November 14, 2006

• I went to Connecticut with the guys from Navs for the weekend...  Guys
  and gals, I'm telling you, New England may be the most beautiful place
  in the world, at least in the fall, at least in Vermont, and maybe in
  Connecticut.. Today I wanted to show you part of a book I just
  finished, The Problem of Pain by C.S. Lewis.

  "There have been times when I think we do not desire heaven; but more
  often I find myself wondering whether, in our heart of hearts, we have
  ever desired anything else. You may have noticed that the books you
  really love are bound together by a secret thread. You know very well
  what is the common quality that makes you love them, though you cannot
  put it into words: but most of your friends do not see it at all, and
  woften wonder why, liking this, you should also like that. Again, you
  have stood before some landscape, which seems to embody what you have
  been looking for all your life; and then turned to the friend at your
  side who appears to be seeing what you saw - but at the first words, a
  gulf yawns between you, and you realise that this landscape means
  something totally different to him, that he is purseuing an alien
  vision and cares nothing for the ineffable suggestion by which you are
  transported. Even in your hobbies, has there not always been some
  secret attraction which the othersare curiously ignorant of -
  something, not to be identified with, but always on the verge of
  breaking through... Are not all lifelong friendships born at the moment
  when at last you meet another human being who has some inkling (but
  faint and uncertain even in the best) of that something you were born
  desiring, and which, beneath the flux of other desires and in all the
  momentary silences between the louder passions, night and day, year by
  year, from childhood to old age, you are looking for, watching for,
  listening for? You have never had it.
  All the things that have ever deeply possessed your soul have been but
  hints of it - tantalising glimpses, promises never quite fulfilled,
  echos that died away just as they caught your ear. But if it ever
  should really become manifest - if there ever came an echo that did not
  die away but sweleed into the sound itself - you would know it. Beyond
  all possibility of doubt you would say "Here at last is the thing I was
  made for." We cannot tell eachothhe about it. it is the secret
  sidnature of each soul, the incommunicable and unappeasable want, the
  thing we desired before we met our wives or made our friends or chose
  our work, and which we shall still desire on our deathbeds, when the
  mind no longer knows wife or friend or work. While we are, this is. If
  we lose this, we lose all."

  This next quote comes from a bit further on, but related to this
  individual passion Lewis believes to dwell within each person, and
  certainly the person in Christ. "Your soul has a curious shape because
  it is a hollow made to fit a particular swelling in the infinite
  contours of the Divine substance, or a key to unlock one of the doors
  in the house with many mansions... All your life an unattainable
  ecstacy has hovered just beyond the grasp of your conciousness... But
  God will look to every soul like its first love because He is its first
  love. Your place in heaven will seem to be made for you and you alone,
  because you were made for it - made for it stitch by stitch as a glove
  is made for a hand. The day is coming when you will wake to find,
  beyond all hope, that you have attained it, or else, that it was in
  your reach and you have lost it forever."

  Poetry. Poetry. These words were like a song to me. Dangerous is the
  person who can speak beautifully. A person who speaks beautifully and
  truthfully brings you closer to home than you could ever be otherwise.
  There are others who speak beautifully and mislead, but don't hate
  beauty, right?

  SOOOO... Guys weekend in Connecticut...
  
  
  
  
  
  

  • 3:19 am
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