Fussing! What an apt title for this entry!
How apt I am to fuss and fume, rather than “live truths,” active in an active will. There are things that cannot be true unless practiced as live truths.
1 Like
I really like how he described his being disturbed by a forgotten treasure of thought - how we are disturbed in spirit until we recover the ‘treasure’. How many times in an extended conversation have I “listened” to somebody - and their words provoked in me what I thought to be a treasure to be added to the conversation, but meanwhile - they talk on and on (or so it seems to me - who has now stopped really listening to them as I try to build and also retain my own anticipated offering) - and then my so-treasured contribution suddenly flies away! And I sit there and brew, trying to get it back.
Trusting that God will bring back whatever is needed is quite a discipline (and release) indeed!
And speaking of forgetting things, far be it from me to in any way diminish the tragedy of dementia and what it robs people of; but here is a different perspective on memory loss (or at least the normal kind of memory loss) - perhaps that has the consequential silver lining of relieving us of a whole lot of trash that we might otherwise unreasonably treasure and continue to cling to at the expense of simply being in the moment with others. I have often thought what a tremendous super power it would be to never forget a name or face or apt reading - and yet now, I’m not so sure. Perhaps a mind accumulates clutter in the same way a house can. And we find our presently usable and sharable “living space” thus diminished.
2 Likes
All the time and exactly as you describe. It might show—my deep-seated urge to participate in discussions. There are times, when it’s almost physically painful NOT to be in it, when it’s interesting and in some area I can speak to. (It’s even worse in person. Kendel, do NOT emulate Arnold Horseshack. Please!)
But—speaking to myself here—make sure I grasp what the other person said! and that I know what I’m talking about! and am willing to deal with my errors! and stick to the rules I expect other people to stick with! And really, if I can’t remember what it was I was going to say, because the thought was SO fleeting, how well grounded and developed was it really?
(The fleetingness of thought has gotten a lot worse in the last 5 ish years, though, as I am adjusting to the effects of a different hormonal balance. It’s real.)
My cousin seems never to forget any wrong done her or word she deems harsh. She has a photographic as well as phonographic memory, which includes perfect recall and interpretation of everything I have said to her and in what context. She will willingly catalog it all at a moment’s notice. Her memory and hypervigilance torture her — and me. Every wound is always present and in process all the time. Nothing fades. Such a perfect memory of pain is her curse.
1 Like
(82) Housekeeping
True, my lost thought might have so worked; but had I faith in God, the maker of thought and memory, I should know that, if the thought was a truth, and so alone worth anything, it must come again; for it is in God–so, like the dead, not beyond my reach: kept for me, I shall have it again.
‘These are foolish illustrations–not worth writing!’
If such things are not, then the mention of them is foolish. If they are, then he is foolish who would treat them as if they were not. I choose them for their smallness, and appeal especially to all who keep house concerning the size of trouble that suffices to hide word and face of God.
From the sermon: “The Cause of Spiritual Stupidity”
1 Like
I am too easily overwhelmed and distracted by the petty.
1 Like
I expect that experience must be as common as dirt. So much lost treasure! We should be tripping over it no matter which way we go.
In my family it was common for many to try to hold fort around the table, to hold the stage as long as possible. My mother was the exception. Everyone loved my mother who was the real treasure, someone who would hear one out in a desert of talkers.
3 Likes
I"ve enjoyed these last posts, @Mervin. Thanks.
I’ve also been mulling on some passages from “The Baron’s Apprenticeship,” which my wife and I are finishing up soon.
“Do you think it very bad of a man not to believe in a God?”
“That depends on the sort of God he imagines that he either does or does not believe in. Most people have totally wrong conceptions of God. A thousand times would I rather see a man not believe in God at al than believe in an evil god that could cause suffering and misery as if he were a devil…When one looks ath the gods that have been offered through the years who are not worth believing in, it might be an act of actual virtue not to believe in them.”
4 Likes
Thanks for this, Randy.
1 Like
(83) Cares
With every haunting trouble then, great or small, the loss of thousands or the lack of a shilling, go to God, and appeal to him, the God of your life, to deliver you, his child, from that which is unlike him, therefore does not belong to you, but is antagonistic to your nature. If your trouble is such that you cannot appeal to him, the more need you should appeal to him!
From the sermon: “The Cause of Spiritual Stupidity”
3 Likes
(84) God at the Door
Nor will God force any door to enter in. He may send a tempest about the house; the wind of his admonishment may burst doors and windows, yea, shake the house to its foundations; but not then, not so, will he enter. The door must be opened by the willing hand, ere the foot of Love will cross the threshold. He watches to see the door move from within. Every tempest is but an assault in the siege of love. The terror of God is but the other side of his love; it is love outside the house, that would be inside–love that knows the house is no house, only a place, until it enter–no home, but a tent, until the Eternal dwell there. Things must be cast out to make room for their souls-- the eternal truths which in things find shape and show.
The last of the quotes from this sermon: “The Cause of Spiritual Stupidity”
1 Like
This may be the toughest of all of MacDonald’s quotes so far.
What for the one who has opened the door? Has begged God to return, to enter, anything? Only to face an ever-present silent void.
2 Likes
Wow. Yeah. I really want to know how MacDonald [or Christ!] would respond to that. I’m at loss at the moment - maybe among all his extensive writing he does have a response to that situation, but I’m not recalling what that would be right now. Don’t let us forget this question … I know I’ll want to circle back to it.
3 Likes
While it isn’t directly my question, it’s one that has gripped me. Is the reality for some and defies any doctrinal statement or orthodox belief I know of. I’ve heard and uttered completely heartless statements in response to some version or another – to my utter shame.
Keep your eyes and ears open. It comes up regularly in one form or another.
1 Like
Amen–like this?
“When you are happy, so happy you have no sense of needing Him, so happy that you are tempted to feel His claims upon you as an interruption, if you remember yourself and turn to Him with gratitude and praise, you will be — or so it feels— welcomed with open arms. But go to Him when your need is desperate, when all other help is vain, and what do you find? A door slammed in your face, and a sound of bolting and double bolting on the inside. After that, silence.” (C S Lewis, “A Grief Observed”)
I think that Macdonald, of all people, will treat this compassionately (or at least attempt to)
He was kicked out of his congregation for saying that those outside of the faith might wind up in Heaven.
3 Likes
Tennyson wrote that we cry like this:
So runs my dream: but what am I?
An infant crying in the night:
An infant crying for the light:
And with no language but a cry.
Have you read the scene with Emeth in “The Last Battle”? In the scene with Aslan, Emeth (“truth,” I think, in Hebrew) admits he has followed Tash all his life. He’s sought for him with his whole heart, and in doing so, as emulated the best that he knows–loving his brother, serving the poor, and telling the truth.
“Beloved,” said the Glorious One, unless thy desire had been for me, thou wouldst not have sought so long and so truly. For all find what they truly seek"
. It is still tremendously unfair that one does not find Christ, does not see Him, in this life. I don’t know the answer.
Thanks.
2 Likes
Yes, I have.
I love Lewis’s ideal, but asuming that the accounts of other experiences are truthful, and I believe they are, then Lewis’s picture in the novel is incomplete.
1 Like
Yes, absolutely, (sorry, I remember that you have read the entire Narnia series!). I absolutely do agree with that, that the accounts are true.
1 Like
I am not sure if it ever helps–is it relevant that Jesus, too, said “Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?”?
I read an account by a vicar in England who wrote after her son died, however, that she yelled at God, “It’s all right for you–you got your son back!”.
Milton Keynes vicar’s world fell apart when her son took his own life - BBC News
2 Likes
(85) Difficulties
The impossibility of doing what we would as we would, drives us to look for help. And this brings us to a new point of departure. Everything difficult indicates something more than our theory of life yet embraces, checks some tendency to abandon the strait path, leaving open only the way ahead. But there is a reality of being in which all things are easy and plain–oneness, that is, with the Lord of Life; to pray for this is the first thing; and to the point of this prayer every difficulty hedges and directs us.
From MacDonald’s sermon: “The Word of Jesus on Prayer”
3 Likes
I want to come back later as I can to also continue in this discussion you and Kendel have started. My morning beckons right now - but I’m seeing and appreciating your responses, Randy. Let them continue!
2 Likes