Pursue the Beauty!
reflections on the intermix of beauty, grace, and sufferingArchive for Quotations
C.S. Lewis on Love
Here are a few of the quotes I’ve gleaned from recent excursions into Lewis’s work. I also just requested the books Miracles and Perelandra from Paperback Swap. They always have Lewis books available. Hurray!
“Love is something more stern and splendid than mere kindness.”
“This is one of the miracles of love: It gives a power of seeing through its own enchantments and yet not being disenchanted.”
“Love is not affectionate feeling, but a steady wish for the loved person’s ultimate good as far as it can be obtained.”
“Why love if losing hurts so much? We love to know that we are not alone.”
Thoughts on Friendship
- Originally published September 1, 2006
C. S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien on the mysterious glory of friendship…
“Is there any pleasure on earth as great as a circle of friends by a fire?” – from The Letters of C.S. Lewis
“The next best thing to being wise oneself is to live in a circle of those who are.” – C.S. Lewis, Selected Literary Essays, “Hamlet: The Prince or the Poem”
“You can trust us to stick to you through thick and thin–to the bitter end. And you can trust us to keep any secret of yours — closer than you can keep it yourself. But you cannot trust us to let you face trouble alone, and go off without a word. We are your friends.” – The Fellowship of the Ring
Friendship is the greatest of worldly goods. Certainly to me it is the chief happiness of life. If i had to give a piece of advice to a young man about a place to live, I think I should say, “sacrifice almost everything to live where you can be near your friends.” I know I am very fortunate in that respect. – C.S. Lewis
Life in the Center
Our lives have grown too complex and overcrowded. Even the necessary obligations that we feel we must meet grow overnight, like Jack’s beanstalk, and before we know it we are bowed down with burdens, crushed under committees, strained, breathless, and hurried, panting through a never ending program of appointments. WE are too busy to be good wives to our husbands, good homemakers, good companions of our children, good friends to our friends and the list goes on. We are weary and breathless. Civic duties call our name. Needs abound and good causes are everywhere making us feel guilty. But as we begin to try and be involved in those good causes our dearest and closest ones to us suffer from our lack of attention to them and to those things that in our home we have been called to do as first priority.
We tend to think our great problems are external, environmental. We are not skilled in the inner life where the real roots of our problem lie. For I would suggest that the true explanation of the complexity of our program is an inner one, not an outer one. The outer distractions of our interests reflect an inner lack of integration of our own lives. We are trying to be several selves at once, without all of our selves being organized by a single mastering life within us. We feel honestly the pull of many obligations and try to fulfill them all. And we are unhappy, uneasy, strained, oppressed and fearaful we shall be shallow. For over the margins of life comes a whisper, a faint call, a premonition of richer living that we know we are passing by. Strained by the very mad pace of our daily outer burdens, we are further strained by an inward uneasiness, because we have hints that there is a way of life vastly richer and deeper than all this hurried existsnce, a life of unhurried serenity and peace and power. If only we could slip over into that Center.
Joy in darkness
The Return of the Prodigal Son by Henri Nouwen pages 113-117
God rejoices. Not because the problems of the world have been solved, not because all human pain and suffering have come to an end, nor because thousands of people have been converted and are now praising him for his goodness. No, God rejoices because one of his children who was lost has been found. What I am called to is to enter into that joy….
I am not accustomed to rejoicing in things that are small, hidden, and scarcely noticed by the people around me…somehow I have become accustomed to living with sadness, and so have lost the eyes to see the joy and the ears to hear the gladness that belongs to God and which is to be found in the hidden corners of the world….
I have to learn to “steal” all the real joy there is to steal and lift it up for others to see. Yes, I know that not everybody has been converted yet, that there is not yet peace everywhere, that all pain has not yet been taken away, but still, I see people turning and returning home; I hear voices that pray; I notice moments of forgiveness, and I witness many signs of hope. I don’t have to wait until all is well, but I can celebrate every little hint of the Kingdom that is at hand.
This is a real discipline. It requires choosing for the light even when there is much darkness to frighten me, choosing for life even when the forces of death are so visible, and choosing for the truth even when I am surrounded with lies. I am tempted to be so impressed by the obvious sadness of the human condition that I no longer claim the joy manifesting itself in many small but very real ways. The reward of choosing joy is joy itself….
People who have come to know the joy of God do not deny the darkness, but they choose not to live in it. They claim that the light that shines in the darkness can be trusted more than the darkness itself and that a little bit of light can dispel a lot of darkness…every moment of each day I have the chance to choose between cynicism and joy….that divine joy does not obliterate the divine sorrow.
