Meditation in a Toolshed

I found C. S. Lewis’ essay “Meditation in a Toolshed” very fascinating. He took a very simple idea of looking at a beam of light from different perspectives and turned it into something extremely thought provoking. These two perspectives from which he viewed the beam were by looking "at" the beam and by looking "along" the beam. We can look at all situation in life from these two points of view, and it is important for us to use both different views in order to have a better understanding of the situations.

In this piece of writing Lewis struggles between which view is the correct view: should we look “at” or “along”? At the end he comes to the conclusion that both views are important, and instead of choosing between the two, we should use both. I agree with his conclusion. By studying a topic such as frustration or thirst we will know what happens to our bodies when these emotions occur and why they are occurring, but if we never experience the emotions, we will never truly understand what these emotions are. Likewise, if we only experience the emotions without knowing what is happening in our bodies to make us feel this way, we will not truly understand what these emotions are. In order to truly understand life, we must look both "along" and "at" everything.

An interesting topic that we discussed in class about this piece of writing is that in both views, the sun is present. The beam was still made by the same thing even though it looked completely different from the two different perspectives. This point was very intriguing to me because we can look at something one way, but when we see it from a different point of view, it’s hard to relate them even though it was the same thing. An example of this is sin in our lives. It is so easy for us to point out sin in other people’s lives and wonder why they committed that sin, but we hardly notice when we do the same thing. We may think the circumstances in our case were much different or our sin wasn’t as bad, but when it comes down to it, in both cases the same thing happened, and both are equally deserving of punishment. By seeing the situation through both perspectives, we can better understand the sin, and this is true in almost all aspects of life. This piece of writing really made me think, and it helped me realize how important different perspectives are in our lives.