Postcards From Eternity

Or, why beauty sometimes hurts

Photo credit: me

(An eight-minute read.)

This past summer, as I’ve been doing for quite a number of years now, I took my place on the sun-drenched rocks of perhaps my favorite ocean-side vista on the planet (pictured above).

I won’t tell you exactly where it is, but it’s a somewhat-remote location on the coast of Maine—where, after a mile walk through an “enchanted” green forest, you come to a beach that only forms at low-tide, which goes out to a small island about 100 yards off the shore (you can watch a very short reel I made of it here).

I try to get there at least once a year for an all-day “spiritual retreat.” I haul out a camping chair, plop it down on the rocks, and for 6-8 hours, I alternate between writing in my prayer journal, reading Scripture and other spiritual materials, and jumping into the invigorating ocean waters.

I also do a lot of watching and listening, which provides therapy for the soul.

I listen to the waves lapping against the rocks, and the constant advance and retreat of the little pebbles on the beach that dance to the rhythm of those waves. I hear gulls chattering, the melodious songs of a fog horn and bell buoys in the distance, and the hum of lobster boats on the horizon.

I watch as common terns nosedive into the water in pursuit of lunch, and occasionally see seals pop their heads up, unable to curb their curiosity.

This past summer, I watched as a number of dolphins gracefully and slowly engaged in synchronized swimming about 200 yards off shore.

It’s always such a spiritually and emotionally-restorative time—and it’s one of my favorite days of the year.

This past year, I also joined a friend at a neighboring beach at the end of my time—just as the afternoon sun was starting to get closer to the horizon, and its warm light caressed the landscape, providing the type of delightful lighting that every photographer dreams of.

As my friend and I stood waste deep in the ocean water, just chatting for an hour or so, a number of young families, full of laughter and joy, kept pace with our delight, enjoying a quintessential summer day in Maine.

As I said, it’s one of my absolute favorite days of the year.

But for whatever reason, this particular trip hit me like no previous year.

I’m sure it mostly had to do with the realization that life was about to hand me some significant changes, including departing from the congregation and city that I’ve loved for the past 13 years.

But as I stood there on the shore, looking out at the intoxicating scene, I finally found the words to articulate what I was feeling:

This is so beautiful it hurts.

That’s the only way I could explain it.

I wasn’t sure why it hurt, but I was about to uncover the reason through the words of one of my trusted—though deceased—companions.

Surprised by joy

One of the things I often do when I go on this retreat each year is bring a book or two by C. S. Lewis. I’m not sure why, but his writing just seems to match the mood of the setting and the occasion.

Though I’ve read other books by him, the ones I usually take to the coast are less overtly theological and more allegory or fantasy (which generally aren’t my jam). The one I read the first year was The Great Divorce. Then I plowed through The Chronicles of Narnia over a few subsequent trips.

Though there’s actually a lot about these books that doesn’t resonate with me a great deal, I’ve discovered that when I do unearth something, it’s other-worldly. I don’t know how else to put it. There’s just something about it that reaches down to the deepest recesses of my soul, putting into word-pictures the longings of my entire being.

Simply put, while most of Lewis’s allegorical work doesn’t do much for me, when it is on, it’s on.

This year, I decided to bring his Surprised by Joy, which is as close to an autobiographical work as he wrote.

And the decision to choose this book proved fateful—because Lewis, in this work, articulates exactly what I felt that day and actually what lies beneath the surface for me every day of my life.

And what is that?

Joy.

But not the type of joy you might expect.

Because Lewis’s definition of joy goes in a different direction than what we commonly think.

For Lewis, joy is different than happiness and pleasure in that it’s characterized by “an unsatisfied desire which is itself more desirable than any other satisfaction.”

Indeed, he proposes that joy may be called a “particular kind of unhappiness or grief” that has a “stab,” “pang,” or “inconsolable longing.”

And yet it’s kind of unhappiness or grief we want. In that sense, just like happiness or pleasure, anyone who has experienced joy “will want it again.”

This is because, according to Lewis, “Joy reminds. It is never a possession, always a desire for something longer ago or further away or still ‘about to be.’”

So this is why I felt the scene that day was so beautiful it hurt.

The moment was intoxicating, beautiful, and enchanting—and yet I implicitly understood that the moment was fleeting and wasn’t quite the fulfillment of all my heart longed for.

It was merely a temporary foretaste of the eternal and transcendent for which I was created.

Perhaps an even better analogy is that it was a beautiful postcard of the distant home-country for which my heart yearns. It provided passing bliss as I remembered the distant land, while simultaneously reminding me that I’m not there—and that a postcard can’t fully deliver the goods.

In that sense, it was a sort of “tease.”

Indeed, at the risk of sounding crass or sacrilegious, it was God’s way of “flirting” with me—as he seeks to allure me into the eternal by flashing signs of eternity in the here-and-now.

Simply put, a postcard provides temporary delight, turning our minds and hearts to the distant land. But the lasting emotion we experience because of them is a pining and a yearning, stirring within us a deep longing for that which we aren’t currently experiencing.

Interestingly, as C. S. Lewis explained in Surprised by Joy, this inconsolable longing, this pang and “unsatisfied desire which is itself more desirable than any other satisfaction,” was “in a sense the central story” of his life—and that, in many ways, his life was about “nothing else.”

It’s no wonder, then, that this theme kept popping up throughout his writings—including in the heart of probably his most well-known book, Mere Christianity, in a quote that’s perhaps his most famous quote of all.

I’ve shared it often in this setting, but it bears repeating again—partially because, just as with (and because of) Lewis, I’ve discovered that this longing has also been the story of my life.

Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for those desires exists. A baby feels hunger: well, there is such a thing as food. A duckling wants to swim: well, there is such a thing as water. Men feel sexual desire: well, there is such a thing as sex. If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.

“In the sweet by and by”

Two Saturdays ago, I said goodbye for the last time to my congregation, which I’ve led and served for the last 13 years. It was so hard because it’s easily the best congregation in the world, and I’ve had so many incredible memories and experiences with the church community—and, just as significantly, with the people in the neighborhoods, cities, and towns our congregation serves and shares life with.

I spoke on these themes, tracing out the idea in the Bible—about how, according to the author of Hebrews, all the great people in Scripture “died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, were assured of them, embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth” (Hebrews 11:13).

As such, they “desire[d] a better, that is, a heavenly country,” wherein God “has prepared a city for them” (v. 16).

All the good times we have in this world—the laughter, the joy, the fellowship—is but a “postcard” of and from that city God has made. The meaningful moments we experience here are good and beautiful and lovely, but they’re just a temporary tease—a flirtation from God as he tries to induce us to set our GPS for the eternal.

There will be beautiful vistas along the way, of course—inviting us to pull off at rest stops and marvel at the scenery. But they’re not the ultimate destination, and are, in many ways, just the “foot hills” that tell us the real mountains are just around the corner—where our senses will be overwhelmed with unadulterated beauty and joy for all eternity.

Until then, as Lewis encourages us, “I must keep alive in myself the desire for my true country. . . I must never let it get snowed under or turned aside; I must make it the main object of life to press on to that other country and to help others do the same.”

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Shawn is a pastor in Maine, whose life, ministry, and writing focus on incarnational expressions of faith. The author of four books and a columnist for Adventist Review, he is also a DPhil (PhD) candidate at the University of Oxford, focusing on nineteenth-century American Christianity. You can follow him on Instagram, and listen to his podcast Mission Lab.