“Shangri-La” #1 of 3: By Surprise

Lost Horizon by James Hilton, 1933

“Shangri-La”, I had some vague idea—maybe some exotic paradise somewhere. A few mornings ago, by the fire pit, while reading into the second chapter, there it was: “Shangri-La, he called it. La is Tibetan for mountain pass. He was most emphatic that we should go there.” 

It’s a story told by James Hilton in his 1933 novel Lost Horizon. I found myself reading it because during all our family comings and goings, during one of our scattered conversations, Steve dug out an old beat up book and encourage me to give it a read: “It’s short”, he said. It’s true, but I’m a slow reader.  Steve dug it out because we were discussing how that “modern science’s big history of everything” book ends with a not so scientific utopian vision. Where do such utopian dreams come from?

That’s what prompted Steve to leave the conversation and return with his beat up old book. I figured it had something to do with utopian dreams, but the word “Shangri-La” was never mentioned, nor is it in the title of the book. So it was that it came as a surprise at the end of the second chapter. And from there, the mystery and wonder of Shangri-La percolates through every chapter and every page. And now, after the read, Shangri-La has found a place in me. I will never see or hear the word again without the whole story tumbling through my mind.

A single word parlays into a bigger story. That’s how the Bible works. A single word… let’s pick a word, say “virgin”.  Can we hear the word without thinking of “The Virgin”? And then something of the whole big story flows through us. Or, in this case, a new word like “Shangri-La” finds its way back into our big Bible story. It has to do with The Garden, and how we got kicked out and how we somehow have a memory of it that gives us all our ideas about justice and righteousness because now we know good and evil and we know that things are not right and that justice eludes us.

Our big Gospel Story frees us for the wonders of all stories. At the end of one of his essays, Lewis sums it up like this: “I believe in Christianity as I believe that the Sun has risen not only because I see it but because by it I see everything else.”  For us, Christ opens up lost horizons.