Real Pleasures

Andrew is reading The Screwtape Letters by CS Lewis, and so I've been stealing the book from time to time to enjoy it again. I've read it twice before, but it's been many years, and it is so much fun to read. It's a "real pleasure" for me to read this book, and just about any book I pick up. I love chapter 13, when Wormwood mistakenly "allows" his patient to read a book he enjoys--just for the sake of enjoyment, and not to impress or make clever remarks to others. And then his patient goes for a walk, through the country, alone, to have tea...and winds up becoming inaccessible because of the cloud of God's presence that surrounds him. His uncle Screwtape admonishes him,

"How can you have failed to see that a real pleasure was the last thing you ought to have let him meet? Didn't you foresee that it would just kill by contrast all the trumpery which you have been so laboriously teaching him to value? And that sort of pleasure which the book and the walk gave him was the most dangerous of all? That it would peel off from his sensibility the kind of crust you have been forming on it, and make him feel that he was coming home, recovering himself? As a preliminary to detaching him from the Enemy, you wanted to detach him from himself, and had made some progress in doing so. Now, all that is undone. Of course, I know that the Enemy also wants to detach men from themselves, but in a different way. Remember always, that He really likes the little vermin, and sets an absurd value on the distinctness of every one of them. When he talks of their losing themselves, He only means abandoning the clamor of self-will; once they have done that, He really gives them back all their personality, and boasts (I am afraid, sincerely) that when they are wholly His they will be more themselves than ever. Hence, while He is delighted to see them sacrificing even their innocent wills to His, He hates to see them drifting away from their own nature for any other reason."

Many times I have felt like I'm coming home, or recovering myself, after partaking in what would be called a "real pleasure". For me, reading a book, visiting a friend, walking the property with my husband, competing on a team sport, traveling and teaching a group of preschoolers are some such pleasures. I wind up feeling closer to God, and more like myself when I've allowed myself time to do these things. It's kind of weird, because these are not spiritual things, but I think it's a key to abundant living--when we are true to who God has made us, wholly His, and walking through life as the "me" He made us to be.