Tag Archives: C.S. Lewis

Two to Remember

church, family, history, love, quotes, saints, , , , , , ,

Today is the birthday of C.S. Lewis, and that’s a good reason to post a thought-provoking quote from him. Lewis was born in 1898 and died on Nov. 22, 1963, the same date as President John F. Kennedy and author Aldous Huxley. Peter Kreeft wrote a book based on his imagination of what a conversation among these three people might sound like if they met after death; it is titled Between Heaven and Hell: A Dialog Somewhere Beyond Death with John F. Kennedy, C. S. Lewis & Aldous Huxley.

I don’t think I’ve read that book yet, but today is Lewis’s birthday. Maybe I’ll read the book prompted by the date of his death before next November 22 and have some thoughts on it then. For now, I’d like to think on this:

  Gratitude looks to the Past and love to the Present; fear, avarice, lust, and ambition look ahead.

The first clause describes what characterized our family’s Thanksgiving celebration so recently. The second describes what I have daily to turn from, to put off from my thoughts just as I might drop an icky thing from my hands, so that I can freely touch and hold, really be present with, what and who is right here now.

While I’m remembering people who inspire, let me not forget to mention St. Andrew The First Called, whose feast day is tomorrow. I learned last year about how he is the patron saint of Scotland. We don’t have our priest-intern Fr. Andrew any longer but we are having Vespers tonight and Liturgy tomorrow for Saint Andrew all the same, which makes me happy right now.

In thinking about Lewis’s quote above, I realized that one reason we plan for the future is just so we will be able to love and serve when the future has become the present. It’s the way we can look ahead in love and faith and not in those other ways. But what a lot of Love I have to live in today.

Can’t say anything good enough.

love, quotes, ,
Actually it seems to me that one can hardly say anything
either bad enough or good enough about life. 
–C.S. Lewis

The Christian life includes both joy and sorrow, and it seems that the intense experience of either aspect can’t adequately be described. Each of us has our own unique pain or bliss.

What comes to us on the journey is meant to be shared with and offered to our God; He’s the only one who knows our heart, without us saying a word. Christ endured shame, abuse, the Cross, and hell, for the joy that was set before Him. He does know what we are going through, and He went through worse, and the Love in the Holy Trinity is the Sun of which our happiness is only a ray.

Right now I’m walking on the sunny side of life, and I’m glad to say so here, but I won’t try to describe my giddiness. I can’t say anything good enough about Life. He is the Source, He is the Life, I know that, and I am finding His goodness and kindness in so many things: my husband’s love, the warmth of my home, the fatigue from housecleaning, the hope of the tulips I planted blooming in the Spring, the rest at night.

The photo is of a vase that was my grandmother’s, with some snippets from my garden. A bit of this and that, a unique medley that reminds me of my blessed life.

How to Get Light instead of Fog.

Lent, quotes, , , , ,
St. Isaac of Syria

Thanks to Christ is in our Midst for this posting appropriate to the beginning of Lent. To me it is a helpful elaboration on C.S. Lewis’s statement that “Virtue — even attempted virtue — brings light; indulgence brings fog.”

…If you cannot be still within your heart, then at least make still your tongue. If you cannot give right ordering to your thoughts, at least give right ordering to your senses. If you cannot be solitary in your mind, at least be solitary in body. If you cannot labor with your body, at least be afflicted in mind. If you cannot keep your vigil standing, keep vigil sitting on your pallet, or lying down. If you cannot fast for two days at a time, at least fast till evening. And if you cannot fast until evening, then at least keep yourself from satiety.

If you are not holy in your heart, at least be holy in body. If you do not mourn in your heart, at least cover your face with mourning. If you cannot be merciful, at least speak as though you are a sinner. If you are not a peacemaker, at least do not be a troublemaker. If you cannot be assiduous, at least consider yourself lazy. If you are not victorious, do not exalt yourself over the vanquished. If you cannot close the mouth of a man who disparages his companion, at least refrain from joining him in this.

Know that if fire goes forth from you and consumes other men, God will demand from your hands the souls which your fire has burned. And if you yourself do not put forth the fire, but are in agreement with him who does, and are pleased by it, in the judgment you will be reckoned as his accomplice. If you love gentleness, be peaceful, if you are deemed worthy of peace, you will rejoice at all time. Seek understanding, not gold. Clothe yourself with humility, not fine linen. Gain peace, not a kingdom.

~St. Isaac of Syria

Quote of the Week – may be only fidgets

quotes, women, , ,


I haven’t kept up with my plan for a weekly quote, but it’s a practice worth reviving, especially for those ever-more-frequent periods when I have nothing to say. Today, from C.S. Lewis:

“Don’t be too easily convinced that God really wants you to do all sorts of work you needn’t do. Each must do his duty ‘in that state of life to which God has called him.’ Remember that a belief in the virtues of doing for doing’s sake is characteristically feminine, characteristically American, and characteristically modern: so that three veils may divide you from the correct view! There can be intemperance in work just as in drink. What feels like zeal may be only fidgets or even the flattering of one’s self-importance. As MacDonald says, ‘In holy things may be unholy greed!’ And by doing what ‘one’s station and its duties’ does not demand, one can make oneself less fit for the duties it does demand and so commit some injustice. Just you give Mary a chance as well as Martha!”

C.S. Lewis, Letters to An American Lady