Wisdom of the Hrossa

I am continually amazed at the brilliance shown in the works of C.S. Lewis. I am currently reading Out of the Silent Planet. This is the first volume in the space trilogy by Lewis. The silent planet is Earth and the character who is “out of it” is Ransom. He is abducted and taken hostage to Malacandra (Mars) where he encounters a creature named Hyoi. Hyoi is a member of one of three rational races of creatures. His being called Hrossa. Chapter 12 contains interesting dialogue between the two as Ransom tries to understand hrossan ways from the perspective of his own fallen human nature.

The conversation turns to thoughts on pleasure and memory. The hrossa seem to be a contented folk and this confuses Ransom a bit. Ransom wonders why they would not want more of a pleasure. The direction of his wonder has a hedonistic bent. Ransom is basically wondering if their desire for pleasure would be insatiable enough to war with the other races to satisfy it. Hyoi simply does not have the categories in his mind for this kind of thought. If you have read Lewis enough, you can see how his thought on ordinate and inordinate desire has made its way into the story. Hyoi simply asks Ransom:

Would he (hman, man) want his dinner all day or want to sleep after he had slept?

Ransom then questions Hyoi wether they must be merely content to remember a pleasure if it cannot be repeated and Hyoi replies:

A pleasure is full grown only when it is remembered. You are speaking, Hman, as if the pleasure were one thing and the memory another. It is all one thing… What you call remembering is the last part of the pleasure.

Hyoi uses the occasion of their meeting to illustrate this point.

When you and I met, the meeting was over very shortly, it was nothing. Now it is growing something as we remember it. But still we know very little about it. What it will be when I remember it as I lie down to die, what it makes in me all my days until then – that is the real meeting. The other is only the beginning of it. You say you have poets in your world. Do they not teach you this?

The “growing” is not mere fish story. We grow in our understanding and appreciation, the depth of the thing. I believe this could add insight to our view of the Lord’s Table. Christ told us to partake in remembrance of Him. As Hyoi shows in the next quote, this involves expectation and memory. What kind of changes would take place in our churches if we came to the Lord’s table expectantly?

And how could we endure to live and let time pass if we were always crying for one day or one year to come back – if we did not know that every day in a life fills the whole life with expectation and memory and that these are that day?

As my friend Jamie said, probably not enough people are reading the space trilogy.