"Humans are amphibians...half spirit and half animal...as spirits they belong to the eternal world, but as animals they inhabit time. This means that while their spirit can be directed to an eternal object, their bodies, passions, and imaginations are in continual change, for to be in time, means to change. Their nearest approach to constancy, therefore, is undulation--the repeated return to a level from which they repeatedly fall back, a series of troughs and peaks.” (C.S. Lewis from The Screwtape Letters). Amphibians are some of the only creatures that can take in oxygen both on land and in the water. Adult amphibians have lungs so they can breathe the air when they are on land, and they can also take in oxygen through a process of gas exchange through their permeable skin. As C.S. Lewis says, we are amphibians - half spirit and half animal, half eternal and half time-bound. Just as amphibians like frogs and toads can spend a lot of their time in water and still survive, humans can spend a lot of time in the world and survive. While we are in the world, we can still be sustained by the Spirit. We can still have hopes and dreams, still do small acts of kindness, still appreciate pure moments of joy and peace. God is in and through all things and His goodness flows into us with or without our knowledge or any conscious effort on our part. We may be so deep into our worldly concerns that we can't remember what heaven looks like or we may even have convinced it that there is no such thing - no loving Heavenly Father, no Savior, no Divine Justice or Divine Mercy, nothing but the cool murky waters in which we are wont to swim. But as amphibians we can kick towards the surface and breathe in fresh, pure air. The word spirit originally meant breath. When we can tear ourselves away from the cool, watery weight of the world that so easily engulfs us, and instead reach for the heavens, then we can fill ourselves with breath, with the Spirit. We don't have to rely on the slow, imperceptible trickle of our Heavenly Father's love that permeates through the world and gets inside of us almost accidentally. We can fill our lungs with eternity, with truth and light and love unconquerable. I know that we will often jump back into the water and sometimes forget what it feels like to breathe the pure clean air, but, just like frogs, we can keep jumping back up every time we fall down.
