On Words.

“We are masters of the unsaid words,

but slaves of those we let slip out.”

Winston S. Churchill

Ash Wednesday

Almighty God, you have created us out of the dust of the earth: Grant that these ashes may be to us a sign of our mortality and penitence, that we may remember that it is only by your gracious gift that we are given everlasting life; through Jesus Christ our Savior.

Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.

Selection from the Ash Wednesday liturgy, taken from The Book of Common Prayer, 1979.

The Loves.

Need-love cries to God from our poverty; Gift-love longs to serve, or even to suffer for, God; Appreciative love says: “We give thanks to thee for thy great glory.” Need-love says of a woman “I cannot live without her”; Gift-love longs to give her happiness, comfort, protection — if possible, wealth; Appreciative love gazes and holds its breath and is silent, rejoices that such a wonder should exist even if not for him, will not be wholly dejected by losing her, would rather have it so than never to have seen her at all.

C. S. Lewis
The Four Loves

The Mystery of Boys

“Boyhood is a most complex and incomprehensible thing. Even when one has been through it, one does not understand what it was. A man can never quite understand a boy, even when he has been the boy.”

G. K. Chesterton
The Autobiography of G. K. Chesterton

(I found this quote in a book I just began reading, Wild Things: The Art of Nurturing Boys, which was highly recommended to us be a few of our friends with boys. I like it already, since one of the authors has a set of twin boys! Once I finish it, I’ll try to write out my thoughts about it.)

Further Up and Further In

“I have come home at last! This is my real country! I belong here. This is the land I have been looking for all my life, though I never knew it till now…Come further up, come further in!”

C.S. Lewis, The Last Battle

On Christmas.

It is good to be children sometimes, and never better than at Christmas, when its mighty founder was a child himself.

Charles Dickens

On Tolerance, and Despair.

“In the world it is called Tolerance, but in hell it is called Despair, the sin that believes in nothing, cares for nothing, seeks to know nothing, interferes with nothing, enjoys nothing, hates nothing, finds purpose in nothing, lives for nothing, and remains alive because there is nothing for which it will die.”

Dorothy L. Sayers

Be Still, and Wait.

I said to my soul, be still, and wait…So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.

T.S. Eliot

Fearfully and Wonderfully

¹³ For you created my inmost being;
you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
¹⁴ I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
your works are wonderful,
I know that full well.
¹⁵ My frame was not hidden from you
when I was made in the secret place,
when I was woven together in the depths of the earth.
¹⁶ Your eyes saw my unformed body;
all the days ordained for me were written in your book
before one of them came to be.

Psalm 139

On Friendship.

“In friendship…we think we have chosen our peers. In reality a few years’ difference in the dates of our births, a few more miles between certain houses, the choice of one university instead of another…the accident of a topic being raised or not raised at a first meeting–any of these chances might have kept us apart. But, for a Christian, there are, strictly speaking no chances. A secret master of ceremonies has been at work. Christ, who said to the disciples, “Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you,” can truly say to every group of Christian friends, “Ye have not chosen one another but I have chosen you for one another.” The friendship is not a reward for our discriminating and good taste in finding one another out. It is the instrument by which God reveals to each of us the beauties of others.”

C. S. Lewis