New music from the Distant Spire.

It’s been a while since my last post due to my attention being focused on preparations for a pilgrimage to Europe at the end of September. In addition (and perhaps due to this distraction), creative inspiration has been elusive. I am hoping some time away will re-energise me and provide some time for reflection, and I look forward to providing more music for meditation soon. Meanwhile I plan to jump in on Notes from time to time while I’m away but there will be no Distant Spire music until November.

This week’s music for meditation is called Surprised By Joy, so named, and inspired by CS Lewis’ autobiography and his theological understanding of joy. Along with listening to the music and finding some quiet time for prayer, I invite you to read a short explanation below for context as you reflect.

(I recommend headphones or full range speakers both for listening quality and to provide some isolation from the noise and business so you can more easily enter into a quiet time with the Lord).

CS Lewis And Surprised By Joy

Surprised By Joy is about much more than the life of CS Lewis; it is an exploration of essence and belief. I first read his autobiography many years ago and I recently read it again. I was captivated by his vivid recall and how important, central even, the role of imagination was in his formation, and how it became central to his thoughts on meaning and the eternal.

For Lewis joy also had a much deeper meaning than the definition we might otherwise apply; joy was not merely happiness but suggested a deep longing for something beyond our grasp, and that this longing signifies our inherent need, and desire, for God.

According to Lewis, this sense of longing can take many forms. For example he said that a literary person often will read the same story more than once, because they want to revisit the world that they enter into through the story to reawaken the longing for the real eternal world of heaven. Romantic longing, loneliness and its desperate craving for friendship or at least some social interaction, suggest our inherent need for connection and relationship. Lewis provides a vivid example of this sensation of longing and how it relates to his understanding of joy:

“As I stood beside a flowering currant bush on a summer day there suddenly arose in me without warning, and as if from a depth not of years but of centuries, the memory of that earlier morning at the Old House when my brother had brought his toy garden into the nursery. It is difficult or find words strong enough for the sensation which came over me; Milton's 'enormous bliss' of Eden (giving the full, ancient meaning to 'enormous') comes somewhere near it. It was a sensation, of course, of desire; but desire for what?...Before I knew what I desired, the desire itself was gone, the whole glimpse... withdrawn, the world turned commonplace again, or only stirred by a longing for the longing that had just ceased...

In a sense the central story of my life is about nothing else... The quality common to the three experiences... is that of an unsatisfied desire which is itself more desirable than any other satisfaction. I call it Joy, which is here a technical term and must be sharply distinguished both from Happiness and Pleasure. Joy (in my sense) has indeed one characteristic, and one only, in common with them; the fact that anyone who has experienced it will want it again... I doubt whether anyone who has tasted it would ever, if both were in his power, exchange it for all the pleasures in the world. But then Joy is never in our power and Pleasure often is.” (pp.16-18)

Lewis expressed his idea of joy in numerous other works and it goes some way to giving a framework of meaning to what is sometime a feeling or sense that we know but cannot always explain.

Additional Notes

In a year that has already been full of blessings and transformation, I will soon be leaving for a twenty three day Carmelite pilgrimage through France, Spain and then onto Rome and the Vatican. My parish is run by Carmelite Friars and two of the priests will be leading our group. We will be visiting important sites in the Carmelite tradition, including the town of Lisieux where St Therese produced her profound and beautiful writings that have been so influential, and the walled city of Avila which holds special significance for St Teresa and St John of the Cross.

Please pray for me as go with a number of intentions for family, and also seeking discernment of my future in the Church, namely whether I should become a Benedictine Oblate, or focus on serving the Lord in my local parish.

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D.A SigleyThe Distant Spire

Footnotes and Resources

Music written, recorded and produced by Dale Sigley ©2025

Scripture quotes from Revised Stand Version: Catholic Edition ©1989, 1993.

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