Prophetic Words from John Buchan

John Buchan (1875-1940) was a politician and author who is most widely remembered for his Richard Hannay series of novels. In his autobiography, Memory Hold-the-Door, he takes a dim view of the future.

Writing in 1940, in the midst of WWII, he seems to be looking toward future generations and how they will be affected by modernism. He writes, My fear is not barbarism, which is civilization submerged or not yet born, but de-civilization, which is civilization gone rotten. (p. 146)

The world has become a huge, dapper, smooth-running mechanism. Is that the perfecting of civilization? Does it not rather mean de-civilization, a loss of the supreme value of life? In such a world everyone would have leisure. But everyone would be restless, for there would be no spiritual discipline in life.... Everybody would be comfortable, but since there could be no great demand for intellectual exertion, everybody would be slightly idiotic. Their shallow minds would be easily bored, and therefore unstable. Their life would be largely a quest for amusement. The vulgar existence led today by certain groups would become the normal existence of large sections of society. (p. 147)

Men would go everywhere and live nowhere; know everything and understand nothing. In the perpetual hurry of life there would be no chance of quiet for the soul. In the tumult of a jazz existence, what hope would there be for the still small voices of the prophets and philosophers and poets? (p. 148)

He certainly seems to be describing the 21st century!

Blessings, 

Fairy Tales and the Cosmos - quote by G.K. Chesterton

My last post was about how fairy tales prepared G.K. Chesterton's heart to recieve the gospel. Here is one of the choice quotes: 

Cinderella had a glass slipper, and it cannot be a coincidence that glass is so common a substance in folk-lore. This princess lives in a glass castle, that princess on a glass hill; this one sees all things in a mirror; they may all live in glass houses if they will not throw stones. For this thin glitter of glass everywhere is the expression of the fact that happiness is bright but brittle, like the substance most easily smashed by a housemaid or a cat. And this fairy-tale sentiment also sank into me and became my sentiment towards the whole world. I felt and feel that life itself is as bright as the diamond, but as brittle as the window-pane; and when the heavens were compared to the terrible crystal, I can remember a shudder. I was afraid that God would drop the cosmos with a crash.

(from page 86 of Orthodoxy)

Blessings,

C.S. Lewis on the Perfect Walking Trip

I am reading The Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis (Vol. 1). It is rough going since the first half is obligatory letters to his father, which, in order to avoid all potentially controversial subjects, keep Lewis confined to discussing health and weather. But the second half has some nice nuggets. In a letter to his brother, Warnie, in April of 1927, he writes of a recent walking expedition. Apparently, he didn’t mind all the discomforts of an all-day hike as long as there were good places to stop for meals along the way. This particular trip did not start out well.

Thursday opened with discussions. A survey of the maps showed a lamentable discrepancy between the route we wanted to follow and the possible places for lunch. Then emerged the dark and hideous prospect of ‘taking’ our lunch. Perfectly simple you know. Buy some bread and cheese before we start and have lunch where we like. Makes you independent you know. Drinks? Oh, get a few oranges if you don’t feel inclined to carry a bottle of beer in your pack for the first ten miles. I need hardly say that our novice member was entirely in favor of the scheme. I, of course, who have seen days spoiled this way before, was the head of the opposition. The wrong party won. We stuffed our packs with bread, butter, cheese and oranges. The only thing I look back on with satisfaction was that the butter, at any rate, was not in my pack. 

Because of rising winds all day, the group was cold and miserable by lunchtime. The packed lunch was entirely unsatisfactory. He continues: The midday siesta, that great essential of a day’s walking, was out of the question in that abominable camp, and we set off gloomily.... [at dusk] no one can describe the delight of coming to a sudden drop and looking down into a rich wooded valley where you see the roofs of a place where you’re going to have supper and a bed: especially if the sunset lies on the ridge beyond the valley. There is so much mixed in it: the mere physical anticipations as of a horse nearing its stable, the sense of accomplishment and the old romance of travelling. It always seems to sum up the whole day that is behind you – give it a sort of climax and then stow it away with the faintly melancholy, but not unpleasant, feeling of things gone past.

In an earlier letter to Arthur Greeves he describes the delight of finding a perfect spot for sitting and "soaking" in the beauty and peace of nature. He writes, I have one great addition to my comfort here, in the discovery of a ‘soaking-machine,’ which conveniences are very scarce in England, owing to the strict customs which prevent the mildest trespassing. My new palace, is at the foot of a great oak, a few yards off a lane, and hidden therefrom by a little row of shrubs and small trees. Completely private, safe from sun, wind or rain, and on a ridge. 

Soaking up the beautiful countryside, conversing with like-minded friends, and arriving at the end of the day to a good meal, warm fire and comfortable bed. Sounds perfect!

Blessings, Hope

(Photo by Tomasz Filipek on Unsplash)

Quote from Thaddeus Williams on the Heroism of Everyday Obedience

The greatest adventure we can aspire to is composed of a million seemingly small cross-shaped acts. The adventure Jesus calls us to does not include thrilling escapes from the realities of ordinary life. Christ enters our lives and baptizes the mundane with meaning. We embark on this adventure by sacrificing for others over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways. By preaching the gospel with our words and embodying it in our daily actions, we toss the ring into Mount Doom, fire the proton torpedo into the Death Star exhaust port, and destroy the Horcruxes. 

Daily life takes on eternal significance. Because we are eternal beings, we can join the real adventure that lasts forever. In Christ, ordinary work mingles with the extraordinary. In all the menial tasks, we find ourselves thrust into an epic story with eternal implications.  

(From Don't Follow Your Heart, which I liked, but didn't love. It was a bit too "cluttered" with its chapter headings, hashtags, personal testimonies, "to do" lists, and prayers. You Are Not Your Own by Alan Noble has a similar message but it is more straightforward, and was my favorite book in 2022.)

Still, DFYH had many important ideas, and wonderful quotes. 

Blessings,

Stories as a Source of Truth - quote from Russ Ramsey

I recently finished Russ Ramsey's fascinating Rembrandt is in the Wind. I enjoyed his good writing and his deft weaving together of biography, art history and devotional thoughts. Here is one of the many quotes I underlined.

Story is a trojan horse for truth. It can sneak truth past the gates of our defenses and prepare our hearts to hear things we might have resisited if they had come as mere declaration. (p. 14)

(Depending on what "truths" are being taught, that can be a good thing or bad!)

Blessings,

Satan's "Nothing" Strategy by Tony Reinke

Photo by Priscilla Du Preez on Unsplash

In order to keep my earlier review of 12 Ways Your Phone is Changing You from being too long, I opted to put this lengthy quote in a separate post. In this passage, Reinke recounts scrolling through his newsfeed after a tiring day of work. 

On and on I flicked down a list of disconnected and fragmented items, most of them only barely important or interesting. I was not edified or served, only further fatigued because of missing a nap I should have had or a walk I could have taken.... What I am coming to understand is that this impulse to pull a lever of a random slot machine of viral content is the age-old tactic of Satan. C.S. Lewis called it his "nothing strategy" in Screwtape Letters. This nothing strategy is very strong, strong enough to steal away a man's best years - not in sweet sins, but in a dreary flickering of the mind over it knows not what and knows not why in the gratifications of curiosity so feeble that the man is only half aware of them. A hamster wheel of what will never satisfy our souls. Lewis' warning was prophetic to our digital age. We are always busy, always distracted, diabolically lured away from what is truly essential and truly gratifying. In our digital idleness, we fail to enjoy God and we fail to love our neighbor. We give our time to not what is explicitly sinful, but also to what cannot give us joy or prepare us for self-sacrifice. Satan's nothing strategy aims at feeding us endlessly scrolling words, images and videos that dull our affections instead of invigoration our joy and preparing us to give ourselves in love. 

(This is the exact same thing that Francis de Sales addressed in my previous post on his advice to Philothea: It is a pity to sow the seed of vain and foolish tastes in the soil of your heart, taking up the place of better things, and hindering the soul from cultivating good habits.) 

Lots to think about!

Blessings,

Reading as a Spiritual Discipline - Quote from Jessica Hooten Wilson

Reading is a spiritual discipline akin to fasting and prayer and one that trains you in virtues, encourages your sanctification, and elicits your love for those noble, admirable, and beautiful things of which St. Paul writes in his Letter to the Philippians. We read because without books our world shrinks, our empathy thins, and our liberty wanes. We read for the same reason that people have read - and shared poems and stories - for thousands of years: because our eyes are not enough by which to see. The time and place in which we live blinds us to other perspectives and ways of being that are not our own experience. We read because we have been given the gift of imagination and intellect, and we exhibit our gratitude by using it.

(from p. 62 of Reading for the Love of God by Jessica Hooten Wilson)

Blessings,

Quote on the Glories of Fresh-Ground Coffee - Amor Towles

An example of the beautiful writing in Amor Towles' A Gentleman in Moscow:

Count Alexander Ilyich Rostov stirred at half past eight to the sound of rain on the eaves. With a half-opened eye, he pulled back his covers and climbed from bed. He donned his robe and slipped on his slippers. He took up the tin from the bureau, spooned a spoonful of beans into the Apparatus, and began to crank the crank.

Even as he turned the little handle round and round, the room remained under the tenuous authority of sleep. As yet unchallenged, somnolence continued to cast its shadow.... But when the Count opened the small wooden drawer of the grinder, the world and all it contained were transformed by that envy of the alchemists – the aroma of freshly ground coffee. In that instant, darkness was separated from light, the waters from the lands, and the heavens from the earth. The trees bore fruit and the woods rustled with the movement of birds and beasts and all manner of creeping things. (p. 171)

Blessings,

Quotes on Poetry

People who are knowledgeable about poetry sometimes discuss it in that knowing, rather hateful way in which oenophiles talk about wine: robust, delicate, muscular. This has nothing to do with how most of us experience it, the heart coming around the corner and unexpectedly running into the mind. - Anna Quindlen

Most entertainment dulls our senses. Poetry sharpens them. - Joseph Pearce

Do you have a favorite poet? I like the metaphysical poems of John Donne and Richard Crashaw, but admit that it takes effort to understand them. For sheer joy of serendipitous language, I love Emily Dickinson. And Robert Louis Stevenson's A Child's Garden of Verse never ceases to bring a smile to my heart.

Blessings,

April 23 - World Book Day

On April 23 (St. George’s Day), 1616, Miguel de Cervantes breathed his last, on exactly the same day as the death of William Shakespeare. It was singularly and surely providentially appropriate that the brightest jewels in the golden ages of Spanish and English literature should have taken their respective last bows together. It was also singularly appropriate that these slayers of dragons should have died on the Feast of St. George, true knights as they were, who had wielded their pens like lances in the service of the good, the true, and the beautiful.  

Quoted from Joseph Pearce in Crisis Magazine 1/1/22

(Another reason I like to celebrate World Book Day is that two of my favorite authors were born this week. Charlotte Brontë on the 21st and Elizabeth Goudge on the 24th. Lots of reasons to eat cake!!)

Blessings,

Sabbath-Keeping (quote by Pete Scazerro)

On Sabbath I embrace my limits. God is God. He is indispensable. I am his creature. The world continues working fine when I stop…. We stop on Sabbaths because God is on the throne, assuring us the world will not fall apart if we cease our activities…. Ultimately we will die with countless unfinished projects and goals. That’s okay. God is at work taking care of the universe. He manages quite well without us. When we are sleeping, he is working. Every Sabbath reminds us to “be still, and know that he is God.” The core spiritual issue in stopping revolves around trust. Will God take care of us and our concerns if we obey him by stopping to keep the Sabbath?

(from p. 147-148 of Emotionally Healthy Spirituality by Pete Scazerro)

Blessings,

C. S. Lewis Quote on Romantic Love

I'm on page 450 of my book of C.S. Lewis' letters and my Kindle tells me I have 164 highlighted passages! I can't recommend this book highly enough. Here are some excerpts from his letter to Daphne Harwood on March 6, 1942. 

My view of being-in-love is that (like everything except God and the Devil) it is better than some things and worse than others. Thus it comes in my scale of values higher than lust, selfishness, or frigidity, but lower than charity or constancy - in fact about on a level with friendship. Like everything (except God and the Devil) it therefore is sometimes opposed to things lower than itself and - in that situation - good; sometimes to things higher than itself and in that situation, bad. Thus being-in-love is a better motive for marriage than, say, worldly advancement, but the intention to obey God's will by entering into an indissoluble partnership in all virtue and mutual charity for the preservation of chastity and the admission of new souls to the chance of eternal life is better even than being-in-love.

The trouble arises when poets and others set up this "good" thing as an absolute, which many do. An innocent and well-intentioned emphasis on the importance of being-in-love with one's spouse (i.e. its superiority over lust or ambition as a basis for marriage) is in fact widely twisted into the doctrine that only being-in-love sanctifies marriage and that therefore as soon as you are tired of your spouse you get a divorce. Thus the over-praising of a finite good, the pretense that it is absolute, defeats itself and corrupts the very good it set out to exalt; and what begins by wanting to to beyond the prayer-book idea of marriage ends by reducing marriage to mere concubinage. Treat "Love" as a god and you make it a fiend.

 

Blessings,

Quote from Ray Bradbury on Leaving a Legacy

Everyone must leave something behind when he dies, my grandfather said. A child or a book or a painting or a house or a wall built or a pair of shoes made. Or a garden planted. Something your hand touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die, and when people look at that tree or that flower you planted, you're there.

It doesn't matter what you do, he said, so long as you change something from the way it was before you touched it into something that's like you after you take your hands away. The difference between the man who just cuts lawns and a real gardener is in the touching, he said. The lawn-cutter might just as well not have been there at all; the gardener will be there a lifetime.

(from Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, p. 149)

Blessings,

Eating Together as a Basis for Culture - quote from Sean Fitzpatrick

Breaking bread together is a deep sign of cultural togetherness, for it bestows both natural and supernatural nourishment. What’s more, a meal is a ritual. It’s a manifestation of living together in harmony and health—an enactment of human civility and civilization. Food provides a happy occasion for gathering and collective enjoyment, which is one of the pillars of friendship and a healthy culture. As an essentially life-giving activity, the meal is a sacrament of family and friends; it is a sign and a strengthening of the life that flows from those labors of love that bind people together....

Today the idea and ethics of dining are deteriorating into a hurried, harried, pre-packaged affair punctuated by interruptions. The very expression “fast food” is inimical to the most essential reason for meals, which arises not out of speed but out of care, consideration, and conversation. Just as Mass and prayer are not for hastening through, neither are meals. The current tendency, however, is not only to eat in a rush, which prevents the enjoyment of a meal and demeans the dignity of food, but also to eat alone, which diminishes the sense of community. When meals are sacred, the labor and leisure of communities will be sacred—and that sanctity is the basis of culture.

Food for Thought by Sean Fitzpatrick (from Crisis Magazine)

Blessings,

The Creative Act as Ministry - quote by Andrew Peterson

I want you, dear reader, to remember that one holy way of mending the world is to sing, to write, to paint, to weave new worlds. Because the seed of your feeble-yet-faithful work fell to the ground, died, and rose again, what Christ has done through you will call forth praise from lonesome travelers long after your name is forgotten. They will know someone lived and loved there…. That is why the Enemy wants you to think you have no song to write, no story to tell, no painting to paint. He wants to quiet you. So, sing. Let the Word by which the Creator made you fill your imagination, guide your pen, lead you from note to note until a melody is strung together like a glimmering constellation in the clear sky. Love the Lord your God, and love your neighbor, too, by making worlds and works of beauty that blanket the earth like flowers. 

(from Adorning the Dark by Andrew Peterson, p.183)

Blessings,

Two Wonderful Quotes on Prayer

A heart clogged with care is like a man trying to swim with heavy clothes upon him, he must get them off if he hopes to swim to shore. Many a sailor has cut his clothes to pieces, because he felt he should sink if he did not get clear of them. I could wish that many Christians would tear themselves away from their excessive worldly engagements, for they have such a mass of care upon them that they scarcely keep their heads above water. Oh, for more grace and less worry! More praying and less hoarding! More intercession and less speculating! As it is, prayers are sadly hindered. - Charles Spurgeon

(Photo by Kyle Glenn on Unsplash)

Pray without ceasing. How can one do it who is surrounded by the cares of daily life? How can a mother love her child without ceasing? How can the eyelid, without ceasing, hold itself ready to protect the eye? How can I breathe and feel and hear without ceasing? I can do all these things because they are the functions of a healthy, natural life. And so, if the spiritual life is healthy, under the full power of the Holy Spirit, praying without ceasing will be natural… Pray without ceasing. How can I learn it? The best way of learning is to do a thing – in fact, the only way – is to do it. Begin by setting apart some time every day, say ten or fifteen minutes, in which you say to God and to yourself, that you come to Him now as an intercessor for others. If at first you do not feel any special urgency or faith or power in your prayers, let not that hinder you. Quietly tell your Lord Jesus of your feebleness; believe that the Holy Spirit is in you to teach you to pray, and be assured that if you begin, God will help you. - Andrew Murray

Blessings,

Reading as an Addiction - quote by W. Somerset Maugham

Some people read for instruction, which is praiseworthy, and some for pleasure, which is innocent, but not a few read from habit, and I suppose that is neither innocent nor praiseworthy. Of that lamentable company am I. Conversation after a time bores me, games tire me, and my own thoughts, which we are told are the unfailing source of a sensible man, have a tendency to run dry. Then I fly to my book as an opium-seeker to his pipe. I would sooner read the catalogue of the Army and Navy stores or Bradshaw's Guide than nothing at all, and indeed I have spend many delightful hours over both these works.... Of course to read in this way is reprehensible as doping, and I never cease to wonder at the impertinence of great readers who, because they are such, look down on the illiterate. From the standpoint of eternity, is it better to have read a thousand books than to have ploughed a million furrows? Let us admit that reading with us is just a drug that we cannot live without. Who of this band does not know the restlessness that attacks him when he has been severed from reading too long, the apprehension and irritability, and the sigh of relief which the sight of a printed page extracts from him? And the sigh of relief which the sight of a printed page extracts from him? And so let us be no more vainglorious than the poor slaves of the hypodermic needle or the pint-pot. 

(W. Somerset Maugham, from his Collected Short Stories, Volume 4; quoted on the Literary Life facebook page by Wendi Lord Capehart)

[photo courtesy of Annie Spratt at Unsplash]

Blessings,

How Books Help Put us Back Together Again

Children's author, Katherine Paterson, reflects on her love for good literature:

And when you close Homer, there are the books of Jane Austen and Joseph Conrad, and great fat volumes of Tolstoy.  There is the Bible, perhaps the most over prescribed and least taken of any.  There is Flannery O’Connor and Anne Tyler.  There is William Shakespeare and Jacob Bronowski.  There is The Yearling and A Tale of Two Cities.  There is The Secret Garden and The Wind in the Willows.  There is Ramona the Brave and Where the Wild Things Are.  I have only begun to name what I especially love.  There are countless others - really good books.  Good or even great because they make the right connections.  They pull together for us a world that is falling apart.  They are the words that integrate us, stretch us, comfort and heal us.  They are the words that mirror the Word of creation, bringing order out of chaos.

(p. 238 from her book of essays The Invisible Child)

Blessings,

A Quiet Heart - quote by Alexander MacLaren

The quiet heart will be able to fling its whole strength into its work. And that is what troubled hearts never can do, for half their energy is taken up in steadying or quieting themselves, or is dissipated in going after a hundred other things. But when we are wholly engaged in quiet fellowship with Jesus Christ, we have the whole of our energies at our command, and can fling ourselves wholly into our work for Him. 

(I found this lovely quote by Baptist preacher and expositor Alexander MacLaren (1826-1910) while reading his commentary on Ephesians 6.)

Blessings,

A Culture of Boredom

In a culture that craves the big, the entertaining, the dramatic, and the shocking, cultivating a life with space for silence and repetition is necessary for sustaining a life of faith. Once a student complained to his professor about having to read Augustine's Confessions. "It's boring," the student whined. "No, it's not," the professor responded. "You're boring." What he meant is that when we gaze at the richness of the gospel and the church and find them dull and uninteresting, it's actually we who have been hollowed out. We have lost our capacity to see wonders where true wonders lie.

(from Tish Harrison Warren's Liturgy of the Ordinary, p. 34)

Blessings,