Posts tagged new

What do I have a GIVENNESS NOW to?

New math.

“God is not found in the soul by adding anything, but by a process of subtraction.”  Meister Eckhart

…subtract to find the difference.

I have a GIVENNESS NOW to new math.

What do I have a GIVENNESS NOW to?

Not having a new year.

“The object of a New Year is not that we should have a new year.

It is that we should have a new soul and a new nose; new feet, a new backbone, new ears, and new eyes.


Unless a particular man made New Year resolutions, he would make no resolutions.  

Unless a man starts afresh about things, he will certainly do nothing effective.  

Unless a man starts on the strange assumption that he has never existed before, it is quite certain that he will never exist afterwards.

Unless a man be born again, he shall by no means enter into the kingdom of heaven.”  G.K. Chesterton, Daily News

…you anew.

I have a GIVENNESS NOW to not having a new year.

What do I have a GIVENNESS NOW to?

The emperor’s new clothes.


“In that way we are “more ourselves” when clothed.

By nudity, the lovers cease to be solely John and Mary; the universal He and She are emphasized.  

As nature crowns man in that brief action, so the Christian law has crowned him in the permanent relationship of marriage, bestowing - or should I say, inflicting? - a certain “headship” on him.  


This is a very different coronation.


And as we could easily take the natural mystery too seriously, so we might take the Christian mystery not seriously enough.  

The husband is the head of the wife just in so far as he is to her what Christ is to the Church.  He is to love her as Christ loved the church - read on - and give his life for her (Ephesians 5:25).  

This headship, then, is most fully embodied not in the husband we should all wish to be, but in him whose marriage is most like a crucifixion; whose wife receives most and gives least, is most unworthy of him, is - in her own mere nature - least lovable.  

For the Church has no beauty but what the Bridegroom gives her; he does not find, but makes her, lovely.  


The chrism of this terrible coronation is to be seen not in the joys of any man’s marriage, but in its sorrows, in the sickness and sufferings of a good wife or the faults of a bad one, in his unwearying (never paraded) care or his inexhaustible forgiveness: forgiveness, not acquiescence.  


As Christ sees in the flawed, proud, fanatical or lukewarm Church on earth that Bride who will one day be without spot or wrinkle, so the husband whose headship is Christ-like (and he is allowed no other sort) never despairs.  

He is King Cophetua who after twenty years still hopes that the beggar-girl will one day learn to speak the truth and wash behind her ears.”  C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves

“Clothed” in the chrism of this very different coronation?







…that way we are more ourselves.


I have a GIVENNESS NOW to the emperor’s new clothes.