Moment | Katherine Goodell

Able to Marvel

The snow falls while I am reading C.S. Lewis's novel The Screwtape Letters. I am astounded by the idea that nearly every aspect in "the patient's" life is being twisted into numerous tragic flaws. His love becomes materialized, his charity becomes arrogance, and his faith becomes social position. The crafty Screwtape contorts this man's morality in to such a tight knot that the patient gives up on trying to unravel that devil's reasoning. The patient begins to view the world only as a physical world. A place where all forms of enjoyment are squelched by real world sufferring. His appetite and his pain holds more weight to his existence than his ablility to observe beauty. And if he feels a glimpse of something marvelous, he tells himself that there is "no such thing." No such thing as anything sublime. Numb to the sensation of peace or enjyoment. He is unable to marvel at the snow's quiet white.