Blog 3108 – 05.03.2024

This Masquerade

In one of my favorite little books by C.S. Lewis, the Great Divorce, that was brought to mind when I recently watched a movie about a perhaps fictional meeting between Lewis and Sigmund Freud called, Freud’s Last Session, there is a scene where a wife tries desperately to get beyond the mask of ego that her husband is wearing and talk him into staying in heaven with her. In the end her efforts fail and he gets back on the bus and returns to the hellish shadowlands.

We all at ego’s insistence wear masks to hide behind fearful that if people see and know the real us they will reject us. In the movie I mentioned above the two men from different and opposing philosophies drop their masks briefly and see into the souls of one another. Words that are meant to be bridges of connection between us can often as today’s song says just “get in the way.”

I recently saw my beloved son playing peek-a-boo with his daughter, my beloved granddaughter Emma Grace. She loved it and giggled with joy at the pretense of her daddy disappearing and reappearing like magic before her eyes. Her sweet giggle seemed to say, “I see you daddy and I love you.”

Another childhood game we play is hide ‘n seek. We need to stay mindful in this life lest we get lost in this lonely game we play, lost in a masquerade.

Your friend and fellow traveler,

David White

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1fy0VBQd73hyIgkRo_l9vJPONsLFJRnrl/view?usp=drivesdk

This Masquerade

Author’s Note: A younger Anthony Hopkins played Lewis in a biopic of C.S. Lewis called Surprised By Joy. In Freud’s Last Session the pretext for their meeting is a critical comment Freud had written about C.S. Lewis’s poor writing ability in which he says John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress was a masterful work. Lewis’s Great Divorce is written like Pilgrim’s Progress as a dream awakened from in the end. The children’s round Row, Row, Row Your Boat concludes with Merrily, Merrily, Merrily, Life Is But A Dream. Sweet dreams Emma Grace and children one and all.