I make it no secret that I often consult God regarding my wardrobe. It’s not because I do not feel capable of choosing my own clothes (although some days that is debatable), or because I think I will accomplish some spiritual aim for having consulted Him, or worse yet, simply to be more spiritual somehow. It is, quite frankly, because He is my friend.
The idea that life could be more…or less…spiritual seems strange to me. Either the spiritual is real, and is an integral part of everything we do, or it is not. I think the trouble in accepting this comes, for most people, in the perceived weightiness of it. Because I am lacking in profundity today (but apparently not lacking in big, obscure words), I will quote C. S. Lewis:
There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilization—these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit—immortal horrors or everlasting splendours. This does not mean that we are to be perpetually solemn. We must play. But our merriment must be of that kind (and it is, in fact, the merriest kind) which exists between people who have, from the outset, taken each other seriously—no flippancy, no superiority, no presumption. And our charity must be a real and costly love, with deep feeling for the sins in spite of which we love the sinner—no mere tolerance or indulgence which parodies love as flippancy parodies merriment. Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbour is the holiest object presented to your senses. If he is your Christian neighbour he is holy in almost the same way, for in him also Christ vere latitat—the glorifier and the glorified, Glory Himself, is truly hidden.
You could probably just stop reading there. ‘The Weight of Glory” has been my favorite essay, and probably even my favorite extra-Biblical writing, since I first read it in college. It is foundational to my world view, particularly that last paragraph (quoted above). But the part which is ringing in my ears today is, “We must play.”
God is a lot of fun. He is tender and joyful and dynamic. He likes delicious things (as evidenced when He turned water into wine and it was the best wine of the evening). He likes laughter (the second patriarch of the Old Testament is named Isaac which means, literally, laughter). If we understood how truly joyful He is, would we take ourselves so seriously? Would we be so afraid of the reality that everything is sacred? Or would we take more delight in each other, more delight in following Him where He leads, more delight in every bit of life?
Working with God is a lot of fun. It is a life worth living.
Raindrops in the Ocean 