Clive Staples Lewis. I always knew that he was a great mind. Wise, deep, inteligent, insightful, sensitive, passionate (not to mention he had a yummy accent. mmm. mmm.). But it wasn't until recently that I've fallen in love with his works. For whatever reason, regardless of the fact that I have owned some of his books (which I noticed I'm missing my copy of "Four Loves" if anyone knows where it is??), his words have never struck quite the same as they are now. Maybe I've become enlightened & now see things on a different plain. I'm not sure. All I know is that I am glad for it. I've recently (thanks to the continual urging of a friend) read "The Weight of Glory" and let me tell you...it's rocked my world. Undeniably. I keep telling EVERYONE, no joke, EVERYONE i run into about it & try to convince them to read it! let me be completely honest here...if able to, i actually take it out of my purse & make them read it right there on the spot! lol Just shy of a bakers dozen, actually. ;) I've recently been going through an emotionally trying time the last few months - what exactly caused it...i'm still not sure. I am sure it was brought on by more than 1 "thing". But as I've been working through it & realizing things about myself & how I think, process, react & feel, it wasn't until I read his sermon that I regained some very real & much needed clarity. It hit me like a ton of bricks so much so that as I was reading it in a very public coffee house tears began to roll down my cheeks. And for me that isn't such a common thing. If you've not read it before I not only suggest you do so NOW, but I beg you to. I know how enlightening it has been to me & truly helped me regain some sense of sanity in a world I have no real control over & I would love nothing more than for you to have that for yourself. I still don't fully understand what my deal has been the last several months, but I know for certain that I've made it through on top. I have been so happy the last few days. Like inner peace with life & God kinda happy. Nothing beats that. Not a dang thing. It's worth every last one of the confusing, trying, sad, hard, rough & disheartening times we go through in this life.
I'd like to share a couple paragraphs from Clive's sermon "The Weight of Glory" that really hit home for me. I still STRONGLY encourage you to read it in full on your own.
"Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires, not too strong, but too weak. 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."
"I am trying to rip open the inconsolable secret in each one of you - the secret which hurts so much that you take your revenge on it by calling it names like Nostalgia and Romanticism and Adolescence; the secret also which pierces with such sweetness that when, in very intimate conversation, the mention of it becomes imminent, we grow awkward and affect to laugh at ourselves; the secret we cannot hide and cannot tell, though we desire to do both. We cannot tell it because it is a desire for something that has never actually appeared in our experience. We cannot hide it because our experience is constantly suggesting it, and we betray ourselves like lovers at the mention of a name. Our commonest expedient is to call it beauty and behave as if that had settled the matter. Wordsworth's expedient was to identify it with certain moments in the past. But all this is a cheat. If Wordsworth had gone back to those moments in the past, he would not have found the thing itself, but only the reminder of it; what he remembered would turn out to be itself a remembering. The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust to them; it was not in them, it only came through them, and what came through them was longing. These things - the beauty, the memory of our own past - are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshippers. For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited."
The Weight of Glory
by C.S. Lewis
November 1941
Clive...Jack...C.S....whatever you go by...thank you. you know just what to say to a lady to make her melt. if only you were here today still, Love. ;)
jill. out.
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It's 2am. And you made me cry, Evelyn. I think you might know why. To hear someone else -- you specifically -- articulate these feelings for my dearly-cherished, favorite author/historical figure/influence ... Wow. Jack is one more reason we're extraordinarily suited as friends :)
ReplyDeleteYou might know this, or not, but I prayed intensely for two weeks that "The Weight of Glory" would deeply and profoundly move your spirit like it did mine. I wanted to see that badly. Yet, I wondered if it would. Silly me. God knew ALL ALONG that it fits your soul like a glove. That makes me ridiculously happy.
Kindred ;)