Posts tagged November 2011
what is the "givenness" of your life?
a givenness not to miss the forest for the trees
What do I have a GIVENNESS NOW to?
Not to miss the forest for the trees.
“You have your heads in your bibles constantly because you think you’ll find eternal life there.
But you miss the forest for the trees.
These scriptures are all about me!
And here I am, standing right beside you, and you aren’t willing to receive from me the life you say you want.” John 5:39-40, The Message
…the would of the wood.
I have a GIVENNESS NOW not to miss the forest for the trees.
a givenness to diagnosing the disease
What do I have a GIVENNESS NOW to?
Diagnosing the disease.
“If you were to diagnose the spiritual disease of modern men, I would not concentrate on symptoms such as our lust for power, our insatiable hunger for gadgets, or our habit of repressing women and the poor.
I would, rather, focus on our lack of joy.” Sam Keen, Fire in the Belly
…the epidemic of male joylessness.
I have a GIVENNESS NOW to diagnosing the disease.
a givenness not to that vague cloud
What do I have a GIVENNESS NOW to?
Not to that vague cloud.
“Remember the story in the Imitation, how the Christ on the crucifix suddenly spoke to the monk who was so anxious about his salvation and said, “If you knew that all was well, what would you today, do, or stop doing?”
When you have found the answer, do it or stop doing it.
You see, one must always get back to the practical and definite.
What the devil loves is that vague cloud of unspecified guilt feeling or unspecified virtue by which he lures us into despair or presumption.
“Details, please?” is the answer.” C.S. Lewis, Letters to an American Lady
…divine definition.
I have a GIVENNESS NOW not to that vague cloud.
a givenness to look through it as glass
What do I have a GIVENNESS NOW to?
Look through it as glass.
“…this paradox appeared also in the treatment of the early church.
It was important while it was still insignificant, and certainly while it was still impotent. It was important solely because it was intolerable; and in that sense it is true to say that it was intolerable because it was intolerant.
It was resented, because, in its own still and almost secret way, it had declared war. It had risen out of the ground to wreck the heaven and the earth of heathenism.
It did not try to destroy all that creation of gold and marble; but it contemplated a world without it.
It dared to look right through it as though the gold and marble had been glass.” G.K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man
I have a GIVENNESS NOW to look through it as glass.
a givenness to the snowman starting to melt
What do I have a GIVENNESS NOW to?
The snowman starting to melt.
“I felt as if I were a man of snow at long last beginning to melt.
The melting started at my back, drip-drip, and presently trickle-trickle.
I rather disliked the feeling.
Remember, I had always wanted, above all things, not to be “interfered with.”
I had wanted (mad wish) “to call my soul my own.”
I had been far more anxious to avoid suffering than to achieve delight.
Even my recent attempts to live my philosophy had secretly (I now knew) been hedged round by all sorts of reservations. I had pretty well known that my ideal of virtue would never be allowed to lead me into anything intolerably painful; I would be “reasonable.”
But not what had been an ideal became a command; and what might not be expected of one?
Doubtless, by definition, God was reason itself.
But would He also be “reasonable” in that other, more comfortable, sense?
Not the slightest assurance on the score was offered to me.
Total surrender, the absolute leap in the dark, were demanded. The reality with which no treaty can be made was upon me.
The demand was not even “All or nothing.”
I think the stage had been passed, on the bus top when I unbuckled my armor and the snowman started to melt.
Now the demand was simply, “All.” C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
All.
…drip-drip, trickle-trickle.
I have a GIVENNESS NOW to the snowman starting to melt.
a givenness to pretending with the pug
What do I have a GIVENNESS NOW to?
Pretending with the pug.
“I have been talking as if it were we who did everything.
In reality, of course, it is God who does everything.
We, at most, allow it to be done to us.
In a sense you might even say it is God who does the pretending.
The three-personal God, so to speak, sees before Him in fact a self-centered, greedy, grumbling, rebellious human animal.
But He says, “Let us pretend that this in not a mere creature, but our son. It is like Christ in so far as it is a man, for He became man. Let us pretend that it is also like Him in spirit.
Let us treat it as if it were what in fact it is not.
Let us pretend in order to make the pretense into a reality.”
God looks at you as if you were a little Christ: Christ stands beside you to turn you into one.
I daresay this idea of a divine make-believe sounds rather strange at first.
But, is it so strange really?
Is not that how the higher thing always raises the lower? A mother teacher her baby to talk by talking to it as if it understood long before it really does.
We treat our dogs as if there were “almost human”: that is why they really becomes “almost human” in the end.” C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
In reality, of course, it is God who does everything.
We, at most, allow it to be done to us.
In a sense you might even say it is God who does the pretending.
The three-personal God, so to speak, sees before Him in fact a self-centered, greedy, grumbling, rebellious human animal.
But He says, “Let us pretend that this in not a mere creature, but our son. It is like Christ in so far as it is a man, for He became man. Let us pretend that it is also like Him in spirit.
Let us treat it as if it were what in fact it is not.
Let us pretend in order to make the pretense into a reality.”
God looks at you as if you were a little Christ: Christ stands beside you to turn you into one.
I daresay this idea of a divine make-believe sounds rather strange at first.
But, is it so strange really?
Is not that how the higher thing always raises the lower? A mother teacher her baby to talk by talking to it as if it understood long before it really does.
We treat our dogs as if there were “almost human”: that is why they really becomes “almost human” in the end.” C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
We, at most, allow it to be done to us.
In a sense you might even say it is God who does the pretending.
…why they really become almost human.
I have a GIVENNESS NOW to pretending with the pug.
a givenness to leaving my cares forgotten among the lilies
What do I have a GIVENNESS NOW to?
Leaving my cares forgotten among the lilies.
“I abandoned and forgot myself
laying my face on my beloved;
all things ceased. I went out from myself
leaving my cares
forgotten among the lilies.” John of the Cross, The Dark Night
…I went out from myself.
I have a GIVENNESS NOW to leaving my cares forgotten among the lilies.
a givenness not to the wrong tree
What do I have a GIVENNESS NOW to?
Not to the wrong tree.
“If you are familiar with the biblical narration, you will remember that there are two special trees in Eden - the tree of knowledge of good and evil and the tree of life.
We got the wrong tree.
We got knowledge and it hasn’t done us much good.” John Eldredge, Knowing the Heart of God
Spirituality of the stump.
…the giving tree.
I have a GIVENNESS NOW not to the wrong tree.
a givenness to forsake cake to the fake
What do I have a GIVENNESS NOW to?
Forsake cake to the fake.
“Polytheism fades at its fringes into fairy-tales or barbaric memories; it is not a thing like monotheism as held by serious monotheists.
Finally it did satisfy, or rather it partially satisfied, a thing very deep in humanity indeed; the idea of surrendering something as the portion of the unknown powers; of pouring out wine upon the ground, of throwing a ring into the sea; in a word, of sacrifice.
Where the gesture of surrender is most magnificent, as among the great Greeks, there is really much more idea that the man will be better for losing the ox than the god will be the better for getting it.
It is said that in its grosser forms there are often actions grotesquely suggestive of the god really eating the sacrifice. But this fact is falsified by the error that I put first in this note on mythology. It is misunderstanding the psychology of daydreams.
A child pretending there is a goblin in a hollow tree will do a crude and material thing, like leaving a piece of cake for him. A poet might do a more dignified and elegant thing. like bring to the god fruits as well as flowers.
But the degree of seriousness in both acts may be the same or it may vary in almost any degree. The crude fancy is no more a creed than the ideal fancy is a creed.
Certainly the pagan does not disbelieve like an atheist, any more than he believes like a Christian.
He feels the presence of powers about which he guesses and invents.
St. Paul said that the Greeks had one altar to an unknown god. But in truth all their gods were unknown gods. And the break in history did come when St. Paul declared to them whom they had ignorantly worshipped.” G.K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man
I ignorantly worship “gods” guessed and invented. But in fact, all of these gods are unknown gods.
My polytheism must fade away at its fringes into fairy-tales.
…stop feeding goblins in hollow trees.
I have a GIVENNESS NOW to forsake cake to the fake.
…stop feeding goblins in hollow trees.
I have a GIVENNESS NOW to forsake cake to the fake.
a givenness not to take a red coal out of the fire to examine it
What do I have a GIVENNESS NOW to?
Not take a red coal out of the fire to examine it.
The command after all, was “Take, eat,” not “Take, understand.”
Particularly, I hope I need not be tormented by the question “What is this?” - this wafer, this sip of wine.
It invokes me to take “this” out of its holy context and regard it as an object among objects, indeed a part of nature.
It it like taking a red coal out of the fire to examine it: it becomes a dead coal.
To me, I mean.
All this is autobiography, not theology.” C.S. Lewis, Letters to Malcolm Chiefly on Prayer
“I hope I do not offend God by making my communions in the frame of mind I have been describing.
The command after all, was “Take, eat,” not “Take, understand.”
Particularly, I hope I need not be tormented by the question “What is this?” - this wafer, this sip of wine.
That has a dreadful effect on me.
It invokes me to take “this” out of its holy context and regard it as an object among objects, indeed a part of nature.
It it like taking a red coal out of the fire to examine it: it becomes a dead coal.
To me, I mean.
All this is autobiography, not theology.” C.S. Lewis, Letters to Malcolm Chiefly on Prayer
…it becomes a dead coal.
I have a GIVENNESS NOW to not take a red coal out of the fire to examine it.
