What Our Senses Whisper to Us

The doorway to Narnia

Photo by Jacob Diehl on Unsplash

Dear reader,

When my daughter was much younger there were some books I read to her at night. I read her the whole Harry Potter series, the Hobbit, and the whole Chronicles of Narnia series.

The Hobbit was one I pretty much made her listen to, and while she loved The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, she humoured me by listening to the rest of C.S Lewis’ tales from Narnia. I didn’t read any of them as a child, so I was coming to them for the first time with eager adult eyes.

She has since read some of the Chronicles of Narnia again, and recently marvelled to me about how much she saw her faith woven into the story. It was nice to see the penny drop for her.

As a fan of C.S Lewis’ theology I particularly enjoyed the Chronicles of Narnia from a theological perspective.

Lewis’ Mere Christianity was a significant influence early in my journey of following Jesus. At the time I was doing my painting and decorating apprenticeship and we were painting some of the buildings in a historic village just outside of Matamata.

During that time I would excuse myself from the other guys at lunchtime, sit in my car, and read a chapter of Mere Christianity. When I read the stories of Narnia to my daughter I could see Lewis’ theological ideas woven in. But my adult mind didn’t see it as much more than an allegory for those ideas. In that thinking the story, imagery, and imaginings were of little importance compared to the rational theological ideas they conveyed.

As I’ve become more and more dissatisfied with the mechanistic, modernist, rationalist worldview of the cosmos as purposeless and meaningless spinning atoms caught in the entropy of the universe, the reductionist influence it has had on my faith, and as I’ve seen the destruction wrought by the loss of meaning around me in the depression and fragmentation people carry, I find myself reconsidering Narnia in a different way.

What if the story of Narnia, in all its fantastical glory, is a more real representation of the world around us than the flat view of the world as purposeless stuff, where the only meaning is what we can individually and subjectively conjure up in our heads? What if the universe is loaded with objective purpose emanating from a creative Divine source (God), and what if it’s teeming with good and evil… a world both visible and invisible? And for those familiar with his work, I don’t mean it in a Frank Peretti, This Present Darkness kind of a way - I’m reaching for something else.

Photo by Almos Bechtold on Unsplash

And if the world is more like Narnia than Richard Dawkins would want us to believe, then where’s the door? Or more aptly put, what is the door?

There was an experience in the life of my daughter that has stuck with my wife and I ever since it occurred. I loosely held it in my thinking for a long time, but it’s only now, as my faith has been evolving rapidly over the last year, that it has really started to form something substantial in my trajectory.

We’ve often worked to expose our daughter to different thinking, worldviews, and experiences with respect. In so doing she is able to see the diversity of the world and the human experience, and to engage with it.

With that in mind, when she was much younger we took her to the temple of another religion (I won’t name it as in this article I’m not interested in critiquing other religious views and practices).

I’ve been into the temples and worship spaces of many religions around the world out of curiosity and a desire to learn and understand. For me it has always been primarily an intellectual exercise.

That day we ate at the café of the temple and all was fine. We wandered around the gardens and all was fine. We then chose to step into the prayer/worship space of the temple. Again, I’ve done this many times.

As we stepped in, I was fascinated to look around at the statues, smell the incense, and watch what people were doing…. but my daughter’s demeanour rapidly shifted as we crossed the threshold of that particular physical place within the temple grounds.

In a way that she couldn’t explain, she felt highly uneasy. She felt something heavy and dark. It was clearly affecting her. She couldn’t rationally explain it but she knew she really didn’t want to be in there because of what she felt. We honoured that feeling, stepped out, and left.

There’s a particular type of shop where she has had that same feeling. My wife has the same feeling in the same type of shop.

I’m convinced that conditioning played no part in what she felt. I say that because it’s where my mind first went for explanation. We had never done anything to cultivate a sense that she should be cautious around the worship practices of others… if anything my/our approach to life would have conveyed quite the opposite though I hold there to be one truest way in the person of Jesus the Christ - the answer to all the endeavours of humanity’s reaching in religion. The same goes with the type of store where she would have that same feeling. Her senses were telling her something that her and our rational brain couldn’t.

Unlike my early church life, there was nothing in church life as she experienced it that would have conditioned her to feel like that in the worship space of a different religion.

At the time I explained it as her being attuned to something I wasn’t. I would have given lip service and a mental nod to the unseen realm, but didn’t go beyond much more than that nod. Now I find myself pondering it further and more deeply as I consider some of my own spiritual poverty due to being drenched in modernist rationalism where I give mental assent to the propositions of the Christian faith but am realising I am dulled to the invisible.

On a personal level I also recognise that due to my own traumatising childhood experiences of spiritual abuse I’ve often thrown the baby out with the bathwater so as not to perpetuate what I experienced as a child. I’m now trying to find where the healthy ground is with this stuff.

That day my daughter signalled something - she showed what the door to Narnia is… our deeper sense. It’s that feeling/vibe that goes beyond what we can taste, touch, see, hear, and smell. Those five senses are how we engage with the world of spinning atoms, but there’s a deeper sense.

I’m convinced that for myself and many of us, that deeper sense has been dulled (that may not be true of you, in which case, I have much to learn from you). We’ve been taught to not trust it; to rationalise it away as the imaginings of our mind. We look sideways at people who are attuned to that sense, and who talk of the world with it in mind. we treat them as a little weird.

Now, that’s not to say they’re never well off base and veering into territory that is more damaging than helpful, but I find myself needing to deal to my own arrogance that may seek to dismiss them. Some may use language that would differ from what I would use, but I feel the need, more and more, to hear them, to listen, and to ponder it more beyond mere rational dismissal.

What if, when we have that sense that something is beautiful, it is not just a subjective feeling but is, instead, objectively so? What if it is telling us of something deeper and greater? What if that sense of beauty is telling us something real beyond ourselves? The same goes for when something causes us to recoil and something feels off.

What if that movement caught out of the corner of our eye when there was seemingly nothing there really was an angel?

Photo by Marek Studzinski on Unsplash

What if that deeper sense is connected to the world in such a way that it’s whispering to us things that are objectively true about the external world we live and move in? What if that deeper sense is right, rather than being vain and useless imaginings of our mind? What if that deeper sense is connected to the reality we’ve explained away? What if that deeper sense is the door to the world of Narnia all around us?

As I consider this in my own life and try to find examples and places where I could lean into that sense to cultivate it further, realising it is dulled, I find myself ruminating on my tramping experiences in the Kaimai ranges over the years. I’ve been walking in those ranges on and off since I was a teenager.

I can call to mind clear memories of times where I have felt a serene peace in particular places and locations in the ranges, and have slowed or paused in those places, enjoying that sense. Then there are other times, in other locations and places, where I have felt a severe unease and have felt the need to move through an area quickly, even running. If I have been with others I push those senses down. Whilst I have felt those things I have usually explained it as my own imaginings… tricks of the mind. ‘Grow up, Frank.’

Then there are experiences I’ve had each time I have left Kopua monastery after staying there…. experiences I have dismissed as my own imaginings and the wrestle of my mind, but now I’m willing to own as more of a battle between external dark and light, good and evil.

Thinking through where I have felt these things in the Kaimai ranges, there is no rational reason related to context as to why I should have felt like that. One could understand it if it was about quiet waterfalls vs dense and dark undergrowth, or light vs dark, sunny vs stormy, my own meandering thought patterns as I’ve come into those places, but I’ve never been able to explain it like that.

The rationalist mind would dismiss it as imaginary conjurings, but I want to give room for those senses signalling to me an unseen reality where that sense is connected to something that is objectively true externally from me… something that I cannot see, touch, taste, smell, or hear.

Is there history to these places that might tell me something?

This is what I want to cultivate - that sense… the sense that was clearly in play for my daughter when she stepped into that temple. That sense that seems to be strong in many children before the rationalism of adulthood dulls it and we dismiss it as the naïve imaginings of an immature mind.

Thankfully my faith gives me rhythms, rituals, and practices to be better attuned to it, and more importantly, it gives an overarching way of seeing and understanding the world that provides it with cohesion and explanation - it encourages this and ultimately points it all towards God, and the work of God in the world. In cultivating that sense, the outcome is a better knowing of God, and a better knowing of the world as it really is.

I would love to read your thoughts and experiences on this via the comments.

A question for us who curate worship places, spaces, and times - if we see value in this, are our communal places and practices helping to form this sense in people (in a healthy way)? Are we helping them open the door to Narnia?

I leave you with a traditional closing prayer of Compline (night prayer) that has been part of challenging me in this direction. When I began praying this as part of the traditional Benedictine prayer rhythm, I had to decide whether I took it as poetry and metaphor, or whether I took the imagery seriously… over time I have opted for the latter:

‘Visit, we pray Thee, O Lord, this house, and drive far from it all snares of the enemy. Let thy holy Angels dwell herein to keep us in peace, and may Thy blessings be always upon us. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, Thy Son, Who with Thee liveth and reigneth in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, world without end. Amen.’

If prayer is a thing in your life, please pray for me. If ever you would like others here to pray for you, simply let us know in the comments.

Aroha nui,
Frank

PS - there is now a part II to this article.