Moments of "Joy"

No, this would be the right place. If I understand Lewis correctly, the moments of joy of which he spoke are completely unplanned (and unplannable), and strike so swiftly that you don't realize they're happening until they're over. Hence the only immediate sensation you get is one of loss - you can't savor the moment because it passes too quickly; all you can savor is the feeling that it leaves behind when it departs. Yet Lewis describes that loss as being more precious than the most valuable possession. This is what kept tormenting him in his pagan days: what touch could be so profound that the loss of it would be more valuable than any worldly good?

Even though I've had a rich life full of wonderful experiences, I've only known a handful of those kind of experiences, and I remember every one.
 
I have had a few such moments, but all hard on the heels of something very painful, and the shock of the joy maybe was brought out more starkly in contrast to what I had been experiencing even moments or a day before ... I don't know.
 
wow, this is a great question, MF. :)

I can so vividly remember the first time I felt the pangs of "joy" as Lewis describes it: "An unsatisfied desire which is itself more desirable than any other satisfaction." I was only 7 or 8 years old, riding my bike outside of my grandmother's house on a delightfully sunny southern California evening and we had just moved from Massachusetts where I used to play everyday in the backyard with my sisters in some wooded area which to me seemed like a vast forest but if I were to go back there now, I would see that it is probably just a couple trees. Anyway, my mind rushed back to "those days" of playing in and around the trees and the peace that was always there and perceiving the fact that I would never again live there. I felt such an incredibly intense pain or longing that I can never forget-and never up to that point had experienced before.

I have felt many similar occurrences since then, but none stands out quite like this first time.
 
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They take many forms, and are unpredictable. One example for me goes back to when my first wife Mary was in this life, and our daughter Annemarie was not yet grown. We were on a rare vacation, to Yosemite National Park, and we ate a picnic lunch alongside a remote lake. It was SO silent and serene there, it was like the "silence" half of the expression that Heaven is made up of music and silence.
 
I got saved when I was sixteen very unexpectedly. I'd suffered depression my whole life. And finally I yanked out a Bible my mother had given me a while back and was like, God, if you exist, I want to know why my parents seem so happy and I'm so miserable. So I started reading it and it was like I was possesed by a feeling I've never understood and completely changed my entire way of acting and thinking. Every time I doubt I remember that moment.
 
Daishi, that is a spirit-lifting testimony. It sounds to me as if you are in a good position to tell others the contrast between emptiness without Jesus, and fulfillment with Him. In this context, you might often find use for one of my favorite Scriptures, Isaiah 55:2, which addresses the unbeliever: "Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy?"

By the way, looking at your profile, I see that you are four days younger than my daughter. But you're years older in the Lord than she.
 
Copperfox said:
Daishi, that is a spirit-lifting testimony. It sounds to me as if you are in a good position to tell others the contrast between emptiness without Jesus, and fulfillment with Him. In this context, you might often find use for one of my favorite Scriptures, Isaiah 55:2, which addresses the unbeliever: "Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy?"

By the way, looking at your profile, I see that you are four days younger than my daughter. But you're years older in the Lord than she.
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Well I eventually ended up going to seminary and have been in the ministry in various capacities for some years. Of course, that does not necessarily reflect on the depth of my relationship with God. Your verse is very accurate. While I work as hard as any other and enjoy things like anyone else, the investment of my heart is in Christ, and I can certainly attest to the life lived in Him versus the life lived without Him. I think Lewis even said if we have hunger that's satisfied by food and thirst satisfied by drink, then this something inside of us that's satisfied by God is a fitting extension.
 
I experienced these moments,fully, only after I reconized them. However I did not reconize them to be joy on my own. I recieved a four disc narnia dvd box in January. One of the four discs was 'C.S.Lewis Dreamer of Narnia'. I had seen this before (I borrowed from a dear friend a long time ago). But it never really struck me until that January.
It spoke all about our longing for another world which is depicted through these moments of joy. For C.S.Lewis these moments were felt when reading fairy stories and looking out over the hills when he was a child. And in 'The Weight of Glory' he says this longing is what we feel when we see beauty.
During that time I felt a dissapointment in the church I go too. Its a 'hard core' southern baptist church and I didn't feel like God was really...oh bother whats the word?...somewhere between magnificant and loving. Anyway he seemed far from either of those words except when I read the Bible in which cases he felt very strong and caring. But I thought I was suposed to feel the way my church felt.
And it was such a relief, when I began watching the dvd again, that C.S.Lewis was also a bit dissapointed in the church. (That God wasn't big enough for what was taught in church.) And so he developed his own opinion of God based from the Bible. It was also a relief that I knew what that longing was there for: the longing for the other world, for heaven.
I was already saved by the way, but during that period I became very close to God because now I could look at the Bible in an awsome sense without having to think of it in a very 'serious way'. (not to say the Bible should not be taken seriously)
And it just so happened that the week I discovered this joy I was still off school because of the holidays. I spent plenty of time looking out over the lake across the street from my house. I would sit on the ledge of an old ruined and crumbled house on some property across the street. There were bare oaks and pecan trees covered in moss that shined crimson when the sun would set. I had these moments of joy many times a day during that week. Also my imagination grew very much over that week for some reason and I felt it was because my mind was finally opening, finally getting to breathe as if it were kept inside a box all its life. And I felt the longing over again as I reread the Narnian books. To me the moments of joy are moments of longing. And I feel God told me his plan for my life then and from then on He's been showing me how to prepare for it. My life has changed dramitically from the influence of that movie, C.S.Lewis' book 'Weight of Glory' and Douglas Gresham's 'Jack's Life'
By the way has anyone also seen 'dreamer of narnia'? I don't think many people watch it.
 
Unfortunately I haven´t read Lewis other works besides Narnia, but I am very interested.
"Surprised by joy" wow, that´s something I must look for now.

But basically, concerning the main idea, yes I have lived those moments, and I think they are the best (When and why?? well, it happens every different moment I couldn´t know)
I try to keep that feeling long enoguh but anyway sooner or later it ends...

But I think its a kind of sad, those moments are soo few and sooo short. And sometimes we just don´t have anyone.
They are so great while they last...

Though, I find other people´s experiences very interesting to read and to learn.
 
While my first wife Mary was still in this life, when our daughter Annemarie was small, not long before I joined the Navy, there was a pleasant summer day when we all walked in a park in the late afternoon. I hold in my memory forever the way my wife and child looked in the low-slanting sunlight, about ten yards away from me, enjoying themselves at ease. I realized _then_ that I _would_ always remember this moment, and that it would be a little gleam of Heaven carried in my heart. What I felt then would be a low-key version of Lewisian Joy.
 
Wow, that's excellent. Poignant. Visiting on the island of Bonaire this week, I was reminded of one of those "moments of joy" 15 years ago, when I lived here. My boss had taken me and two of his little blondie kids in one of the pongas out to dive at a site where sharks had been sighted. His son was old enough to dive, and his daughter was going to snorkel, so they were probably 12 and 9. On the way to the site, a pod of dolphins started swimming with the boat, and playing with us. They would run alongside us, then zoom up ahead and fling themselves sky-high, whirling in the air before splashing down. I remember it like yesterday, the sun shining on the sea, the dolphins dancing, the kids and I shouting and laughing -- even small juvenile dolphins were leaping up in front of us, and I remember Chris, the little boy, watching a baby dolphin whirling through the sky, turned back and said, "Think that's why they call them spinners?" For a few minutes, for us, it was heaven on earth.

Ah, I can feel that ache right now, for more of that. :)

The dive was good, too: we did see the sharks, small black tip and Caribbean reef sharks. It was sweet. Thank you Jesus for days like that.
 
Now that reminds me: I may already have posted my own dolphin story on this forum somewhere sometime, but it bears repeating, especially since I've shared a moment from when I was _preparing_to join the Navy.

Once more, think of low-angled sunbeams not long before dusk. Only now those beams of light are playing over the open Atlantic Ocean. They are piercing through a surface mist, setting it all agleam. This beauty is being beheld through a periscope by Fire Control Technician Second Class Joseph Ravitts, whose regular duties on watch _include_ the delightful privilege of "taking the scope" at intervals in the captain's place. The year is 1991, I'm one one of my last submarine deployments before I changed to a linguist; and on this exhilarating occasion I see three or four _dolphins_ leaping through the illuminated mist. I feel as if I'm a character in "Voyage of the Dawn Treader," arriving where the waves grow sweet.
 
Oh, nice, nice! Wonder why dolphins connect with us in such a wonderful way? I remember the morning regatta was beginning here; it used to be a race around the island and the prize was a case of beer, but now it has become a week long event with all kinds of craft in various races. But it begins early in the morning with a boat parade along the coast, and one year I had come early just to see the opening events, and as the biggest sail boats were coming around to open the parade, a couple of dolphins swam up beside them and leaped out of the water -- it was as if they wanted to be in the parade, too. Those moments are priceless. :)

When I left Bonaire to go to work in Grand Cayman, my very first dive in the Cayman Islands, I was pleasure diving, not working, and in the shallow clear water, maybe 40 feet down, I came face to face with an enormous grouper! They are called "giant jewfish." This one was way bigger than I -- I want to say about the siez of a Volkswagen Bug. He stopped in front of me, dead still, about 2 feet from me, as if he were waiting for something. I waited, too, and finally reached out and touched him: petted his enormous head and scratched him uner the chin. Then off he swam ... what on earth?!

I never saw him again and never saw another grouper that big. It was like the ocean saying, "Hello! Glad to have you here." Or, like God saying, "I'm still looking out for you, kiddo." Despite that I was not looking for Him at all at that time in my life ... How good God is to hold onto us long after we've let go of him. How precious to have moments like that to remind you what heaven might be ...
 
Here's another joy-moment that the Navy gave me.

This was in the summer of 1990, while I was on the longest single deployment I ever experienced. The Italian Navy permits us to bring vessels into their La Maddalena naval base, in the small cluster of tiny islands gathered around the north end of Sardinia. There was an off-duty afternoon I had while we were docked there; being a married man and NOT wanting to chase girls at the major seaport in that area, I took a sightseeing hike instead. After awhile I sat and rested on a smooth rock, atop a ridge which gave a view of the sun-brightened Mediterranean Sea in several directions. To the north, I could see all the way to what I'm pretty sure was Corsica, ancestral home of Napoleon. It's hard to describe the sensation I had then of seeing the whole world from almost a God's-eye vantage point; but it was all heartbreakingly beautiful.
 
Ah, yah, very nice. Nature seems like God speaking to us, or loving us.

For whatever reason, I feel more at home underwater than on the land, so last week was good for me, I did a bunch of diving. On one afternoon, I was the first one off the boat, and there was a jolly turtle right under the boat -- I can't tell you exactly how great that is, alone in the deep blue sea with an amazing creature next to you, no one else around ... weightless, buoyant, free ... ah, all of life should be like that.
 
There is a certain movie which I first watched when I was a teenager, before I knew Jesus as my Lord. The last time I mentioned this movie was long before this topic thread began, so....

Titled "Robinson Crusoe On Mars," this 1960-ish science fiction film had a script at once more intelligent and more emotionally moving than many space operas of the pre-Star-Trek era. The hero was an astronaut who gave strong evidence of being a Christian, and of being sustained by faith as he endured the hardships of a Red Planet that the writers visualized as being JUST BARELY possible to survive on.

The reason I associate this film with Lewisian Joy is that, coming as I did from a relentlessly materialistic upbringing, this was the FIRST time I had seen it suggested that faith in God could plausibly accompany the explorers of outer space. Like Mr. Lewis' description of Elwin Ransom finding space to be Heaven, this epiphany made it conceivable that the universe might NOT be dead, cold and meaningless after all. Even the very effective music score, by somebody named Van Cleave, contributed to the mood of heroic spirituality.

It is a sad irony that Paul Mantee, who so convincingly portrayed the God-fearing hero, chose in real life to be a mocker of God. The last I knew of him, he was writing pornographic novels. Yet the movie he made left a lasting impression on me, little though he cared when I wrote to him to tell him so. I am reminded of what St. Paul said about rejoicing that the gospel was preached, EVEN IF the preachers were insincere.
 
That's very similar to what Lewis said happened to him while reading fantasy literature (when he was an atheist) -- it gave him the idea that there might be another world beyond this one, where real joy was possible.
 
One 'Moment of Joy' that I remember really well now, is that of one that happened while I had ventured into going to a girl Christian camp in the mountains. This was right before I had fallen to failure. While I was there I was always quiet not talking unless I was spoken to, not eating unless I _had_ to. There was nothing that I _really_ looked forward to while I was there, except the worship service that was held at sunset. Their area of worship was kinda cut into a mountain; which wasn't the only thing that made it wonderful. It was the view that was spectacular. Where you would sit at faced a stage with a clearing of trees behind it. From that view you could see the world [Not really, alas I liked to pretend that I could see my house from there. Which was no way possible.]. It was the most beautiful thing that I had ever seen when they would hold the worship outside. The sunset colors would paint everything around you. 'Like a cascade of colors.' I always told anyone who would ask about the trip.
I had seemed to lost that memory over the years until this afternoon while I was going over some of my old pictures saved on the computer.
 
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