, but it is still I who see. Here, as in worship, in love, in moral action, and in knowing, I transcend myself; and am never more myself than when I do.

Growing up an only child, I immersed myself in the world of fiction.  I began rather benignly reading Archie comics and Nancy Drew mysteries.  There is something marvelous about getting lost in a book.  I stood innocently behind Nancy as she ascended the winding staircase, hearing the steps groan beneath the weight of her foot, waiting with bated breath in the pregnant silence of a strange house suffering from neglect.  What awaited her at the top of those stairs?  A shadowy figure?  A cryptic message scrawled across a mirror?

The privilege of reading is that you can escape, if but briefly, to another world.  You can “see with a myriad eyes and yet remain yourself” for a few moments.  As Lewis extrapolates further in An Experiment on Criticism, escaping is not an unhealthy practice as long as you suppress the urge to blur reality and fiction.  Fiction can certainly teach us many truths about reality, but fiction can also poison reality, creating false perspectives which rob us of the pleasure, what Lewis would call Joy, life can offer us. There is a grand exchange between an author and a reader.  It has existed for centuries, fueled by the delight and passion of those who insatiably devour books to feed a mind or engage an imagination.

Alan Jacobs recently argued in his The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction that, contrary to popular belief, technology has positively impacted literacy.  Inventions such as the Kindle and Nook have, for both casual readers and erudite scholars, reinvented reading.  Many reluctant readers purchase e-readers to simply maintain a presence in the technological community, to keep abreast of what their friends are “downloading”; it’s keeping up with the Joneses for the twenty-first century.

So as new generations get lost in the literature of the age (or of ages past), let us be thankful that they are reading at all, amid a plethora of other distractions.  Be it the antics of Archie and his two girlfriends, Harry Potter wrestling with his arch nemesis, or pale vampires who sparkle, be ye thankful.  That initial interest for reading may very well mature into an appreciation for more diverse genres of literature.  I followed Nancy Drew up that squeaky staircase to uncover the beauty and rhythm of Shakespeare, the witty satire of Dickens, the bizarre genius of Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes, or the often anticlimactic realities of life found in Hemingway and Woolf.   You see, my own journey mimics that staircase, each step elevating me to new discoveries of life and within myself.  With each new literary work, I arrive at a new height of transcendence, while never forgetting who I am.