blessings and bodies

This semester I read a poem by Andrew Marvell called "A Dialogue Between the Soul and the Body." In this poem, the soul complains,

"O who shall, from this dungeon, raise
A soul enslaved so many ways?
With bolts of bones, that fettered stands
In feet, and manacled in hands;
Here blinded with an eye, and there
Deaf with the drumming of an ear;
A soul hung up, as it were, in chains
Of nerves, and arteries, and veins;
Tortured, besides each other part,
In a vain head, and double heart."

Recently I read a similar poem by C. S. Lewis entitled "The Magician and the Dryad," the dryad is given a body through the magician's art. Far from rejoicing, she laments this incarnation, crying,

"Oh till now she drank
With thirst of myriad mouths the bursting cataracts of the sun,
The drizzle of gentler stars, an indivisible small rain.
Wading the dark earth, made of earth and light, cradled in air,
All that she was, she was all over. now the mask you call
A Face has blotted out the ambient hemisphere's embrace;
Her light is screwed into twin nodules of tormenting sight;
Searing divisions tear her into five. She cannot hear
But only see, the moon; earth has no taste; she cannot breathe
At every branch vibrations of the sky. For a dome of severance,
A helmet, a dark, rigid box of bone, has overwhelmed
Her hair... that was her lungs... that was her nerves... that kissed the air.
Crushed in a brain, her thought that circled coolly in every vein
Turns into poison, thickens like a man's, ferments and burns.
She was at peace when she was in her unity. Oh now release
And let her out into the seamless world, make her forget."

Have you ever considered your physical body to be, not an expression of your soul, but a restriction of your soul? I hadn't, until this year, and now I sometimes long for, in the words of N. D. Wilson, "eyes hard enough to pierce the cherubim games, for unbursting ears to hear the planets sing." But perhaps, perhaps, in the words of C. S. Lewis' "On Being Human,"

"I know the senses' witchery
Guards us, like air, from heavens too big to see;
Imminent death to man that barb'd sublimity
And dazzling edge of beauty unsheathed would be."

Meanwhile, I am thrilled with the beauty and joy God does allow us to experience. Lewis continues,

"Yet here, within this tiny, charm'd interior,
This parlour of the brain, their Maker shares
With living men some secrets in a privacy
Forever ours...
The lavish pinks, the field new-mown, the ravishing
Sea-smells, the wood-fire smoke that whispers Rest.
The hill-born, early spring, the dark cold bilberries
The ripe peach from the southern wall still hot,
Full-bellied tankards foamy-topped, the delicate
Half-lyric lamb, a new loaf's billowy curves
Porridge, the tingling taste of oranges..."

Yep, I'm pretty thrilled with the blessings I have, and I'll always be curious--could there be more?