In Planet Narnia, Michael Ward argues that C.S. Lewis, a professor of medieval literature, used the idea that each planet has a unique resonance to frame The Chronicles of Narnia. He wanted children to experience the “kappa element”, or hidden atmosphere, for themselves rather than drown in explanation and analysis.
When his young scientist character, Eustace, meets a resting star named Ramadu, Eustace explains that a star in our world “is just a flaming ball of gas.” Ramadu reassures him that even in our world, that’s not what a star is, but only what it is made of.
Ancient and medieval humans didn’t look up at the night sky and see a black void; instead, they perceived magic and possibility.
The novelist and playwright Ayad Akhtar wants us to defend and expand upon this possibility in his latest book, The Radiance.
“I focus on that invisible, immaterial inner part of us that is the substance of our moral life.”
The book challenges us to bring mystical experience into a secular world, “to be related to our own experience not through materialist separation, wanting, or drive, but attentive to the aliveness of that experience.”
I loved how both writers, when pushed to explain those flashes of radiance, stopped reaching for words and intuitively gave themselves up to feeling. Moments over meaning. Embodied before the mind could catch up.
Akhtar defined transcendence as “the continuity between us… The continuity with our ancestors… Being connected to that in a lived sense, without self-consciousness.”
Over time, the radiance taking on a different shape: less eruptive force that rips through our consciousness, more like the rolling hills of our everyday.
Connected. Steady. Always there if we remember to stop and take in the view.
