i haven't really been inspired to write in a while. maybe it is all of the energy i put into academic writing these days, but as i finally have time to read outside of the classroom, i'm slowly feeling more inclined to write outside of academia as well. i picked up a book which had been collecting dust on the shelf, so to speak, for quite some time now - a book that i started in a half-hearted attempt a couple of years ago, put aside, lost a copy, bought a replacement and still never got around to reading. it took a friend coming into my depressing little dorm room (yes, i'm 23 and still live in a dorm. let's not talk about it, okay? i think my age is the depressing element in the equation) and saw it on my shelf - a 1966 edition of C.S. Lewis' Till We Have Faces.
i can't even begin to talk about how much this book moved me once i sat down and gave it the time it deserved. i'm going to write about this book; professionally, i mean. or as close as professionally as an undergraduate can get. academically maybe, but it is a bit more than that. there is no grade riding on this, no deadline, just my own personal motivation to do it right. clive staples is one of the few writers i know who just gets it, who sees the world the way that i see it. okay, for all of you out there who just associate him with narnia, feel free to check out right now. granted, The Last Battle means a whole hell of a lot to me, the authorial voice really comes out in his philosophical works and in the Perelandra series. until this book, the closest i ever felt to C.S. Lewis was probably in The Problem of Pain (you can read more about that here). there is something about him and i can't articulate it (at least not yet), which oddly enough, brings me to my point.
the complaint was the answer. to have heard myself making it was to be answered. lightly men talk of saying what they mean. often when he was teaching me to write in greek the fox would say, "child, to say the very thing you really mean, the whole of it, nothing more or less or other than what you really mean; that's the whole art and joy of words." a glib saying. when the time comes to you at which you will be forced at last to utter the speech which has lain at the center of your soul for years, which you have, all that time, idiot-like, been saying over and over, you'll not speak to us openly, nor let us answer. till that world can be dug out of us, why should they hear the babble that we think we mean? how can they meet us face to face till we have faces?
i can't believe that it is already august. classes start in twenty three days and somehow two whole weeks have passed since i left the US for the second time this summer. twenty more days of survery. no, make that seventeen, then i fly out at nine in the morning on the twenty second. the days are going by in a blur, but i still haven't found myself counting down the days in the same way that i was in albania - it is really more a matter of disbelief that i have already been here this long. woke up a little bit before seven, my heart racing. maybe it is something about getting more than six hours of sleep a night on a regular basis (for a change), but i have been dreaming much more frequently since i've been here. last night, one my recurring dreams repeated itself once more, these varying images of missing my flight or train, thoughts of packing. last night i couldn't manage to carry all of my bags - i kept switching what went in each bag, worried about what i could bring back with me, what could go through security and what could not. before i knew it, i was out of time and had missed my flight. i know it shouldn't unsettle me as much as it did, but i really felt like i had disappointed and thrown everything into chaos, that i had screwed up, which made it a bit hard to go back to sleep. breakfast with three people in our little kitchen was kind of a complicated shuffle, but extra company is definitely beneficial. it looked a little overcast, but promising, but as soon as we stepped outside it started misting. went outside to try to write and tina said that we would just hang out until eleven, when roman was planning to take us over to the brahekyrkan again. as we were all sitting around the living room, nez mike jess and i started talking about tattoos, which was refreshing. well, it was refreshing to talk to people who interact with tattoos in the same way that i do. it is really about art, expression, meaning, not just showing out or something. i know some people don't assign meaning to their tattoos, and for some that is the only way that tattoos can 'stay' relevant all of their lives. maybe it is the same for everyone, but loud, obscene tattoos just don't seem like the best life choice or something that you would really want to have when you are eighty - family or not. i don't know, maybe depressing tattoos aren't the answer either, but to each their own.we left for the church and tina arranged for someone to unlock the staircase so we could head up toward the bell tower. we went up to the king's chapel and then into the rafters to see the old walls which bring into question the age and original use of the church.
after the church chapel, we kept climbing up until we reached the clock and bell tower level - stepping over a few dead birds in the process. going up spiraling, tiny stone steps in pitch black darkness put me to the edge of panic, but somehow i managed to brave the set of stairs twice - thought once it was not on purpose. katie and i climbed too high to begin with, but that is what happens when you send two people up first who don't know where they are going or where to stop. hung out in the entrance way of the church waiting for the rain to let up, then stopped by the store on the way back. i feel like we are always going to the store, but maybe that is just because i'm always working with tina and she pays for the groceries. i think that is going to stay that way (working with tina, that is) until the end of my time here after what tom said today. on the day that we tried to finish the pea field and started work on the forest, he made us quit after two or three holes and has made it sound like i couldn't tough it because i'm a girl ever since. this project is comically easy in terms of physical exertion and risks, but somehow the fact that i'm a girl prevents me from jumping across a small ditch? the problem is that he has issues walking across any surface, nonetheless a difficult patch of the forest in the rain and he couldn't cut it - he made us go back to the car early. today while we waited to leave to meet roman, he openly insulted me in front of a room full of people, along with katie. i have been letting the slightly chauvinistic comments slide, but saying that a girl shouldn't work in the forest was too much - and he wouldn't let it go. unprofessional, inappropriate, and unfounded - not the kind of triple threat you want to strive for. came back to the cottage after the store and watched the rest of inception. took a short nap, downloaded and edited photos and watched true blood while writing. jess and katie both went on separate walks which gave me about an hour of uninterrupted alone time - something i haven't had in two weeks. hallelujah! now veggie sausage and dinner with the rest of the crew at the big house. not too shabby - a lazy sunday after all.
another day, another hangover. i haven't made it home sober successfully since i've been here. you would think copenhagen would have provide the requite i so desperately needed before berlin, and, well, after amsterdam, but it seems to be the exact opposite. despite mathilde insisting that she wouldn't be able to go out since she works every day that i'm here, she has only gone into work once since monday and has been out with me every single night. granted, i stay out a few hours longer than she does, but she has been right there with me for the most part.
as soon as she and her mother picked me up at the train station, we went to check my pack in left luggage then hit the streets walking. we went down strøget, the walking street, and stopped for lunch on the canal at nyhavn, where mathilde's mom graciously treated us to lunch. oh, and to my first carlsberg...the first of many, many more to come. then we caught the metro to christiania. we had coffee at the 'world's safest cafe' (due to the fact that they have had something like 2000 police raids in the past decade) and then walked around the water looking at all of the self-built homes. then we caught a bus to see the new opera house and then headed back to the train station to grab my pack. then we were finally headed to mathilde's apartment, phew.
mathilde's mom left us money for dinner and went with mathilde to run errands while i organized my pack. i took a nap after mathilde went to pick up philip, which was nice because i had just spent eighteen hours on trains and more than a few hours on my feet walking around copenhagen. when i woke up it was to a fully cooked dinner, a box of wine, and then a bit of reminiscing about amsterdam. philip was really sweet, but his english got weaker and weaker has his sobriety diminished. ultimately i had to go to call it a night once the wine started to settle into my veins...and i drifted into sleep with every intention in the world of making it an early morning.
early turned out to be 10:30 by the time i showered, ate, and attempted to make iced nescafe, which was disastrous and awful. i got to the station, spent ten minutes staring at the ticket machine that was only in danish and apparently only took change. i went to a coffeeshop in the little strip near the station to get some change, a cappuccino to get things going, and then a friendly conversation with a barista later, i was on my way. i went to the national museum, and i was absolutely blown away. this place definitely made up for everything that amsterdam had been missing. i completely geeked out and ended up staying until it closed, a good six hours later. after that i went to the round tower, took a bunch of photos and stressed over the fact that my phone was not working. after getting on the wrong line in the completely opposite direction of mathilde's apartment, i finally made it back half an hour late.
we tried to go to this traditional danish restaurant, but when we finally got there the kitchen was closed, but they sent us to another place - rio bravo. we were told if we took a certain bus and got off right near tivoli we would see it, but we ended up walking around the same few blocks over and over again. eventually we found it, and it was definitely worth the walk. i had the same thing as mathilde (she ordered for both of us) which was this pork and potato dish (gasp! i was put into a culturally awkward situation where i had to eat meat. eck) which was surprisingly good, but between that and the beers...and the fact that it was a more than generous portion, i was absolutely satiated. surprisingly, the meat didn't really make me that sick, just sleepy. we ended up walking around looking for a place to go out, but it was a tuesday night. we found a 'student' bar with cheap take away beers, and after struggling to make it up to the bar, we finally got some tubørgs and made it out to the street where i sat on the curb chatting with some guys we had taken to be from central or south america. it turns out that they were swedish! between them and the germans, i was some kind of side show being from texas, and after a while it got really old.
eventually mathilde said it was time for her to head home and get some sleep before work in the morning, and i wasn't so into staying with these tourist boys by myself, so we grabbed a taxi home together. come the next morning i somehow managed to have my first real hangover of the trip, though i probably drank the least that night. i woke up around nine, got ready for the day, and then headed over to øosterport to see the danish resistance museum for world war two. it was really well done and very moving, but i couldn't help but laugh when there would be ten lines of danish captions on an exhibit and the english translation would be all of five words. after that, i walked into the nearby church, anglican with pointed arches and all, and then walked around churchillparken for a few minutes, taking in the swans, water lillies, and heaps of tourists. then i walked over to the stork fountain at strøget and waited to meet up with mathilde for lunch (she hadn't gone to work after all).
we grabbed pizza at a little hole in the wall place near a whole strip of secondhand and new age stores which we had dropped into. we then spent the rest of the afternoon shopping, then headed over to nørreport where we stopped at a cafe for a coffee, which turned into another coffee and then a few beers. we ended up running into a few of mathilde's colleagues at the cafe and her friend sara , all of whom were very nice. sara wanted us to stop by her art exhibition, but by the time we had gotten ont o the internet at the hovedbibliothek, it was time to head back to valby, where we got ready for the night in a grant total of five minutes. we then headed to darlings to meet up with stephan, whom mathilde had met at roskilde, and who had graciously offered to take me out for the night. when we got to darlings, leigh was there and he ended up leaving with mathilde for the art exhibition when i left with stephan for vega to see tv on the radio.
stephan and i had a few more drinks (and shots of a honey vodka) before we left for vega, and by the time we got there, the band was already four songs into their set. the crowd was a bit rowdier than i was expecting for this kind of show, but it was rather fun. i got us all the way up to the front, which made stephan ecstatic, and we just danced and danced until the show was over. we headed back to darlings and chatted with anne before we headed to jolene's in the meat packing district, where we met back up with mathilde and leigh. eventually mathilde had to leave again, and i went back with leigh much later in the night. come morning, i was really down and upset and i went back to valby, showered, got dressed, and took a nap before finally making myself get back up around 2.
i found a cafe near the round tower, which turned out to be a lesbian bar, and sat with my latte until i had updated everything about amsterdam. then, i walked around a little bit, and then headed back to valby to meet up with mathilde and to get ready for the farewell party. i was still in an awful mood and almost didn't go to the party but i figured, why not? we stopped at an italian place, and then met up with monty and all of his friends at a pub. minus the fact that most of the guys were going on in danish with no regard for the fact that i was left out (until i made them include me), it was all good fun. i had a few shots, including a round purchased by a really silly group of boys, one of whom later gave me a bouquet of plastic flowers, and i had a few really good conversations about music and the like. all of the nordic names were really giving me a hard time, so between that and the alcohol, most of what i have to show from the night are a bunch of faces and numbers without names attached. after the pub we went ot rust, which was like heaven on earth. i danced with this guy caspar for a long time, and he really wanted to go elsewhere, but louis won out in the end when i didn't want to leave with mathilde around four. i was going to crash with theis but louis (monty's cousin) convinced me i was better served crashing on his couch instead of trying to get back to valby. all of these guys are copenhagen's young elite, and needless to say i felt more than a little out of place in his apartment. i left around a quarter to 2, and then just chatted and watched tv with mathilde until she left around six to go to the festival in jutland. i had all these promises of being shown a good time, but none of them went through, but one night off from drinking wasn't all that bad. it was actually really needed, to be honest. i couldn't afford to go to the hardcore festival with mathilde anyway, so i was better served staying in copenhagen.
i got up at eight on saturday and went to the statens museum for kunst, which was really hard to taken in - there was far too much to try and absorb. from there i went to the king's have at the christiansborg palace, where i think i inadvertently saw some of the guys from the night before. then i climbed up the tower of the kirke near christiania which has stairs you can take all the way up on the outside of the steeple. it was quite terrifying, but the views were unparalleled...you could see all the way to sweden since it was a clear day. then i went to christiania, had a beer and met renee and anas. we had a few drinks, hit up one of the stalls near nemoland and then sat at woodstock before heading to the main square, where a giant show was going on for the world out games. we grabbed pizza from a stall and another beer, then smoked under the ferris wheel and i started to panic. then i headed back to valby around ten after catching a few more bands, still really out of it from all of the hash, wasn't packed, and didn't really want to see monty in this condition, so i stayed home watching reruns of weeds. woke up early this morning, went to københavn station, made my reservation to berlin, but i don't leave until tomorrow, which i am kind of bummed about, but i think that means i will get to see mathilde one more time. i feel like i am wasting my time here today, but i am trying not to dwell on it. each passing days means one less adventure in my travels ahead, which makes me a little sad. i haven't been having the trip i was expecting at all, but it has still been nice. if nothing else, i probably wouldn't be able to afford to stay in copenhagen this long if i had come by myself, so i guess using this opportunity while i have the chance isn't really a waste after all. plus, i love mathilde so so much...i don't want to leave her.
after leaving the train station i went to øosterpark, back to churchillparken, did the tourist-y thing by going to see the little mermaid, walked through kastellet, then down along the canal, past the opera house, and then just happened to be passing through amalianborg palace during the changing of the guards. then i went to the marmorkirken, walked back to strøget, which brings me all the way up to the present - sitting at a cafe, writing. i realize now that i'm missing two events in my recollections - one, some kirken i dropped in during the day that mathilde and i went shopping and two, going out by myself on friday, seeing another out games concert near the round town at the antwerpen stage, and then having a large cappuccino in the square near the nørreport station. those incidents aside, i think my accounts are complete. at the next place i stop to write, it will be time to reflect, not just document.
the picture of the fruit you have not found is still, for a moment, before you. and if you wish - if it were possible to wish - you could keep it there. you could send your soul after the good you had expected, instead of turning it to the good you had got. you could refuse the real good; you could make the real fruit taste insipid by thinking of the other
nothing is great or small, save by position
it surprised him that he could experience so extreme a terror and yet be walking and thinking - as men in war or sickness are surprised by how much can be borne: 'it will drive us mad,' 'it will kill us outright,' we say; and hen it happens and we find ourselves neither mad nor dead, still held to the task
either something or nothing must depend on individual choices. and if something, who could set bounds to it?
ransom had been perceiving that the triple distinction of truth from myth and of both from fact with purely terrestrial - was part and parcel of that unhappy division between soul and body which resulted from the fall
the terrible silence went on. it became more and more like a face, a face not without sadness, that looks upon you while you are telling lies, and never interrupts, but gradually you know that it knows, and falter, and contradict yourself, and lapse into silence.
all in a moment of time he perceived that what was, to human philologists, a merely accidental resemblance of two sounds, was in truth no accident. the whole distinction between things accidental and things designed, like the distinction between fact and myth, was purely terrestrial. the pattern is so large that within the little frame of earthly experience there appear pieces of it between which we can see no connection, and other pieces between which we can.
and then, without any apparent movement of the will, as objective and unemotional as the reading on a dial, there had arisen before him, with perfect certitude, the knowledge 'about this time tomorrow you will have done the impossible'
except for the song it was all very still
nay, the very beauty of it lay in the certainty that it was a copy, like and not the same, an echo, a rhyme, an exquisite reverberation of the uncreated music prolonged in a created medium. we have learned better than that, and know it more, for it is waking that understands sleep and not sleep that understands waking
'i do not call it the beginning,' said tor the king. 'it is but the wiping out of a false start in order that the world may then begin
as soon as we think we see one it melts away into nothing, or into some other plan that we never dreamed of, and what was the centre becomes the rim, till we doubt if any shape or plan or pattern was ever more than trick of our own eyes
i finally finished that hideous strength today. i need to type up my favorite quotes from the first two books in the series, so look for perelandra and out of the silent planet soon. definitely worth reading, i was just taking it way too slow. enjoy.
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youth and age touch only the surface of our lives
isn't seeing believing? it may be - for children or beasts.
the sadness that came over him had novelty in it
her actual state of mind was one she could not analyze. her expectation was strung up to the height; something that would have been terror but for the joy, and joy but for the terror, possessed her - an all-absorbing tension of excitement and obedience. everything else in her life seemed small and commonplace compared with this moment.
...that when you mean well, he always takes you to have meant better than you knew. it will not be enough for always. he is very jealous. he will have you for no one but himself in the end. but for tonight, it is enough.
[one] who could enjoy things for their own sake
have you ever noticed, said dimble, that the universe, and every little bit of the universe, is always hardening and narrowing and coming to a point?. . .you always find that there was a time before that point when there was more elbow room and contrasts weren't quite so sharp; and that there's going to be a time after that point when there is even less room or indecision and choices are even more momentous. good is always getting better and bad is always getting worse.
i'm afraid there's no niche in the world for people that won't be either pagan or christian. just imagine a man who was too dainty to eat with his fingers and yet wouldn't use forks!
now the suspicion dawn upon her that there might be differences and contrasts all the way up, richer, sharper, even fiercer, at every rung of the ascent.
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. and now there was nothing except this. yet also, everything had been like this; only by being like this had anything existed.
words take too long. to be aware of all this and to know that it had already gone made one single experience.
it was well that both men had some knowledge of poetry. the doubling, spilitting, and recombining of thoughts which now went on in them would have been unendurable for one whom that art had not already instructed in the counterpoint of the mind, the mastery of doubled and trebled vision.
they could not bear that it continue. they could not bear that it should cease.
they were laughing again, but it was a different kind of laughter. their love for one another became intense. each, looking on all the rest, thought, i'm lucky to be here. i could die with these.
they felt themselves taking their places in the ordered rhythm of the universe, side by side with punctual seasons and patterned atoms. . .under the immense weight of their obedience their wills stood up straight and untiring like caryatids.
it was also strong like a mountain; its age was no mere morass of time where imagination can sink in reverie, but a living, self-remembering duration which repelled lighter intelligences from its structure as granite flings back waves, itself unwithered and undecayed but able to wither any who approach it unadvised.
before the other angels a man might sink: before this he might die, but if he lived at all, he would laugh. . .unquenchable laughter
it was like the first beginning of music in the halls of some king so high and at some festival so solemn that a tremor akin to fear runs through young hears when they hear it
but the realisation that he had forgotten trouble him more than it would have troubled another. it was like the first cold breath of winter - the first little hint of a crack in that great seconday self or mental machine which he had built up to carry on the business of living
nothing but nonsense syllables would occur to his mind
if i take a step in any direction, he thought, i may step over a precipice
christianity was a fable. it would be ridiculous to die for a religion one did not believe. this man himself [christ], on that very cross, had discovered it to be a fable, and had died complaining that the god in whom he trusted had forsaken him - had, in fact, found the universe a cheat. but this raised a question that mark had never thought of before. was that the moment at which to turn against the man? if the universe was a cheat, was that a good reason for joining its side? supposing the straight and normal was utterly powerless, always and everywhere certain to be mocked, tortured, and finally killed by the crooked, what then? why not go down with the ship? he began to be frightened by the very fact that his fears seemed to have momentarily vanished. they had been a safeguard . . .they had prevented him, all his life, from making mad decisions like that which he was now making.
this, combined with an inarticulate want for the human companionship to which he was accustomed, gradually plunged him into depression. sorrow such as only animals know - huge seas of disconsolate emotion with not one little raft of reason to float on - drowned him fathoms deep. in his own fashion he lifted up his voice and wept.
often the man knows with perfect clarity that some still possible action of his own will could yet save him. but he cannot make this knowledge real to himself.
increasingly, his actions had been without motive. he did this and that, he said thus and thus, and did know why. his mind was a mere spectator. he could not understand why that spectator should exist at all.
he half saw: he wholly hated.
as he now saw, one might as well have thought one could buy a sunset by buying the field from which one had seen it.
but now that it's so very nearly time for me to go, all this begins to feel like a dream. a happy dream, you understand: all of it, even the pain. i want to taste every drop. i feel as though it would be dissolved if i talked much.
i wish they were still having the event in jackson :( maybe it will still happen?
also, i appreciate the fact that they used passion pit in this video :) i still get chills thinking about invisible children....bring me back here. i wish i was good enough, or whatever, to be a roadie.
i'm in the midst of writing my roman legacy paper, well past due, and i shouldn't be writing anything except stitching together my sources (especially considering it is 2:25)...but here i am. my mind needs a break from discussing the characterization of janus and how his multiple and evolving iterations can analogously be applied to roman character and even to the christian trinity. my brain may melt out my ears if i go at this too long...or else my paper will sound like absolute rubbish - it is a give and take, i suppose.
i was facebook-surfing/stalking/what have you and i guess my thoughts are fixed into a certain analytical mindset currently. it is really interesting to see how you can boil down the characterization (en! there is that word characterization again. and yes, i just used a latin exclamatory in colloquial "discussion"...so sue me) of an individual or a group of friends by their facebook pages. i was reading a note a certain individual from my past had tagged a mutual friend in (on a creepy note, i am not facebook friends with this person from my past, yet if he tags one of our mutual friends in a note i suddenly have access to all of his notes and all of the ones he has been tagged in) and saw a familiar list of his friends and some of his new ones from school. and what did they all have in common? all of this pictures that appeal to their "spiritual" lifestyle and don't conform to the typical, egocentric composition of the typical default picture. inadvertantly, however, they are conforming by not conforming and you can instantly see why these new individuals are becoming a part of the circle - because they all cherish the same ideals!
it is as easy as that! in a few brief moments i was able to generalize that these individuals will have the exact same underlying philosophical views and lifestyle or perspective as the rest of the individuals in this group - it is their common thread, all unraveled through a simple glance at thumbnails next to a note on facebook that i shouldn't be able to read in the first place. the speed with which technology allows us to further our understanding, overgeneralize individuals or concepts, and even speculate on the interconnectedness of separate entities, whether those entities are individuals or even ideas, is mind-boggling.
before i get too involved with my south by southwest updates, i typed up selections from this book i just finished, which was great. i highly recommend every one reading it...these selections don't even do it justice. the first section are from the compiling editor's introduction, taken from c.s. lewis himself, and the rest are from the selections of other of lewis' works.
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'little by little,' he wrote, 'she loosened the whole framwork, blunted all the sharp edges, of my belief. . .the whole thing became a matter of speculation: i was soon altering 'i believe' to 'one does feel'
'i believe in no religion. there is absolutely no proof for any of them, and from a philosophical standpoint Christianity is not even the best. all religions, that is, all mythologies to give them their proper name, are merely man's own invention'
he described god as 'a phantom called the good.'
'all that are in hell, choose it. without that self-choice there could be no hell. no soul that seriously and constantly desires joy will ever miss it. those who seek find. to those who knock it is opened.'
by 1963, lewis had won the respect of the entire christian family - whether catholics or protestants - by his adherence to the 'enormous common ground' of essential christian beliefs, and by his refusal to involve himself in the sectarian squabbles which characterize so much of christian writing.
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[aslan] didn't say this as if it were boasting, nor as if it were sorry, nor as if it were angry. it just said it.
either we give up trying to be good, or else we become very unhappy indeed. for, make no mistake: if you are really going to try to meet all the demands made on the natural self, it will not have enough left over to live on. the more you obey your conscience, the more your conscience will demand of you. and your natural self, which is thus being starved and hampered and worried at every turn, will get angrier and angrier. in the end, you will either give up trying to be good, or else become one of those people who, as they say, ' live for others' but always in a discontented, grumbling way
to the materialist things like nations, classes, civilizations must be more important than individuals, because the individuals live only seventy odd years each and teh group may last for centuries. but to the christian, individuals are more important, for they live eternally; and races, civilizations and the like, are in comparison the creatures of a day.
we all know there have been good men who were not christians; men like socrates and confucius who had never even heard of it
mere morality is not the end of life.
we are to be re-made. all the rabbit in us is to disappear - the worried, conscientious, ethical rabbit as well as the cowardly and sensual rabbit. we shall bleed and squeal as the handfuls of fur come out; and then, surprisingly, we shall find underneath it all a thing we have neer yet imagined: a real man, an ageless god, a son of god, strong, radiant, wise, beautiful, and drenched in joy.
but i wonder whether people who ask god to interfere openly and directly in our world quite realize what it will be like when he does. when that happens, it is the end of the world. when the author walks on to the stage the play is over. god is going to invade, all right: but what is the god of saying you areon his side then, when you see the whole natural universe melting away like a dream and something else - something it never entered your head to conceive - comes crashing in; something so beautiful to some of us and so terrible to others that none of us will have any choice left?
god could, had he pleased, have been incarnate in a man of iron nerves, the stoic sort who lets no sign escape him. of his great humility he chose to be incarnate in a man of delicate sensibilities, who wept at the grave of lazarus and sweated blood in gethsemane. otherwise we should have missed the gret lesson that it is by his will alone that a man is good or bad, and that feelings are not, in themselves, of any importance. we should also have missed the all-important help of knowing that he has faced all that the weakest of us face, has shared not only the strength of our nature but every weakness of it except sin. if he had been incarnate in a man of immense natural courage, that would have been for many of us almost the same as his not being incarnate at all.
you have free will, and if you choose, you can push me away. but if you do not push me away, understand that i am going to see this job through.
we are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. we are far too easily pleased.
by this method thousands of humans have been brought to think that humility means pretty women trying to believe they are ugly and clever men trying to believe they are fools.
the enemy wants him, in the end, to be so free from any bias in his own favor that he can rejoice in his own talents as frankly and gratefully as in his neighbor's talents - or in a sunrise, an elephant, or a waterfall. . .
it is frustrating to have discovered a new author and not be able to tell anyone how good he is; to come suddenly, at the turn of the road, upon some mountain valley of unexpected grandeur and then to have to keep silent because the people with you care for it no more than for a tin can in the ditch; to hear a good joke and find no one to share it with (the perfect hearer died a year ago). this is so even when our expressions are inadequate, as of course they usually are.
there are two points i wanted to make. first, that human beings, all over the earth, have this curious idea that they ought to behave in a certain way, and cannot really get rid of it. secondly, that they do not in fact behave in that way. they know the law of nature: they break it. these two facts are the foundation of all clear thinking about ourselves and the universe we live in.
a young man meets a girl. . .her voice reminds him of something he has been trying to remember all his life.
we must, on pain of idiocy, deny from the very outset the idea that looking at is, by its own nature, intrinsically truer and beter than looking along. one must look both along and at everything.
(note: i love that he writes things that are titled such as 'meditation in a toolshed')
and in prayer this real i struggle to speak, for once from his real being, and to address, for once not th eother actors, but - what shall i call him? the author, for he invented us all? the producer, for he controls all? or the audience, for he watches, and will judge the performance?
you also have the fatal flaw in your character. all the hopes and plans of others have again and again shipwrecked on your character just as your hopes and plans have shipwrecked on theirs.
you also have a fatal flaw in your character. all the hopes and plans of others have again and again shipwrecked on our character just as your hopes and plans have shipwrecked on theirs.
abstain from all thinking about other people's faults, unless your duties as a teacher or parents make it necessary to think about them. . . and think of one's own faults instead.
there is something about the mere words, you known, provided you avoid two dangers, either of sensational exaggeration- trying to work things up and make melodramatic sins out of small matters - or of the opposite danger of slurring things over. it is essential to use the plain, simple, old-fashioned words that you would use about anyone else.
in solitude, and also in confession, i have found (to my regret) that the degrees of shame and disgust which i actually feel at my own sins do not at all correspond to what my reason tells me about their comparative gravity. just as the degree to which, in daily life, i feel the emotion of fear has very little to do with the rational judgment of the danger. i'd sooner have really nasty seas when i'm in an open boat than look down in perfect (actual) safety from the edge of a cliff. similarly, i have confessed ghastly uncharities with less reluctance than small unmentionables - or those sins which happen to be ungentlemanly as well as un-christian. our emotional reactions to our own behavior are of limited ethical significance.
but why now? because god is forching im on, or up, to a higher level : putting him into situations where he will hae to be very much braver, or more patient, or more loving, than he ever dreamed of being before. it seems to us all unneccessary: b ut that is because we have not yet had the slightest notion of the tremendous thing he means to make of us.
the explanation is that he is building quite a different house from the one you thought of. . . you thought you were going to be made into a decent little cottage: but he is building a palace. he intends to come and live in it himself.
we are always harking back to some occasion which seemed to us to reach perfection, setting that up as a norm, and depreciating all other occasions by comparison.god shows us a new facet of the glory, and we refuse to look at it because we're still looking for the old one.
and the joke, or tragedy, of it all is that these golden moments in the past, which are so tormenting if we erec them into a norm, are entirely nourishing, wholesome and enchanting if we are content to accept them for what they are, for memories.
pain insists on being attened to. god whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world. . .
and therefore he troubles them, warning them in advance of an insufficiency that one day they will have to discover.
i think earth, if chosen instead of heaven, will turn out to have been, all along, only a region of hell: and earth, if put second to heaven, to have been from the beginning a part of heaven itself.
our whole education tends to fix our minds on this world
god knows our situation; he will not judge us as if we had no difficulties to overcome. what matters is the sincerity and perseverance of our will to overcome them.
whenever we do good to another self, just because it is a self, made (like us) by god, and desiring its own happiiness as we desire ours, we shall have learned to love it a little more or, at least, to dislike it less.
'error of stoicism': thining we can always do what we can do sometimes. . .for me words are. . . secondary. they are only an anchor. or, shall i say, they are the movements of a conductor's baton: not the music.
good fortune, health, popularity and all the things one wants to have. all thes ethings tend- just as money tends - to make you feel independent of god, because if you have them you are happy already and contented in this life. you don't want to turn away to anything more, and so you try to rest in a shadowy happiness as if it could last for ever.
the people who try to hold an optimistic view of this world would become pessimists: the people who hold a pretty stern view of it become optimistic.
i sometimes pray not for self-knowledge in general but for just so much self-knowledge at the moment as i can bear and use at the moment; the little daily dose.
as gin is not only a drink in istelf but also a base for many mixed drinks, so affection, besides being a love istelf, can enter into the other loves and color them all through and become the medium in which from day to day they operate.
it is when two such persons discover one another,when, whether with immense difficulties and semi-articulate fumblings or with what would seem to us amazing and elliptical speed, they share their vision - it is then that friendship is born. and instantly they stand together in an immense solitude.
emerson said, do you love me? means do you see the same truth? or at least, do you care about the same truth?. the man who agrees with us that some question, little regarded by others, is of great importance, can be our friend. he need not agree with us about the answer.
the gnat-like cloud of petty anxieties and decisions about the conduct of the next hour have interfered with my prayers more often than any passion or appetite whatever.
it is a useful, sturdy, lazy, obstinate, patient, lovable, and infuriating beast; deserving now the stick and now a carrot; both pathetically and absurdly beautiful. so the body.
'if any man come to me and hate not his father and mother and wife. . .and his won life also, he cannot be my disciple' (luke 14:26)
i believe that the most lawless and inordinate loves are less contrary to god's will than a self-invited and self-protective lovelessness.
a moderately bad man knows he is not very good: a thoroughly bad man thinks he is all right. . . good people know about both good and evil: bad people do not know about either.
no amount of falls will really undo us if we keep on picking ourselves up each time. we shall of course be very muddy and tattered children by the time we reach home. but the bathrooms are all ready, the towels put out, and the clean clothes in the airing cupboard. the only fatal thing is to lose one's temper and give it up. it is when we notice the dirt that god is most present in us : it is the very sign of his presence.
women sometimes have the problem of trying to judge by artificial light how a dress will look by daylight. that is very like the problem of all of us: to dress our souls not for the electric lights of the present world but for the daylight of the next. the good dress is the one that will face that light. for that light will last longer.
even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring tuppence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it.
look for yourself, and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin, and decay. but look for christ and you will find him, and with him everything else thrown in.
our natural experiences (sensory, emotional, imaginative) are only like the drawing, like penciled lines on flat paper. . .in reality it lacks lines because it is incomparably more visible.
indeed it would not be proper, gentlemen, for an old man like me to come before you like a boy moulding his words in pretty patterns
so i am simply quite strange to the style of this place
i must answer them, gentlemen, and try to get rid of the prejudice which you have had so long.
and i said euenos is a happy man, if really and truly he has this art and teaches it for such a modest fee
for all this talk about you, and such a reputation, has not arisen, i presume, when you were working at nothing more unusual than others do;
what in the world is his riddle? for i know in my conscience that i am not wise in anything, great or small; then what in the world does he mean when he says i am wisest?
so i am wiser than he is by only this trifle, that what i do not know i don’t think i do.
no wisdom enables them to compose as they did, but natural genius and inspiration
they knew what I did not, and here they were much wiser than i was
because they could manage their art well, each one claimed to be very wise in other things also, the greatest things, and this fault of theirs appeared to obscure their real wisdom.
i think, they find plenty of people who believe they know something, when they know little or nothing.
pretending to know when they know nothing.
but i say, gentlemen, that meletos is a criminal who is making a jest of serious things by prosecuting people lightly, by pretending to be serious and to care for things which he has never cared about at all.
you will be vexed, perhaps, like sleepers being awaked, and if you listen to anytos and give me a tap, you can easily kill me; then you can go on sleeping for the rest of your lives, unless god sends you such another in his care for you.
this has been about me since my boyhood, a voice, which when it comes always turns me away from doing something I am intending to do, but never urges me on.
such things those people used often to do to others, wishing to make as many as possible share their guilt.
and i maintain that i have been commanded by the god to do this, through oracles and dreams and in every way in which some divine influence or other has ever commanded a man to do anything.
but i am far from that, gentlemen; i do believe, in a sense in which none of my accusers does; and i trust you, and god himself, to decide about me in the way that shall be best both for and for you.
but what is that? what is proper for me to suffer or to pay, for not having the sense to be idle in my life, and for neglecting what most people care about, moneymaking and housekeeping and military appointments. . .?
but I went where I hope I might benefit each man separately with the greatest possible benefit, as I declare
but as it is I cannot disperse great prejudices in a moment
if again i say it is the greatest good for a man every day to discuss virtue and the other things, about which you hear me talking and examining myself and everybody else, and that life without enquiry is not worth living for a man, you will believe me still less If I say that. and yet all this is true, gentlemen, as i tell you, but to convince you is not easy.
but it was a lack which defeated me, although not of words; it was lack of effrontery and shamelessness, and of a willingness to make you the sort of addresses you would have liked best to hear.
but then i did not think I ought to do anything servile because of my danger
if there is no consciousness and it is like a sleep, when one sleeping sees nothing, not even in dreams, death would be a wonderful blessing.
if, then, death is like that, i call it a blessing; for so eternity seems no more than one night.
there, at all events, i don’t suppose they put anyone to death for that; for in that world they are happier than we are here, particularly because already for the rest of time they are immortal, if what people say is true.
i nearly forgot who i was they were so persuasive
you shall hear from me the whole truth
indeed it would not be proper, gentlemen, for an old man like me to come before you like a boy moulding his words in pretty patterns
so i am simply quite strange to the style of this place
i must answer them, gentlemen, and try to get rid of the prejudice which you have had so long.
and i said euenos is a happy man, if really and truly he has this art and teaches it for such a modest fee
for all this talk about you, and such a reputation, has not arisen, i presume, when you were working at nothing more unusual than others do;
what in the world is his riddle? for i know in my conscience that i am not wise in anything, great or small; then what in the world does he mean when he says i am wisest?
so i am wiser than he is by only this trifle, that what i do not know i don’t think i do.
no wisdom enables them to compose as they did, but natural genius and inspiration
they knew what I did not, and here they were much wiser than i was
because they could manage their art well, each one claimed to be very wise in other things also, the greatest things, and this fault of theirs appeared to obscure their real wisdom.
i think, they find plenty of people who believe they know something, when they know little or nothing.
pretending to know when they know nothing.
but i say, gentlemen, that meletos is a criminal who is making a jest of serious things by prosecuting people lightly, by pretending to be serious and to care for things which he has never cared about at all.
you will be vexed, perhaps, like sleepers being awaked, and if you listen to anytos and give me a tap, you can easily kill me; then you can go on sleeping for the rest of your lives, unless god sends you such another in his care for you.
this has been about me since my boyhood, a voice, which when it comes always turns me away from doing something I am intending to do, but never urges me on.
such things those people used often to do to others, wishing to make as many as possible share their guilt.
and i maintain that i have been commanded by the god to do this, through oracles and dreams and in every way in which some divine influence or other has ever commanded a man to do anything.
but i am far from that, gentlemen; i do believe, in a sense in which none of my accusers does; and i trust you, and god himself, to decide about me in the way that shall be best both for and for you.
but what is that? what is proper for me to suffer or to pay, for not having the sense to be idle in my life, and for neglecting what most people care about, moneymaking and housekeeping and military appointments. . .?
but I went where I hope I might benefit each man separately with the greatest possible benefit, as I declare
but as it is I cannot disperse great prejudices in a moment
if again i say it is the greatest good for a man every day to discuss virtue and the other things, about which you hear me talking and examining myself and everybody else, and that life without enquiry is not worth living for a man, you will believe me still less If I say that. and yet all this is true, gentlemen, as i tell you, but to convince you is not easy.
but it was a lack which defeated me, although not of words; it was lack of effrontery and shamelessness, and of a willingness to make you the sort of addresses you would have liked best to hear.
but then i did not think I ought to do anything servile because of my danger
if there is no consciousness and it is like a sleep, when one sleeping sees nothing, not even in dreams, death would be a wonderful blessing.
if, then, death is like that, i call it a blessing; for so eternity seems no more than one night.
there, at all events, i don’t suppose they put anyone to death for that; for in that world they are happier than we are here, particularly because already for the rest of time they are immortal, if what people say is true.
