I was flying home from Notre Dame Law School. Of course, leaving Chicago it was a dreary, cloudy, sunless day. Once we cleared the thick clouds, the sun was shining strong, uninterrupted. I was sitting beside the window; the entire scene outside the aircraft was hard to “take in.” For thousands of years, man could only imagine what it might feel like to fly high above the clouds. Standing on a mountaintop is probably the closest experience historic man could have had in relation, and even this experience is at times overwhelmingly majestic.
But, there I was flying at 40,000 feet. The fellow sitting next to me was trying to sleep and that pesky sunlight began streaming in on his face the instant we broke through the clouds. Eventually he was so fed up, he asked me to lower the shade so he would no longer be forced to deal with the sunlight. Instantly, I thought about a passage in Brave New World:
“On their way back across the Channel, Bernard insisted on stopping his propeller and hovering on his helicopter screws within a hundred feet of the waves. The weather had taken a change for the worse; a south-westerly wind had sprung up, the sky was cloudy.
“Look,” he commanded.
“But it’s horrible,” said Lenina, shrinking back from the window. She was appalled by the rushing emptiness of the night, by the black foam-flecked water heaving beneath them, by the pale face of the moon, so haggard and distracted among the hastening clouds.
“Let’s turn on the radio. Quick!” She reached for the dialing knob on the dash-board and turned it at random.”
… skies are blue inside of you,” sang sixteen trembling falsettos, “the weather’s always …”
Then a hiccough and silence. Bernard had switched off the current.
“I want to look at the sea in peace,” he said. “One can’t even look with that beastly noise going on.”
“But it’s lovely. And I don’t want to look.”
“But I do,” he insisted. “It makes me feel as though …” he hesitated, searching for words with which to express himself, “as though I were more me, if you see what I mean.”
But, Huxley did not provide his readers with a satisfactory answer to why? Why should we look out over the waves and absorb their awesome power if it is our natural reaction to recoil, to turn on the radio and drown out our shrinking significance in comparison to the grandeur of nature? For the answer, we must turn to C.S. Lewis.
In the Screwtape Letters, Lewis provided the reader with a glimpse of a conversation between an old devil who was training a younger devil in the ways of tempting human beings. Here is the relevant part of the conversation:
“Music and Silence – how I detest them both! We want Noise, the grand dynamism, the audible expression of all that is exultant, ruthless, and virile – Noise which alone defends us from silly qualms, despairing scruples, and impossible desires. We will make the whole universe a noise in the end…The melodies and silences of Heaven will be shouted down in the end.” (p 102-103)
Music, real music, and silence both tend to inspire impossible desires. These desires mature in a life of serious contemplation. Impossible desires may seem unattractive, why would the devil be seeking to use noise to “defend” against those impossible desires? Why did Lenina seek to turn on the radio when Bernard commanded her to “look” over the ocean? Music, silence, and the grandeur of creation inspire “impossible desires.” Lewis explains why this is proper:
Christians are not born with desires unless satisfaction for those desires exists. A baby feels hunger: well, there is such a thing as food. A duckling wants to swim: well there is such a thing as water. Men feel sexual desire: well, there is such a thing as sex. 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. Mere Christianity
These “impossible desires” that mature with enjoying music, contemplation, and “looking” out over the created order, are in place to remind us of home, our true home. We must not mistake these maturing agents as the “real deal;” for they are merely dirty mirrors, reflecting half-heartedly. But we must also not shy away from their powerful pull if they inspire impossible desires that we fear may not be met. Instead, we must absorb the influences of music, contemplation and creation’s majesty; they are signatures of the divine, certifying that these impossible desires do, in deed, have a home.
So, if you are looking for sleep on an airplane and you are seated beside me, please do not take offense if I respectfully refuse to block the sun.
