9. Serena D'Angelo- Space Trilogy #2

Sehnsucht in Space Trilogy:

The Space Trilogy uses space exploration as an attempt to seek knowledge about the nature of the cosmos. This is an example of sehnscuct, because it is a longing that looks to beyond our scope of reference for the answers to our questions about the cosmos. In Out of the Silent Planet, those answers about the nature of the cosmos are given to Ransom by the Oyarsa of Malacandra, the presiding angel on the planet on which he first lands. This suggests sehnsucht because Ransom's longing for knowledge was granted via a spiritual symbol (the angel), representing truth found through the beyond. This idea of the "beyond" is fabricated through the myth of The Space Trilogy, where time-travel and angels in the stories bring knowledge, making readers think that the answers to the questions of the universe come from an understanding of religious views, and an acceptance of "the beyond" as truth. 
I think that this view is dangerous because it promotes a fear of the unknown. I think it is important to embrace the ambiguity of the unknown, and realized that we will never really be able to explain everything about our world. Still, we will always wonder, and sehnsucht stems from this wonder we experience as we stare at the vastness of the night sky, full of possible explanations of other worlds. 

Chris Snead - Outside Reading 1

In my explorations of C. S. Lewis' connection to esoteric practice, I have stumbled upon countless websites created by evangelical Christians who denounce Lewis for his association with what they consider Heresy. One such treasure trove can be found at http://harrypotterpower.com/lewis.html , where the author suggests that Lewis is a pawn of Satan who renounced Christianity in his youth, became deeply involved in Occult practice, and then re-integrated into mainstream Christian culture in order to corrupt it. The author(s) denounce Lewis' works, saying “Books like these cause the mind to prefer an unreal world of fantasy. They make it all the more difficult for a person to properly deal with the hard, stern realities of life, and to successfully resist Satan’s temptations—when they are suddenly presented to them.” - It would seem to me that the author of this website is the one who would prefer an unreal world of fantasy. I do not deny that Lewis was at least somewhat initiated into the esoteric arts, but rather the notion that this is somehow a negative thing. In fact, this is one of the reasons I love Lewis so much! His writing inspired me as a child, and helped to stimulate my imagination – and always there was the feeling of greater meaning, even when I was too young to recognize what such meanings could be. It seems far more likely to me that the author of this website has neglected his history, and as such is unfamiliar with the origins of the dogma to which he clings so desperately. Would that he had, he would know that the books most people would recognize as “the Bible” are heavily censored and doctored – by the early Semitic people, by the Romans, and by the British a few times. He would know that dozens of books were left out – including the source texts for many of the quotes attributed to Christ. Perhaps if he has thought his position through, he would have realized how absurd the notion of Religious Exclusivism is when presuming a Loving God. Would this Being – who is absolutely and completely infallible – allow for the vast majority of the world's population for the majority of time (even in the most stringent Creationist view) to be damned to eternal Hell solely because this Loving God had chosen to incarnate into a physical body and go through a torturous process of death and rebirth...in a place that they had no knowledge of, in a time far removed? Does the author believe that every single Aztec or Tibetan Buddhist is being punished for committing the heinous crime of being born in the wrong place, at the wrong time? Unless the author is attempting to make the assertion that everyone who existed in these cultures before the arrival of Christianity is an illusion of Satan, I don't really see where he is going with this line of reasoning.

8. Serena D'Angelo- Outside Reading #2

Tiffanie Debartolo's How to Kill a Rockstar:

One of my all time favorite novels concerning love is Tiffanie Debartolo's How to Kill a Rockstar. It is the story of how the corporate world of the music industry can destroy the pure beauty of music and strip a musician of his love for creating music (depressing, I know). It is framed, however, through the perspective of the power of love shared by the aforementioned musician, Paul, and the narrator of the novel, Elisa, who are destined to fall in love from the moment they meet. Their love is seen as very strong early on in the novel, as if forces beyond their control have drawn them together because they were fated for each other. Their loves takes form particularly in affection, romance, and eros, which we talked about in class as the forms of love we assign to relationships as outlined by Lewis.
Their relationship has all these qualities of true love that Lewis talks about in Till We Have Faces, and their strong desire for each other can be compared to sehnsucht, and Pysche's longing for the source of beauty on the mountain. "It was when I was happiest that I longed most...The sweetest thing in all my life has been the longing...to find the place where all the beauty came from." (Faces) We later find this source of beauty on the Grey Mountain to be the unconditional love of the god that is Pysche's future husband, which we can relate to Elisa and Paul's unconditional love.

Chris Snead - Aslan's Country

Aslan's Country is a mystical realm in which Narnia has a more perfect replica – or rather, Narnia is a dim reflection of the tiniest fraction of Aslan's Country. Indeed, even as the “new” version of Narnia traveled to after death is much more vibrant than the “original”, by traveling further into it one is brought to the edge of yet another, more perfect version of this world. I can only imagine this place as some sort of extra-dimensional Matryoshka doll set. Even as Narnia finds a greater perfection within Aslan's Country, so too can it be surmised that our own world also has its counterpart, and likely many others besides. It is easy to associate this place with Heaven, however a question glares out at me. The “Wood between the Worlds” is supposed to be something of an Astral Plane in the Narnian ontological model – but does Aslan's country exist 'within' the Woods, or do the Woods exist 'within' Aslan's Country...or are perhaps both true?

Chris Snead - On Being

Being is All That Is, the Tao, the all-pervading reality of which everything is a part simply by nature of its conception. One can never truly be separate from it, though the one can certainly hide from this fact. The Greek philosopher Heraclitus posited that Being was a state of constant change, and that all forms were temporary. So too did he state that all of existence emerged from One, and that all of existence was bound together in fundamental Unity. These ideas are not unique to Heraclitus, and indeed they are present in most religions, both modern and ancient, in some context or another. Whether we discuss the Trinity and its indivisible Oneness (and do recall that the Holy Spirit exists in all) of Catholicism or the Tao of Taoism, we can see that these ideas are very much alive and well. Indeed, the discoveries of quantum physics even seem to support these observations by way of Quantum Entanglement. It would seem to me that such a unity should be embraced, for it is in line with the observations of many of humanity's most prolithic souls – and for myself, at least, it feels intuitively correct.

7. Serena D'Angelo- Outside Reading #3

Cultural studies of solitude/loneliness:

Our class discussions of The Space Trilogy and solitude/loneliness made me reflect on my studies of loneliness in cultural studies in multicultural American literature. For example, Jhumpa Lahiri is a fiction author who has written many stories of solitude from the perspective of Indian immigrants. As in the worlds Lahiri creates in her short stories, immigrants in America often felt extreme loneliness despite being surrounded by American life, because they felt internally separated from that culture. The mental disconnection makes her characters feel very alone, though they are surrounded by people, which is how we can separate loneliness from solitude. This contrasts with what we see in The Space Trilogy with Ransom and his physical solitude among the planets. Though he is physically alone, he is not lonely. Rather, his solitude has brought him peace of mind, and helps his connect with a larger plan.

Chris Snead - The Despiritization of Nature

In Kabbalah, an esoteric branch of Judaic teachings, Malkhut is the lowest of the Ten Sephirot, and represents the physical body and the material world. For the past few centuries, Western society has gone through great lengths to despiritualize Nature, to strip its secrets away and to force the natural world to conform to our demands of it. In so doing, we have lost touch with the other nine Sephirot...or many of the “rationalists” - the reductionists/materialists/empiricists have, at least. These mock-philosophies have so pervaded our culture that even those who consider themselves among the most devout of their faith can be hesitant to defend the Realness of the events which spawned it – to the point where many are afraid to speak their beliefs in anything non-physical at risk of being thought a simpleton or worse things yet. It has become apparent to me from reading his works that C. S. Lewis also took a very dim view of Institutionalized Science for its despiritualization of the world...and there is reason to believe that Lewis was at least somewhat familiar with Kabbalah through his workings with his friend Charles Williams as well. Indeed, it would seem that for Lewis, this despiritualization was an ever-present force, and in every instance that such a character has appeared in any of his works (that I have read, at least), that character is shown to be missing something crucial to their development as a person...and usually acts wickedly, having very lax codes of morality if they have moral codes at all.