Posts tagged out

What do I have a GIVENNESS NOW to?

Not just chewing things and spitting them out.

“The Christian idea of marriage is based on Christ’s words that a man and wife are to be regarded as a single organism - for that is what the words ‘one flesh’ would be in modern English.

And the Christians believe that when He said this He was not expressing a sentiment but stating a fact - just as one is stating a fact when one says that a lock and its key are one mechanism, or that a violin and a bow are one musical instrument.

The inventor of the human machine was telling us that its two halves, the male and the female, were made to be combined together in pairs, not simply on the sexual level, but totally combined.

The monstrosity of sexual intercourse outside marriage is that those who indulge in it are trying to isolate one kind of union (the sexual) from all the other kinds of union which were intended to go alone with it and make up the total union.


The Christian attitude does not mean that there is anything wrong about sexual pleasure, any more than about the pleasure of eating.

It means that you must not isolate that pleasure and try to get it by itself, any more than you ought to try to get the pleasure of taste without swallowing and digesting, by chewing things and spitting them out again.”  

C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

…intimacy cannot be isolated.

I have a GIVENNESS NOW not to chew things and spit them out.

What do I have a GIVENNESS NOW to?

Not to pout when put out.

“But, however you approach it, the great thing is to bring him into the state in which the denial of any one indulgence - it matters not which, champagne or tea, sole colbert or cigarettes - ‘puts him out’, for then his charity, justice, and obedience are all at your mercy.”  C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

What do I have a GIVENNESS NOW to?

What do I have a GIVENNESS NOW to?

Letting the monsters out.


“So community life brings a painful revelation of our limitations, weaknesses, and darkness; the unexpected discovery of monsters within us is hard to accept.  

The immediate reaction is to try to destroy the monsters, or to hide them away again, pretending that they don’t exist, or to flee from community life and relationships with others, or to find that the monsters are theirs, not ours.

But if we accept that the monsters are there, we can let them out and learn to tame them.

That is growth towards liberation.”  Jean Vanier, Community and Growth

…learning to tame them.

I have a GIVENNESS NOW to letting the monsters out.

What do I have a GIVENNESS NOW to?

Get out of jail here.


“We haven’t let anyone take us in.  The dwarfs are for the dwarfs.


“You see,” said Aslan.  

“They will not let us help them.  They have chosen cunning instead of belief.  

Their prison is only in their own minds, yet they are in prison; and so afraid of being taken in that they can not be taken out.”  C.S. Lewis, The Last Battle







...and so afraid of being taken in that they can not be taken out.

I have a GIVENNESS NOW to get out of jail free.

What do I have a GIVENNESS NOW to?

Taking out the trash.

“True solitude is found in humility, which is infinitely rich.  False solitude is the refuge of pride, and it is infinitely poor.

The poverty of false solitude comes from an illusion which pretends, by adorning itself in things it can never possess, to distinguish one individual self from the mass of other one individual self from the mass of the other men.


True solitude is selfless.  Therefore, it is rich in silence and charity and peace. It finds in itself seemingly inexhaustible resources of good to bestow on people.  

False solitude is self-centered.  And because it finds nothing in its own center, it seeks to draw all things into itself.  But everything it touches becomes infected with its own nothingness, and falls apart.


True solitude cleans the soul, lays it wide open to the four winds of generosity.  

False solitude locks the door against all men and pores over its own private accumulation of rubbish.”  Thomas Merton, No Man is An Island






…my own private wasteland.

I have a GIVENNESS NOW to taking out the trash.

What do I have a GIVENNESS NOW to?

Rinsing my mouth out.



“Our souls demand Purgatory, don’t they?

Would it not break the heart if God said to us, ‘It is true, my son, that your breath smells and rags drip with mud and slime, but we are charitable here and no one will upbrand you with these things, nor draw away from you. Enter into joy’?

Should we not reply,

‘With submission, Sir, and if there is no objection, I’d rather be cleaned first.’

‘It may hurt, you know.’

‘Even so, Sir.’


I assume that the process of purification will normally involve suffering. Partly from tradition, partly because most real good that has been done me in this life has involved it.  

But I don’t think suffering is the purpose of the purgation.


I can well believe that people neither much worse or much better than I will suffer less than I or more.  

‘No nonsense about merit.’

The treatment given will be the one required, whether it hurts little or much.


My favorite image on this matter comes from the dentist’s chair.  I hope that when the tooth of life is drawn and I am ‘coming round,’ a voice will say,

‘Rinse your mouth out with this.’

This will be Purgatory.”   C.S. Lewis, Letters to Malcolm

Should we not reply?






… ‘even so, Sir.’

I have a GIVENNESS NOW to rinsing my mouth out.