Joy in Reading Till We Have Faces - Jacob (Blog Post 3)

 There are moments when I am reading a good novel when I feel my soul touch something which is not of this world. It’s hard to describe. In fact, I think it is beyond articulation. I suppose it is something equivalent to the Joy Lewis describes in Surprised by Joy. Joy is an interesting word. One might be tempted to reduce it down to a type of giddiness. Yet, to do this would be a great injustice. The feeling of Joy is something so rich and varied. It is perhaps, most of all, an otherworldly feeling. Lewis describes it as a longing. Yet, a longing which one desires. This seems to be a contradiction, but it makes sense when one actually has the encounter. I say all this because I felt this emotion when reading Till We Have Faces. The feeling I got was that I encountered something in the novel that was not of this world, as if the divine was hiding within its pages. This did not remove the book from the world. It is still a book of worldly origins written by a human author. All I am saying is that I got the feeling it touched something outside this world, like a tree that reaches up into the heavens when it is fully grown.