Holiness in Literature

Up till now each visitation of Joy had left the common world momentarily a desert….Even when real clouds or trees had been the material of the vision, they had been so only be reminding me of another world; and I did not like the return to ours. But now [reading MacDonald’s book] I saw the bright shadow coming out of the book into the real world and resting there, transforming all common things and yet itself unchanged. Or, more accurately, I saw the common things drawn into the bright shadow.

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C. S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy (San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich Publishers, 1955), 181.