Ah-HA! Having successfully found my blog once again...I begin to write.

The Space Trilogy at first glance...

Having gotten through the first two of the brilliant Proffessor Lewis' Space Trilogy for the first time in my life, I am first shocked that I never read it before. It awakens in me the desire to look at the beginnings of worlds more then perhaps I have ever felt it. I have always been interested in what the first ones must have been like...Adam and Eve are, of course, something that sparks curiosity, because if I am ever to know what should be examining the originals seems like a good place to start. But we have very little actual knowledge of them before the fall, so the fictional birth of a world, complete with a new Adam and Eve on Perelandra, is a delight in and of itself, even if it is simply speculation.

But perhaps the greatest lesson that stands out from this story is the idea of contentment...of will and of body...in what we have, and in the goods that are given to us. From the very first fruit that Ransom eats, to the terrible battles with the Unman, and then in the resolution...Lewis hammers on the idea that in this new world, untainted by sin, it is possible to want only that which is actually the good that has been put before you. Maybe that's not it...let me try again...while it is possible that the will could want its own desired good (or the good that it has chosen above all others) the idea of that sort of choosing seems perverse. To take more when you are satisfied...to intend one thing, and then to do it even when a new good (and therefore, perhaps, a better good) has replaced the option of doing what you originally intended...this sort of foolishness is inconceivable to the Green Lady of Venus. Ransom has to be quite honest about those desires that he experiences in himself when trying to explain it, and that is of course part of the genius of Lewis, because while his hero learns the truth...I am feeling my own lies fall apart and have to deal with the truth--that I would prefer my choice even when I DO know it is no longer good.