Today is Michaelmass.. the feast day of St Michael the Archangel, and I\u2019m reminded of that bit in C.S.Lewis\u2019 science fiction books where his Ransom discusses the reality of the angel-like beings the Eldils. It\u2019s a cool argument that the Eldils are invisible to humans not because they are less real, but more real.<\/span><\/p>\nBecause these non-corporal beings are eternal it is our physical world which is \u2018unreal\u2019 or insubsantial to them. To us they appear to move through solid objects in our world, and we conclude that the objects are real and the Eldil\/Angels are unreal. Ransom argues that it is the other way around. The Eldil are the solid ones and our world is made of shaky, fuzzy stuff compared to them.<\/p>\n
Imagine that a man steps through a wall of fog. If you didn\u2019t know otherwise, you might imagine that the fog was solid and the man insubstantial. Instead, of course, it is the fog that is nothing but gas, and the man is solid. Same with the Eldil-Angels\u2013they step through the stuff of our world not because they are less real, but because they are more real and it is our poor physical world of shifting atoms and molecules that is transient, ephemeral and see through.<\/p>\n
If this delightful fancy is true, then it means heaven itself is more real than we can imagine. C.S.Lewis follows this up with his picture of heaven in The Great Divorce<\/em> where each raindrop can pierce the unsubstantial souls, and every leaf is too heavy to lift.<\/p>\nSweet Saint Therese saw the same truth. She said \u201cIn heaven each grain of dust is a diamond!\u201d<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Today is Michaelmass.. the feast day of St Michael the Archangel, and I\u2019m reminded of that bit in C.S.Lewis\u2019 science fiction books where his Ransom discusses the reality of the angel-like beings the Eldils. It\u2019s a cool argument that the Eldils are invisible to humans not because they are less real, but more real. Because […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":557,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3464","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n
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