What was your favorite bit?
It was a long bit of posting, C.S. Lewis' The Weight of Glory. But now that it is all up, what was your favorite part and why?
My favorite section is the final two paragraphs. But, if pressed, I would have to say the last paragraph is amazing. It's not so muc that it is new in what he has to say, but the way he says it, "there are no ordinary people." Attach that to his idea that it is Nature and governments and the like that are really mortal and the rest of us are immortal really boggles the brain. The thought that has stayed with me the longest, and the one that I try to keep at the front of my head at all times is "All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all polititcs." Wow!
The other idea, which acturally runs through the ntire paragraph, but he explicitly writes about at the beginning and end is in reference to our neighbors. Particularly that our neighbor is a home for for God's Glory. If God dwells in us and we are also destined for glory, then there does exist in us, and our neighbors, "the glorifier and the glorified." It is a thought difficult to grasp - I definitely feel dwarfed by it.
Shawn
My favorite section is the final two paragraphs. But, if pressed, I would have to say the last paragraph is amazing. It's not so muc that it is new in what he has to say, but the way he says it, "there are no ordinary people." Attach that to his idea that it is Nature and governments and the like that are really mortal and the rest of us are immortal really boggles the brain. The thought that has stayed with me the longest, and the one that I try to keep at the front of my head at all times is "All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all polititcs." Wow!
The other idea, which acturally runs through the ntire paragraph, but he explicitly writes about at the beginning and end is in reference to our neighbors. Particularly that our neighbor is a home for for God's Glory. If God dwells in us and we are also destined for glory, then there does exist in us, and our neighbors, "the glorifier and the glorified." It is a thought difficult to grasp - I definitely feel dwarfed by it.
Shawn
posted by Shawn White | 8/02/2006 06:27:00 AM
5 Comments:
I'm going to have to read that. I've been trying to find some new reading material and some christain stuff would be good. oh yea thanks for the tips on songs i'll have to look them up. i like the doors and i've heard alot about live and thrice. but singers are so hard to find.
thanks for comments kyle. you can't go wrong with c.s. lewis - he has a knack of taking lofty, top-shelf ideas and making them accessible to us mere (im)mortals.
signers are hard to find, although i always had more difficulty in the bass-player department. i finally took over singing duties in my own band when i wasn't happy with the people that i had been auditioning. it's a tough process.
shawn
What to say! I feel my words would only scratch the surface of my feelings on this last paragraph... it does truly boggle the mind.
I am aware of this life being the temporary, the training ground for eternity, but I hadn't thought so clearly about my involvement in the fate of others around me. As I mostly interact with children all day (being my own) I have not accepted the enormous weight of the responsibility in this action. May God forgive my lack of seriousness in spending each moment as an opportunity to exude His glory.
Laura - I couldn't agree more. C.S. Lewis definitely has an eye-opening affect in some of his thoughts. It's really changed, in the positive, the way that I see other people and deal with other people.
Shawn
Shawn,
I'd have to agree that the last two paragraphs are pretty amazing, mainly because he summarizes the whole theme of his talk in just a couple of sentences to make the idea clear as crystal.
I'm not sure why, but there is a tendancy for us
(me anyway) to think of ourselves as mortal - to the extent of being true. When, in actuality, the opposite is true. We are in fact, on a journey to arrive at our true destiny in the universe, and our current situation is simply a temporal human experience.
Once one starts to think of themselves as immortal, the reality of the world starts to become "fuzzy" - like some things that were important - are not really - and they become distractions from the destination.
As we are intructed to "love one another as ourselves" and "they'll know us by our love for one another" - the meaning behind those words become amazingly clear as we see each other as immortal.
Thanks for taking the time to post these words - I've been delighted and enlightened - that doesn't happen very often. : )
Dan
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