A Famous Painter Visits Heaven as told by CS Lewis

Recovering the child within

In CS Lewis' The Great Divorce, the narrator is given a trip from Hell to Heaven. We are given glimpses of others visiting Heaven for the first time as well. In this particular passage we meet an artist who was famous on Earth.

This particular artist takes one look and exclaims to his heavenly tour guide that he should like to paint it. This heavenly spirit explains to the artist that he shouldn't bother with that just yet, but just to look and see, and to experience all that is around him. The artist, outraged, says that he's had his look and he is ready to paint!

The Spirit replies: "That sort of thing is no good here...when you painted on earth-at least in your earlier days- it was because you caught glimpses of Heaven in the earthly landscape. The success of your painting was that it enabled others to see the glimpses too. But here you are having the thing itself. It is from here that the messages come. There is no good telling us about this country, for we see it already. In fact we see it better than you do."

The artist is rather disappointed, but the Spirit invites him into Joy: "At present your business is to see. Come and see. He is endless. Come and feed."

The artist fails to see the glory filled Grace in the invitation and continues to dog the Spirit, in which the Spirit replies, "Why, if you are interested in the country only for the sake of painting it, you'll never learn to see the country...You're forgetting...Light itself was your first love: you loved paint only as a means of telling about light."

The artist replies: "Oh, that's ages ago. One grows out of that. Of course, you haven't seen my later works. One becomes more and more interested in paint for its own sake."

"One does indeed [says the Spirit]. I also have had to recover from that. It was all a snare. Ink and catgut and paint were necessary down there, but they are also dangerous stimulants. Every poet and musician and artist, but for Grace, is drawn away from love of the thing he tells, to love of the telling till, down in Deep Hell, they cannot be interested in God at all but only in what they say about Him. For it doesn't stop at being interested in paint, you know. They sink lower- become interested in their own personalities and then in nothing but their own reputations."

Being that I've had an on and off again relationship with visual art, this passage struck a chord within me. When I had highlighted these words last Fall, I had a very shallow takeaway-- "AH! I must learn how to SEE. *That's* what I've been missing". But as I've recently been taking a break from visual art and have kept coming back to this passage, wrestling with it's meaning, I knew that lack of seeing was not the true issue. My true issue lay within my need to control things, and how much of my identity was wrapped up in making "my dreams come true!"

And this thing can happen to any person, not just traditional artists. We are made in the image of the Creator, and so we were made to create. That leaves us two paths in life- we are either on the path of creating or the path of destroying. On the outside, it may look as if we are creating, but without Holy Spirit wisdom, we are on the path to total annihilation. We humans have a tendency of taking a good thing too far.

We are told not to conform to the pattern of this world, and the pattern of this world is to master and conquer! The pattern of this world implies one has no value if they aren't "contributing" in some way.

But the Lord is different. He calls us to taste and see. He calls us to wait and be still. He calls us to be gentle and patient, doing everything in love, for His glory. There is no four step plan for success, but we can rest that we are His children and abide in gratitude, joy, and obedience. The fields of Elysium are already open to us. The world may be crashing down, but God will still find His children faithful to the work of the moment, knowing that their Creator is in control of the rest. Only the meek shall inherit the Earth. The meek will hear the sound of their Father's voice, and follow it until it bids them stay:

"The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit."

We are valued because we are children of God, not for our achievements or earthly possessions.

We are invited like Mary to sit at the feet of Jesus but most of the time we prefer to be Martha, complaining when we feel unseen for all of our effort. We choose an empty title over being completely embodied by a joy filled faith.

"Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness and all other things will be added unto you."