Nature is only Seen from Supernature

Although Miracles is one of those books I have been immersed in for the past year, I somehow missed this one:

"Only Supernaturalists really see Nature. You must go from away from her, and then turn round, and look back. Then at last the true landscape will become visible. You must have tasted, however briefly, the pure water from beyond the world before you can be distinctly conscious of the hot, salty tang of Nature's current. To treat her as God, or as Everything, is to lose the whole pith and pleasure of her. Come out, look back, and then you will see." (C.S. Lewis, Miracles; qtd. in Planets in Peril)

What I see here is another of Lewis's expressions of the sacramental imagination, which exalts rather than denigrates Nature. This imagination formed by the biblical story allows one to view Nature with the wonder of a child at the sea shore who happens upon a small tidal pool teeming with the barely visible but exciting dance of life, or discovers those mysterious little sand crabs just below the surface of the foamy sand.

Growing without Erasing

I came across this quote in a book I am reading:

"Humanity does not pass through phases as a train passes through stations: being alive, it has the privilege of always moving yet never leaving anything behind. Whatever we have been, in some sort we still are." (C.S. Lewis, Allegory of Love; qtd. in D. Downing, Planets in Peril 60)

The person is dynamic, ever-developing, but the earlier stages of development are never erased. The person is formed by experiences, obviously. One cannot undo the past. Although we must also allow for the transformation of a person, even a 180 degree change, the past shapes who one is today. The person is shaped by, reacts to, even opposes past experience; thus one's past remains a factor in the formation of the person.