Friday, July 27, 2012

warnie lewis | the furniture of heaven


I was glad to finish breakfast and get out on the road. Sitting on a well, I found myself looking at a stone posted gate into a field, with some dim stirring in my mind of having looked at a very similar gate when I was a small boy at some seaside place, and enjoying its unfamiliarity. It suddenly occurred to me that the warning, "unless ye are like little children" etc., may not refer to one's moral state at all, but may mean that heaven is only for those who retain something of, or at worst the remembrance of, a child's infinite delight in ordinary things in the days when the whole world was a magical place. I can imagine for instance that wallflowers and flowering currants, as they were when I first became conscious of them - when the former grew knee high, and the latter was a large tree - may very well be part of the furniture of heaven, and produce the same indescribable delight.

Diary of Warren Lewis,
brother of C.S. Lewis
Wednesday 21st September, 1949