“It would seem that the universal society is a great novel, of which each of us is at once joint author, and one of the characters, and many of the characters. At every level we make one another what we are, by reciprocal projection and reflection.” —D. E. Harding in The Hierarchy of Heaven and Earth (Faber and Faber, 1952, Introduction by C. S. Lewis).
I have long felt that our human actions with, and for, and sometimes against each other are of more significance than I was taught to believe. C. S. Lewis certainly affirms that truth when he says in The Weight of Glory (Macmillan, 1949) that “Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbor is the holiest object presented to your senses.” He continues: “There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations—these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub and exploit—immortal horrors or everlasting splendors.”
If we were able to sustain even a portion of this awareness as we go about daily life, how different our world would be. The unfolding “novel” in which we find ourselves would take on a different tone. We would think (at least) twice about cutting someone off (in mid-sentence, in our highway lane—or in life). We would learn the discipline of tongue and hand and fist that might banish violence from its pages.
Overestimating our own importance, of course, could work against a truly harmonious world—one of genuine courtesy and consideration. Like any truth, awareness of our human significance can be distorted into making us believe we are gaining “points” for goodness—rather than acting freely out of knowledge and love as we were created to do.
Some fiction writers have reported that their novel seemed to “write itself.” That is not a bad model to keep in mind regarding our behavior toward each other as we go about co-writing the novel that is this shared life.
—Isabel Anders.
