Posts tagged mine

What do I have a GIVENNESS NOW to?

To mind what I say is mine.

“Even in the nursery a child can be taught to mean by ‘my teddy bear’ not the old imagined recipient of affection to whom it stands in a special relation (for that is what the Enemy will teach them to mean if we are not careful) but ‘the bear I can pull to pieces if I like.’

And at the other end of the scale, we have taught men to say ‘my God’ in a sense not really different from ‘my boots’, meaning ‘the God on whom I have a claim for my distinguished services and whom I exploit from the pulpit - the God I have done a corner in’.

And all the time the joke is that the word ‘Mine’ in its fully possessive sense cannot be uttered by a human being about anything.

In the long run either Our Father or the Enemy will say ‘Mine’ of each thing that exists, and specially of each man.

They will find out in the end, never fear, to whom their time, their souls, and their bodies really belong - certainly not to them, whatever happens.

At the present the Enemy says ‘Mine’ of everything on the pedantic, legalistic groung that he made it:  Our Father hopes in the end to say ‘Mine’ of all things on the more realistic and dynamic ground of conquest.”  C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

…’my’ boots and ‘my’ bear?

I have a GIVENNESS NOW to mind what I say is mine.