there was no form nor sound. the mould under the bushes, the moss on the path, and the little brick border, were not visibly changed. but they were changed. a boundary had been crossed. she had come into a world, or into a Person, or into the presence of a Person. somthing expectant, patient, inexorable, met her with no veil or protection between. in the closeness of that contact she perceived at once that the Director's words had been entirely misleading. this demand which now pressed upon her was not, even by analogy, like any other demand. it was the origin of all right demands and contained them. in its light you could understand them: but from them you could know nothing of it. there was nothing, and never had been anything, like this. yet also, everything had been like this: only by being like this had anything existed. in this height and depth and breadth the little idea of herself which she had hitherto called me dropped down and vanished, unfluttering, into bottomless distance, like a bird in space without air. the name me was the name of a being whose existence she had never suspected, a being that did not yet fully exist but which was demanded. it was a person (not the person she had thought) yet also a thing- a made thing, made to please Another and in Him to please all others- a thing being made at this very moment, without its choice, in a shape it had never dreamed of. and the making went on amidst a kind of splendour or sorrow or both, whereof she could not tell whether it was in the moulding hands or in the kneaded lump.


[here's theology for you. that search of spleandour.]

'that hideous strength', c.s. lewis