(132) Christian Growth
All the growth of the Christian is the more and more life he is receiving. At first his religion may hardly be distinguishable from the mere prudent desire to save his soul; but at last he loses that very soul in the glory of love, and so saves it; self becomes but the cloud on which the white light of God divides into harmonies unspeakable.
As found in MacDonald’s unspoken sermon: “Life”.
(133) Life and Shadow
Life is everything. Many doubtless mistake the joy of life for life itself; and, longing after the joy, languish with a thirst at once poor and inextinguishable; but even that thirst points to the one spring. These love self, not life, and self is but the shadow of life. When it is taken for life itself, and set as the man’s centre, it becomes a live death in the man, a devil he worships as his god; the worm of the death eternal he clasps to his bosom as his one joy!
As found in MacDonald’s unspoken sermon: “Life”.
The life inferred from the shadow we cast is the shadow of a creature no longer looking where it is going but rather where it has been. Life is present in the encounter with the world so long as that is what is present for us. When what is present is our own reflection we have abandoned the encounter which is life, settling instead for the backward glance at the re-presentation of a past moment lived, seeking encounter with our self instead. Not good.
But seeking God directly is no better. God is most present in our true encounter with the world. In seeking God himself we are seeking the counterpart of the phantom self we infer in ourselves projected onto the self of the world. Better to trust the world to show us itself directly and not chase after phantoms.
Fun coincidence between today’s Macdonald quote and this article about a new book in a weekly newsletter I get.
We know that life is the self-correcting mechanism for error — as much in its evolutionary history as in its existential reality. And yet we are living our lives under the tyranny of perfection, as if all the right answers await us at the end of some vector we must follow infallibly until we arrive at the ultimate ideal. But the truth is that we simply don’t know — we don’t know where life ultimately leads, we don’t know what we want or what to want, and we don’t really know ourselves. It is by erring again and again that we find the shape of the path, by tripping again and again that we learn to walk it. Along the way, the answers emerge not before us but in us.
Sounds like a book for me!
I do like the hopefulness of the title and the premise. (As well as The Marginalian’s other book recommendations!). Once you figure out there’s one chance at this, sometimes the stakes suddenly feel incredibly high, and if you step away from that feeling, it’s hard to ward off the strong encouragements to focus again on perfectionism. What if I get it wrong!!! Yeah. Well, I get plenty wrong all the time. If I focus on that, being in a marriage and raising kids would simply be impossible.
It’s hard not to resent the pressure (or what I perceive as pressure) to strive for perfection or higher goals (or any goals) or something that someone else values more. Not taking on another person’s favorite value doesn’t mean I have no things I value, but rather different and to-me worthy values. And the way in which those values occur to us, in us, comes about by various means. Some of which are hard-wired.
The point that we don’t really know ourselves, is hard but sigificant. We may try. We may have a clue. But we also have motives and ideals that affect our ability to know. We receive ourselves, and project on ourselves very much the way we do with others or even texts. We see what we want to see. Part of the picture is accurate. But none of it is complete.
It is possible to not lie to oneself.
[Blessed is the one who]…speaks truth IN his heart.
Psalm 15:2
…and to know the truth about oneself.
(134) False Refuge
Of all things let us avoid the false refuge of a weary collapse, a hopeless yielding to things as they are. It is the life in us that is discontented; we need more of what is discontented, not more of the cause of its discontent.
As found in MacDonald’s unspoken sermon: “Life”.
Yes, more life experience and less extrapolation from what we think we know to thinking life can never surprise us any more. The un examined life may not seem worth living but has the excessively examined life ceased being lived at all?
And yet the maxim is also true that we should seek to recognize what cannot be changed at some point. Pick our battles. Balance in life requires putting our feet up at some point.
(135) A Silly Notion
He has the victory who, in the midst of pain and weakness, cries out, not for death, not for the repose of forgetfulness, but for strength to fight; for more power, more consciousness of being, more God in him; who, when sorest wounded, says with Sir Andrew Barton in the old ballad:–
Fight on my men, says Sir Andrew Barton, I am hurt, but I am not slain; I'll lay me down and bleed awhile, And then I'll rise and fight again;–and that with no silly notion of playing the hero–what have creatures like us to do with heroism who are not yet barely honest!
As found in MacDonald’s unspoken sermon: “Life ”.
Agreed. And weariness itself ought to drive us to it (much less all the higher trauma or despair of the grim toil MacDonald speaks of here.) I just finished re-reading Lewis’ “Till We Have Faces” again - and am connecting with that work more and more with each reading. I don’t think my younger eyes were able to appreciate the insights of human relationship that he packs into that. But one of its central thrusts is an echo of MacDonald’s last comment shown in the quote above: …that we’re not even yet barely honest.
–and that with no silly notion of playing the hero–what have creatures like us to do with heroism who are not yet barely honest!
While I never read Tolkien, I saw the films, and the imagery of Frodo at the end left a lasting impression.
How so? I’ve seen the films — once. But have read the books many times. So my memory is failing me as to what the scene is like you may be thinking of.
Ahh, yes. The ‘unlikely hero’ motif. And in that case, the hero who “feels used up” does have lasting after-effects he then lives with. As I recall the movies (of necessity for time I’m sure) left out a whole lot of significant dialogue that readers are treated to in the books. Among the stuff left out was the entire “return to the Shire” - which may have spanned multiple chapters even. In that whole part, the victorious, heroic hobbits return to their beloved Shire and are dismayed to find their home all overcome with evil - and eventually even come to see that Saruman is the fallen, but still spiteful figure behind all the evil there. And among their conversations with the deposed Saruman (either there, or earlier on the road), I think he tries to play the “Gandalf has used you as his tools” card, and slanders Gandalf as no longer caring for his “tools” once he is done with them. Of course, the readers know Gandalf’s true heart is full of love, and that other living things are not “just tools to be used up”. So we see evil projecting its own motivations onto benevolent agents, unable to understand love, much less fathom that anything like “love” might be authentic.
That’s a nice summary. I should listen to that part of the audiobook sometime. Did you ever listen to any of Ken Myers audio journal conversations with Tolkien scholars when the films were being released? One point which stuck with me, was how Peter Jackson pictured the Shire as if it had been untouched by evil when they returned, and in the books the place was still scarred.
I have not. Sounds interesting - but I’ll admit my interest in the movie adaptations was somewhat ambivalent. There was much to enjoy and “oooh an aaah” over, of course; but nothing can match the stories themselves (and my own imagination is capable of any/all the “CGI” I could ever need).
Especially when it comes to all the essential stuff the movies were forced to leave out. So - yeah, I really recommend you go to the books and read of “the Scouring of the Shire” as I think I now remember it being called. It’s a great (and long) cool down for the reader to the end of the story - and a new smaller story in its own right - after all the high drama around the powers of the world and their rings. The reader gets to come back home to Shire and still have a smaller adventure to help ease them more gently down from all the super-perilous adventure.
[Plus - I have found it unforgiveable that screen directors / film industry types felt a need to remove the real romance found in Tolkien’s stories (that they apparently couldn’t recognize even if it hit them in the face), and instead added in shallow screen romance foreign to Tolkien’s real tale.]
Well said. I’m looking forward to it.
By the way, Ken Myers has free content on his app Mars Hill Audio Journal. The last one I heard on Solzhenitsyn was excellent. He spoke with someone involved on translating his work which has yet to published in English and had another talk about the heroic individuals who aided Solzhenitsyn in the original publications.
If you have any links to recommend, feel free to post it.
I almost wonder if it wouldn’t be worth a thread in its own right to discuss what our entertainment industry has done generally with hero / superhero action? Or perhaps on a private thread, given that it maybe isn’t a very science-centered topic. But just as everybody generally suffers from body image comparison with the graphically enhanced super-star of the screen, so I wonder in the same way if heroism (heroic action generally) suffers humiliation in comparison to the physical comparisons with all the impossible screen stuff - a fraction of which would kill any human being. And yet the real-world stuff is … well … real, while the Hollywood stuff is 100% fake.
Anyway - I’ll have to check out what you speak of when I get the chance.
(136) Dryness
The true man trusts in a strength which is not his, and which he does not feel, does not even always desire; …
As found in MacDonald’s unspoken sermon: “Life ”.
“Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.” -Colossians 4:6
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