Lay That Burden Down
FROM THE JUNIOR WARDEN
A book by C.S. Lewis and a psalm from the bible have been foundational in my spiritual development as a Christian. They comfort, challenge, and guide me in my daily life. I read The Great Divorce more than forty years ago and one of its concepts serves as a constant reminder to treat everyone I meet as a spiritual being and worthy of respect and kindness. Most Episcopalians are familiar with the story: a man finds himself aimlessly wandering the empty streets of a grey town. He sees a line of people waiting to enter a bus and he joins the queue. He watches as some of them argue and walk away. The line grows unexpectedly shorter and soon he is inside the bus as it lifts off the ground and rises to the heavens. Heaven was its destination. He does not know it then, but the grey town is hell—or purgatory according to some interpretations. As the passengers depart the bus, his companions, one-by-one, are greeted by celestial beings that they had known on the living earth (not the grey town). Each of them is faced with the choice to abandon some flaw in their character, some sin that holds them back from paradise. Most are not able to overcome their earthly attachment to a real or imagined grudge or a vice that will not let them go. The celestial being that greeted them was precisely the person they knew on earth who would provoke that grudge or engage that vice in them. The intention of the heavenly greeters was to give these refugees from grey town the opportunity to reject it and embrace paradise. But they could not abandon the chains that bound them to the hell of grey town just as it bound them to a hell on earth. In the end, the unnamed protagonist in the novel meets the theologian George MacDonald, a 19th century Scottish Congregationalist minister that C.S. Lewis greatly admired. Our man comes to some vague realization that both paradise and the grey town were both dreamscapes. Simply put, he was dreaming.
There are many lessons taught in The Great Divorce but the one that shocked me then and continues to animate my imagination is rather unspiritual and unintellectual. That one thing was lesson enough for me, perhaps, because it guides me to better behavior: I imagine myself at heaven’s door and someone who will provoke my sense of some possibly imagined injustice is there to greet me. Who is that person, I ask myself. Whoever it is, I had better address that anger or grudge against them here in my earthly life. I sure do not want them greeting me at heaven’s door. This interpretation of The Great Divorce would be far from theologically interesting to someone of that bent of mind. Nevertheless, it inspires me to let go of my resentments and it often pulls me back from manufacturing new ones. On one side of a resentment is a hell of my own making. On the other side is life without the pain and anger that attend holding a grudge.
I may go weeks or months without consciously thinking of The Great Divorce, but Psalm 27 is a daily presence in my life and serves a similar purpose. I recite that psalm every day, sometimes several times a day. Just as the opening paragraphs of The Great Divorce act as an entry into a mystery that stirs my imagination, the opening stanzas of Psalm 27 open my heart to the love of Christ and the promise of deliverance from my worldly fears and resentments.
The LORD is my light and my salvation;
whom then shall I fear?
the LORD is the strength of my life;
of whom then shall I be afraid?
When evildoers came upon me to eat up my flesh,
it was they, my foes and my adversaries, who
stumbled and fell.
Though an army should encamp against me
Yet my heart shall not be afraid.
When I say this prayer in the morning, the opening stanza becalms me and affirms that there is nothing to fear from the day before me. I know that I will be gently guided by a loving God who will not allow me to be subdued by my enemies. I realize, however, that I have no enemies but those of my own making. If someone speaks harshly to me, I can either accept their gift of discourtesy or reject it. Almost every day, mostly when I am tired or hungry, I find myself encountering someone or some situation that leaves me with an unwanted burden of resentment. In other words, I accepted their gift of anger. If I continue to hold it, I find it growing larger and hardening into something that becomes spiritually damaging. I am increasing the possibility that I could be like the people in The Great Divorce who turn away from their celestial beings because they cannot put down that burden and embrace paradise. I think to myself, “I do not want to meet that so-in-so at the gates of heaven.” And then, if I’m at my best, I laugh at myself and lay that burden down. In closing, I offer the last two stanzas of Psalm 27.
I believe that I shall see the goodness of the Lord
in the land of the living.
Wait for the Lord;
be strong and he shall comfort your heart;
wait patiently for the Lord.
Jeannie Whayne
Junior Warden of the Vestry