Season 1 Episode 8: Sehnsucht, Grief, and the Long Goodbye

In this season finale of Beauty, Brokenness, & the Cross, we talk about the bizarre, sad, longing-filled story of Jesus' Ascension back to heaven. 

[01:02] Acts 1:3-11, New International Version.

[02:29] Here are some images of the Ascension, for your enjoyment. The Salvador Dalí painting is probably the most ridiculous, yet most accurate perspective-wise?

[05:44] Once again, Kathleen Norris' "Ascension." 

[08:49] This is the opening song, "The Predatory Wasp of the Palisades Is Out to Get Us!" performed at the Tony Awards in 2024.

[11:26] Here is the full Lewis quote (from The Weight of Glory): "I am trying to rip open the inconsolable secret in each one of you—the secret which hurts so much that you take your revenge on it by calling it names like Nostalgia and Romanticism and Adolescence; the secret also which pierces with such sweetness that when, in very intimate conversation, the mention of it becomes imminent, we grow awkward and affect to laugh at ourselves; the secret we cannot hide and cannot tell, though we desire to do both. We cannot tell it because it is a desire for something that has never actually appeared in our experience. We cannot hide it because our experience is constantly suggesting it, and we betray ourselves like lovers at the mention of a name. Our commonest expedient is to call it beauty and behave as if that had settled the matter.  . . . These things—the beauty, the memory of our own past—are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshipers. For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited."

[15:22] And here, my friends, is your playlist. I was so moved by the additional comments you included in your submissions. These songs mean so much to you!

(Music from Epidemic Sound.)