Quoting Lewis

Just before the Nebraska Cornhuskers and Indiana Hoosiers kicked off their football game on ABC last Saturday, a good friend of mine posted the following quote on my Facebook:

Knowing how much of a fan I am of The Screwtape Letters John thoughtfully posted what he thought was an excellent quote regarding the role politics tends to play in our lives. I thought it looked “off”, but as I was sinking into the couch with my popcorn and about to loose myself in the game I didn’t have time to confirm the quote. (This is what the internet has wrought: we now have to fact-check everything because of course we do.)

It wasn’t until Sunday night that I had time to research it. It turns out it’s a clever, but fake, quote created by some blogger as a reimagining of what Uncle Screwtape would offer as counsel to Wormwood in our current political climate. It is a clever forgery and despite it not being from Screwtape it is a pretty good summing up of where we are today.

This got me to wondering what Lewis may have written regarding politics in the past. I took a look into my copy of The Quotable Lewis and found the following quotes of interest (to me, at least).

On Political Power:

Each generation exercises power over its successors: and each, in so far as it modifies the environment bequeathed to it and rebels against tradition, resists and limits the power of its predecessors. This modifies the picture which is sometimes painted of a progressive emancipation from tradition and a progressive control of natural processes resulting in a continual increase of human power. In reality, of course, if any one age really attains, by eugenics and scientific education, the power to make its descendants what it pleases, all men who live after it are the patients of that power. They are weaker, not stronger: for though we may have put wonderful machines in their hands we have pre-ordained how they are to use them. – The Abolition of Man, chapter 3, paragraph 4.

Politics:

A sick society must think much about politics, as a sick man must think much about his digestion. – The Weight of Glory, “Membership”, paragraph 4.

[After a few covering the area of politics I continued in the P’s and found more quotes which I thought relevant to today.]

Possessiveness:

But it is not only children who react thus. Few things in the ordinary peacetime life of a civilised country are more nearly fiendish than the rancour with which a whole unbelieving family will turn on the one member of it who has become a Christian, or a whole lowbrow family on the one who shows signs of becoming an intellectual. This is not, as I once thought, simply the innate and, as it were, disinterested hatred of darkness for light. A church-going family in which one has gone atheist will not always behave any better. It is the reaction to a desertion, even to robbery. Someone or something has stolen “our” boy (or girl). He who was one of Us has become one of Them. What right had anybody to do it? He is ours. – The Four Loves, chapter 3, paragraph 30.

[While Lewis is writing about a religious conversion, in our age in which politics and the state have replaced religion in many lives, I’ve seen  this same “Us vs. Them” mentality on display. Tell me you can’t see it yourself, especially if you have a presence on social media. It’s everywhere.]

Post-Christian Man:

What you say about the present state of mankind is true: indeed, it is even worse than you say.

For they neglect not only the law of Christ but even the Law of Nature as known by the Pagans. For now they do not blush at adultery, treachery, perjury, theft and the other crimes which I will not say Christian Doctors, but the pagans and the barbarous have themselves denounced.

They err who say “the world is turning pagan again.” Would that it were! The truth is that we are falling into a much worse state.

“Post-Christian man” is not the same as “pre-Christian man.” He is as far removed as virgin is from widow: there is nothing in common except want of a spouse: but there is a great difference between a spouse-to-come and a spouse lost. – Letters: C.S. Lewis/Don Giovanni Calabria (March 17, 1953), paragraph 4-7.

[I have read words to this same effect on more than one occasion. Where we seem to be headed as a culture is much worse than pre-Christianity. The pagans, and here I refer to the ancient Greek philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle, are widely known to have referred to what they (in their pre-Christian mind) called divine providence. These philosophers recognized the divine and the hope of man to transcend their human state. There was natural law. As is evident in our culture today, where gender is fluid and changed like the oil in our cars, and “marriage” between people of the same sex is not only accepted but encouraged, there is a wholescale rejection of natural law and the divine. While the easy thing to do is to divide the sides into “liberal vs. conservative” or “left vs. right”, we are more accurately a people who are divided thusly: you either believe in the supernatural or you don’t. In a post-Christian world there will be no need for the supernatural, or natural law, because man is a god, the state is the bigger god, and there is no natural law…only what the state on their whim, and man as an individual (“my truth”) says is the law.]

Power:

The descent to hell is easy, and those who begin by worshipping power soon worship evil. – The Allegory of Love, chapter IV.II, paragraph 21

[When a political party realizes that they can stay in and gain even more power by selling themselves to special interests that can at best be described as inhuman, evil or even satanic (Planned Parenthood, anyone?), they no longer are merely interested in power but have themselves become pawns of evil.]

Prayer:

Since I have begun to pray, I find my extreme view of personality changing. My own empirical self is becoming more important, and this is exactly the opposite of self-love. You don’t teach a seed how to die into treehood by throwing it into the fire: and it has to become a good seed before it’s worth burying. – Letters of C.S. Lewis (1933?)

[I included this quote in order to end on a positive note, and to show that there is always hope. But, as the saying goes, change begins with me. This is the hard part. It can be done. I’m living proof.]

‘ere there be tooth fairies: part one

Better late than never: my daughter’s pillow

For the past few months the tooth fairy has earned a bad reputation at our house. She is often a day, or several days, late in delivering the coveted dollar for the latest tooth to fall from one of our younger children’s mouths. My wife and I have chronicled her tardiness on more than a few Facebook statuses and relieved to learn that our tooth fairy is not alone in being late. Her brother’s wife Kim is also having problems with the tooth fairy and has even gone so far as to outsource a replacement fairy. While she and her husband were here with their children to celebrate my daughter’s birthday a few weekends ago she admitted that while they were staying in town at a hotel her own sister had a key to their home and was ensuring that the tooth fairy had arrived and whatever gifts she was to bring would be awaiting Kim’s children upon their return home.

We ourselves were tardy again Sunday morning, then again on Monday. Upon waking Monday morning my daughter did a quick survey under her pillow and found nothing. Stumbling sleepy-eyed into the kitchen she sighed “I guess the tooth fairy is sick” to my wife and me. Turning around to exit the kitchen she mumbled “Maybe she broke a wing” and went to get dressed for school.

Monday afternoon she came home from school and discovered that the tooth fairy had added a school-day route to her delivery cycle. Crisis averted…until next time.

This is all I was going to write on the subject of our tooth fairy adventures. And then I asked myself: Why do we do this? Why do we perpetuate such myths in our household? Not just myths of tooth fairies and Santa Claus and hobbits and wizards and elves, but also tales of knights and maidens and dragons. Of chivalry, honor, courage, truth and beauty. Of saints and sinners. Why do we do this? Shouldn’t we grow up as adults use reason only and allow the world to force our children to grow up? How does this all square with what the cynics of this world consider the Greatest Myth of All: Christianity?

One can hardly look at the world today and witness what happens when we stop believing in things bigger than ourselves. Nihilism, narcissism and the cold, gray nothingness of despair is running rampant in our world and, saddest of all, infecting our children. We are robbing our children of hope. How can one experience joy, beauty or even love without hope?

Or should we simply limit ourselves to what we can see and feel around us and use only reason? Last night I read the following passage from this book by St. Alphonsus Liguori while watching my son’s indoor baseball practice and it reminded me of my own journey in my life of faith.

Reason takes us, as it were, by the hand and leads us into the sanctuary of faith, but itself remains standing at the threshold. Once we are convinced that the truths we are asked to believe really come from God, we are obliged to submit our reason and, on the strength of God’s word, to accept as certain the truths proposed, though we may not or cannot understand them. This is the humble simplicity so characteristic of the child, and of which St. Peter speaks when he says: “As newborn babes, desire the rational milk without guile, that thereby you may grow unto salvation.” (1 Peter 2:2).

This was from a chapter on the subject of faith in which St. Liguori was speaking of truth. No matter how many tantrums we throw as a species and scream that there is no absolute truth (which is ironically a statement made by someone who is uttering an absolute truth about truth), the fact remains that there are such truths. If we utilize our reason in a way that is honest with ourselves and the world around us it will take us to that threshold.

We find those truths hidden in the myths and fairy tales of yore. Indeed that is one of the main purposes of fairy tales, myths and legends. In his new book The Romance of Religion: Fighting for Goodness, Truth, and Beauty (which I highly recommend) Dwight Longenecker writes about the differences between those who are romantics and those who are not.

…almost all of us are romantics at heart. Simply take us into the darkened hush of the cinema or theater and all our cynicism drops away. Allow us for one moment to be entranced by the spell of the storyteller, and the Cyrano de Bergerac in each one of us comes alive. There in the darkness the child within still believes that there are things as truth, beauty, and goodness. Even when we lapse into cynicism, doubt, and despair, the romantic in us lives—otherwise why would we be cynical and despairing?

The reason we become cynical is that we have come to believe that the ideals we thought were true are not true after all, or if they are true, they are impossible. We lapse into despair because we have lost the hope that goodness, truth, and beauty will prevail in the end. Thus, even the most despairing cynic proves that the romantic’s beliefs and hopes are an indelible and universal part of the human heart. If you like, cynicism and despair exist like parasites on belief and hope. You could say that despair is the compliment the cynic pays to the romantic idealist.

Cyrano and Roxanne (courtesy of bonzasheila.com)

When living in despair as cynics our lives have the flavor of what Screwtape prescribed in C. S. Lewis’ collection of that devil’s letters:

All the healthy and outgoing activities which we want him to avoid can be inhibited and nothing given in return, so that at last he may say, as one of my own patients said on his arrival down here, “I now see that I spent most of my life in doing neither what I ought nor what I liked.” The Christians describe the Enemy as one “without whom Nothing is strong.” And Nothing is very strong: strong enough to steal away a man’s best years not in sweet sins but in a dreary flickering of the mind over it knows not what and knows not why.

This malaise is growing ever larger and ever stronger among our youth today. Just a few days ago I read where devices with screens now outnumber toys as gifts given to children. Screens that involve little thought, adventure or, if you will, pain of risking and failing. Longenecker continues:

The romantic way is an adventure with both great risks and great gains. On the other hand, to endure life as a cynic is at best jaded and dull, and at worst bitter and despairing. It is a dead-end street. Think of it like this: We all stand on the deck of a sinking ship. The Epicurean (those who seek only to enjoy life while it lasts) enjoys a five-course meal and drinks a cocktail and dances while the ship goes down. The Stoic (those who believe the suffering of life should be avoided through discipline and noble behavior) gives up his lifejacket and stands on the bridge in silent dignity, awaiting the deluge. But the romantic spots a distant light, decides it is a lifeboat, then jumps in to either swim for safety or die in the attempt.

The Epicurean and the Stoic both believe that there is nothing after this life. The romantic believes that there is more. In Part Two I’ll cover a bit of the “more”.

___________________

photo credits: Me and bonzasheila.com.

Jack: 50 years on

November 22nd marks the fiftieth anniversary of the passing of one of the great figures in history. No, I’m not talking about a U.S. president. I’m referring to one of the other two noted men, both authors, who passed away that day: Clive Staples Lewis, or Jack as his friends and family called him.

On November 22, 1963, at 2:30 pm central time, John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas. An hour earlier, across the Atlantic, C.S. Lewis had died at his home in Oxford. A few short hours later, in Los Angeles, the English writer Aldous Huxley, author of the dystopian classic Brave New World, would also die. This strange and somewhat morbid coincidence would later inspire Peter Kreeft to write Between Heaven and Hell: A Dialog Somewhere Beyond Death with John F. Kennedy, C.S. Lewis, and Aldous Huxley.

The media coverage of Kennedy’s assassination totally eclipsed the deaths of Lewis and Huxley, whose passing went almost entirely unnoticed at the time, much as, many years later, the passing of Mother Teresa would go largely unnoticed in the wake of the death of Princess Diana. (Source: The Catholic World Report)

Over the past fifteen years I have quietly collected quite a few of Lewis’ books, enough so that it surprised me last night when I walked throughout my house collecting them from various shelves and piles in order to take the photo below. There are a few missing that are either on loan to someone or buried at the bottom of a pile that I missed. I even own two versions of the movie Shadowlands: both the Hollywood version with Sir Anthony Hopkins and Debra Winger, and the BBC version with Joss Ackland and Claire Bloom. And of course there are the recent spate of Narnia films. I truly had no idea I’d collected so many Lewis-related works.

Jack was a member of the Inklings, a literary-minded group of friends who would gather at The Eagle and Child (affectionately called the Bird and Baby) whose members included Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, Owen Barfield, Charles Williams and Hugo Dyson. Were I allowed to visit the past as a fly on the wall I would want to be sitting at a table near this group, smoking a good cigar or pipe, quaffing an ale, and eavesdropping. One of my favorite books is Tolkien and C.S. Lewis: The Gift of Friendship.

Born in Belfast, a soldier in WWI, convert from atheism to Christianity, professor at Oxford, and finally a prolific author. His was indeed a life that was full and well lived.

I own only two books that are encyclopedias of quotes by a singular person. The Quotable Lewis and The Quotable Chesterton. Outside of the collected letters of Flannery O’Connor (The Habit of Being) or The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien I have yet to find any compendiums of authors’ quotes worthy of my shelves. Snobbish, perhaps, but it holds true for me.

I read recently where someone said that there is nothing new to be written because Lewis wrote it all already. As I put together a list of favorite quotes for this blog I found it hard to disagree. From his books, lectures, sermons or even small papers, Lewis covered a vast array of subjects that hold weight and are relevant to our lives. I cannot pick a favorite book to mark the fiftieth anniversary of his passing, perhaps Mere Christianity or The Screwtape Letters. I simply love each and every one of them. I’ve strained to limit myself to thirty of my favorite quotes listed below. I hope you take the time to enjoy them and let them stew awhile in your mind or heart. They are not meant to be rushed, but savored like a good cigar or a glass of port.

Here’s to you, Jack. 

[PS: Do you have a favorite Lewis quote or book? Please share it in the comments. I’d love to hear yours.]

— 1 —

We—or at least I—shall not be able to adore God on the highest occasions if we have learned no habit of doing so on the lowest. At best, our faith and reason will tell us that He is adorable, but we shall not have found Him so, not have “tasted and seen.” Any patch of sunlight in a wood will show you something about the sun which you could never get from reading books on astronomy. These pure and spontaneous pleasures are “patches of Godlight” in the woods of our experience. – Letters to Malcolm

— 2 —

When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty, I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up. – Of Other Worlds: Essays and Stories

— 3 —

We never have followed the advice of the great teachers. Why are we likely to begin now? Why are we more likely to follow Christ than any of the others? Because He is the best moral teacher? But that makes it even less likely that we shall follow Him. If we cannot take the elementary lessons, it is likely we are going to take the most advanced one? If Christianity only means one more bit of good advice, then Christianity is of no importance. There has been no lack of good advice for the last four thousand years. A bit more makes no difference. – Mere Christianity

— 4 —

With the cruelty of youth I allowed myself to be irritated by traits in my father which, in other elderly men, I have since regarded as lovable foibles. – Surprised by Joy

— 5 —

When allegory is at its best, it approaches myth, which must be grasped with the imagination, not with the intellect. – The Pilgrim’s Regress

— 6 —

You never know how much you really believe anything until its truth or falsehood becomes a matter of life and death to you. It is easy to say you believe a rope to be strong and sound as long as you are merely using it to cord a box. But suppose you had to hang by that rope over a precipice. Wouldn’t you then first discover how much you really trusted it? . . . Only a real risk tests the reality of a belief. – A Grief Observed

— 7 —

Man has held three views of his body. First there is that of those ascetic Pagans who called it the prison or the “tomb” of the soul, and of Christians like Fisher to whom it was a “sack of dung,” food for worms, filthy, shameful, a source of nothing but temptation to bad men and humiliation to good ones. Then there are the Neo-Pagans (they seldom know Greek), the nudists and the sufferers from Dark Gods, to whom the body is glorious. But thirdly we have the view which St. Francis expressed by calling his body “Brother Ass.” All three may be—I am not sure—defensible; but give me St. Francis for my money.

Ass is exquisitely right because no one in his senses can either revere or hate a donkey. It is a useful, sturdy, lazy, obstinate, patient, lovable and infuriating beast; deserving now the stick and now a carrot; both pathetically and absurdly beautiful. So the body. There’s no living with it till we recognize that one of its functions in our lives is to play the part of buffoon. – The Four Loves

— 8 —

I can’t imagine a man really enjoying a book and reading it only once. – The Letters of C.S. Lewis to Arthur Greeves

— 9 —

I live in the Managerial Age, in a world of “Admin.” The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid “dens of crime” that Dickens loved to paint. It is not done even in concentration camps and labour camps. In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered (moved, seconded, carried, and minuted) in clean, carpeted, warmed, and well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voice. Hence, naturally enough, my symbol for Hell is something like the bureaucracy of a police state or the offices of a thoroughly nasty business concern. – The Screwtape Letters

— 10 —

My father bought all the books he read and never got rid of any of them. There were books in the study, books in the drawing room, books in the cloakroom, books (two deep) in the great bookcase on the landing, books in a bedroom, books piled as high as my shoulder in the cistern attic, books of all kinds reflecting every transient stage of my parents’ interest, books readable and unreadable, books suitable for a child and books most emphatically not. Nothing was forbidden me. In the seemingly endless rainy afternoons I took volume after volume from the shelves. I had always the same certainty of finding a book that was new to me as a man who walks into a field has of finding a new blade of grass. – Surprised by Joy

— 11 —

“Putting on Christ” . . . is not one among many jobs a Christian has to do; and it is not a sort of special exercise for the top class. It is the whole of Christianity. Christianity offers nothing else at all. – Mere Christianity

— 12 —

The decline of “religion” is no doubt a bad thing for the “World.” By it all the things that made England a fairly happy country are, I suppose, endangered: the comparative purity of her public life, the comparative humanity of her police, and the possibility of some mutual respect and kindness between political opponents. But I am not clear that it makes conversions to Christianity rarer or more difficult: rather the reverse. It makes the choice more unescapable. When the Round Table is broken every man must follow either Galahad or Mordred: middle things are gone. – God in the Dock

— 13 —

He [St. Paul] told us to be not only “as harmless as doves,” but also “as wise as serpents.” He [Christ] wants a child’s heart, but a grown-up’s head. – Mere Christianity

— 14 —

I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else. – The Weight of Glory

— 15 —

It is easy to think that the Church has a lot of different objects—education, building, missions, holding services. … The Church exists for nothing else but to draw men into Christ, to make them little Christs. If they are not doing that, all the cathedrals, clergy, missions, sermons, even the Bible itself, are simply a waste of time. God became Man for no other purpose. – Mere Christianity

— 16 —

Those who are enjoying something, or suffering something together, are companions. Those who enjoy or suffer one another, are not. – That Hideous Strength

— 17 —

Courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point, which means, at the point of highest reality. A chastity or honesty or mercy which yields to danger will be chaste or honest or merciful only on conditions. Pilate was merciful till it became risky. – The Screwtape Letters

— 18 —

Isn’t it funny the way some combinations of words can give you—almost apart from their meaning—a thrill like music? – The Letters of C.S. Lewis to Arthur Greeves

— 19 —

And out of that hopeless attempt has come nearly all that we call human history—money, poverty, ambition, war, prostitution, classes, empires, slavery—the long terrible story of man trying to find something other than God which will make him happy. – Mere Christianity

— 20 —

Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another: “What! You too? I thought that no one but myself . . .” – The Four Loves

— 21 —

To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable. – The Four Loves

— 22 —

A man can no more diminish God’s glory by refusing to worship Him than a lunatic can put out the sun by scribbling the word ‘darkness’ on the walls of his cell. – The Problem of Pain

— 23 —

I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to. – Mere Christianity

— 24 —

I didn’t go to religion to make me happy. I always knew a bottle of Port would do that. If you want a religion to make you feel really comfortable, I certainly don’t recommend Christianity. – God In The Dock

— 25 —

The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust to them; it was not in them, it only came through them, and what came through them was longing. These things—the beauty, the memory of our own past—are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshippers. For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited. – The Weight of Glory

— 26 —

There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, “Thy will be done,” and those to whom God says, in the end, “Thy will be done.” All that are in Hell, choose it. Without that self-choice there could be no Hell. No soul that seriously and constantly desires joy will ever miss it. Those who seek find. Those who knock it is opened.  – The Great Divorce

— 27 —

And all the time — such is the tragi-comedy of our situation — we continue to clamor for those very qualities we are rendering impossible. You can hardly open a periodical without coming across the statement that what our civilization needs is more “drive”, or dynamism, or self-sacrifice, or “creativity”. In a sort of ghastly simplicity we remove the organ and demand the function. We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful. – The Abolition of Man

— 28 —

To be a Christian means to forgive the inexcusable, because God has forgiven the inexcusable in you. –Essays on Forgiveness

— 29 —

We live, in fact, in a world starved for solitude, silence, and private: and therefore starved for meditation and true friendship. – The Weight of Glory

— 30 —

It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased. – The Weight of Glory

Summer Vacation

To continue my thoughts from last week…

The First Principle
Last week I read an article in the Wall Street Journal that got me to thinking about friendships. In a May 17th opinion piece called “Aristotle Wouldn’t Friend You on Facebook” Meghan McBride writes:

Aristotle wrote that friendship involves a degree of love. If we were to ask ourselves whether all of our Facebook friends were those we loved, we’d certainly answer that they’re not. These days, we devote equal if not more time to tracking the people we have had very limited human interaction with than to those whom we truly love. Aristotle would call the former “friendships of utility,” which, he wrote, are “for the commercially minded.”

She continues:

One thing’s for sure, my generation’s friendships are less personal than my parents’ or grandparents’ generation. Since we can rely on Facebook to manage our friendships, it’s easy to neglect more human forms of communication. Why visit a person, write a letter, deliver a card, or even pick up the phone when we can simply click a “like” button?

Like the Modernists described by John Senior that I cited last week it’s tempting to look at the marvels of technology in our age and consider ourselves superior to men and women of the past, but the differences between us and them are not nearly as significant as the things we have in common. As G.K. Chesterton wrote in Chapter 4 of The Ethics of Elfland, these

things common to all men are more important than the things peculiar to any men. Ordinary things are more valuable than extraordinary things; nay, they are more extraordinary. […] The sense of the miracle of humanity itself should be always more vivid to us than any marvels of power, intellect, art, or civilization.

He continues:

This is the first principle of democracy: that the essential things in men are the things they hold in common, not the things they hold separately.

There is much to value in the ordinary. The Modernist will overlook the significance of the ordinary man, woman or child, and look instead to celebrate, well…celebrity. Or the shiny and new. The freakish. These are elevated as the new normal; standards for an age that has no standards.

As Chesterton says it is essential for us to recognize what we hold in common if we are to coexist as a nation, democracy or even a community. Again we overlook these commonalities and instead go for the proverbial throats of those whose opinion differs from our own or the prevailing “wisdom” of the age. Dissenters must be ruthlessly attacked with cynicism and malice. The humanity within us all shrivels for lack of attention and when pressed into a corner to make our own rebuttal we devour our “opponent” because our own humanity has been long forgotten. Why should we remember we ever had it? No one acknowledged it therefore it cannot be called upon.

In Mere Christianity C.S. Lewis pointed out the effects of such cynicism on our souls when he wrote

“Suppose one reads a story of filthy atrocities in the paper. Then suppose that something turns up suggesting that the story might not be quite true, or not quite so bad as it was made out. Is one’s first feeling, ‘Thank God, even they aren’t quite so bad as that,’ or is it a feeling of disappointment, and even a determination to cling to the first story for the sheer pleasure of thinking your enemies are as bad as possible? If it is the second then it is, I am afraid, the first step in a process which, if followed to the end, will make us into devils. You see, one is beginning to wish that black was a little blacker. If we give that wish its head, later on we shall wish to see grey as black, and then to see white itself as black. Finally we shall insist on seeing everything — God and our friends and ourselves included — as bad, and not be able to stop doing it: we shall be fixed for ever in a universe of pure hatred.”

This is where the news and the sensationalistic headlines of the day are taking us. Dividing us. Or maybe it’s just me that can’t handle being inundated 24/7 by the sludge. Whatever the case may be I know enough to know when I’ve had enough. I’m taking a vacation.

Will I ever write again? Let’s be honest…who cares, really? I’m sure I will someday as I am currently journaling my way through a few books and my children provide me endless fodder for reflection. I have a young daughter who told me the other day that she’ll be too big to sit on my lap when she graduates college and becomes a teacher. Every day with my middle son lately is an adventure as he tries out a new card trick on me. I have a high school senior who wants to be a Marine after graduation and serve a nation that no longer recognizes nor values honor, sacrifice or personal integrity. I’m proud as hell of him for being smart enough to know the state of our country and still want to serve it. I admit that the child sees something his father, for the moment, does not.

From Desolation to Consolation
Last week I wrote that I sensed I was in the middle of a period of what St. Ignatius describes as spiritual desolation.

Spiritual consolation is an experience of being so on fire with God’s love that we feel impelled to praise, love, and serve God and help others as best as we can. Spiritual consolation encourages and facilitates a deep sense of gratitude for God’s faithfulness, mercy, and companionship in our life. In consolation, we feel more alive and connected to others.

Spiritual desolation, in contrast, is an experience of the soul in heavy darkness or turmoil. We are assaulted by all sorts of doubts, bombarded by temptations, and mired in self-preoccupations. We are excessively restless and anxious and feel cut off from others. Such feelings, in Ignatius’s words, “move one toward lack of faith and leave one without hope and without love.”

The key question in interpreting consolation and desolation is: where is the movement coming from and where is it leading me? Spiritual consolation does not always mean happiness. Spiritual desolation does not always mean sadness. Sometimes an experience of sadness is a moment of conversion and intimacy with God. Times of human suffering can be moments of great grace. Similarly, peace or happiness can be illusory if these feelings are helping us avoid changes we need to make.

Discernment of spirits is a challenging task. It requires maturity, inner quiet, and an ability to reflect on one’s interior life. Discernment takes practice.

Step one is realizing that there are periods of each in your life. Step two is to recognize when you’re in a period of desolation. Step three is to not freak out over it. Ignatius taught that when “in time of desolation one should never make a change, but stand firm and constant in the resolutions and decision which guided him the day before the desolation…” In other words, stay the course. The temptation is to run around like our hair is on fire and radically change something anything in order to stop our suffering. But in times of desolation we must remember that God is there and given us sufficient grace to endure it. For this persistence we must practice the virtue of patience. We must strive ahead and think long-term. And we must starve the desolation by increasing our spirituality.

Making the Break
To accomplish the above I have decided to take a holiday. I have deleted all my photos, save a handful, from my Facebook profile and will be deactivating my account soon. I’ve flirted with this idea before but always cave, especially in the summer during our baseball seasons. But each time I’ve wanted to do it I haven’t and things do not improve. So like it or not this summer I’m going to make the break. I had also planned on closing this blog down by “locking” it behind a password protected firewall for the summer. I’ve been tinkering with other blogs, or redesigns of this one, and from behind that firewall I can experiment with a little privacy. The jury’s still out on whether I’ll do this. In the rare times I have left Facebook my creativity goes through the roof and I may want an outlet here. Sunday was the feast of Corpus Christi. The Body of Christ. During the quiet moments after receiving Holy Communion and on my knees in prayer an idea for something to write about came to me. A whisper from God? Perhaps. All I can say is it made perfect sense and I’m excited to work on it this summer.

In the past I’ve set out each summer to read an overly-ambitious summer reading list. This summer I have a goal to read just one book: The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky. I got 100 pages into it the last time I attempted to read it. This summer I’m going to get through it all.

The Brothers Karamazov is a passionate philosophical novel set in 19th century Russia, that enters deeply into the ethical debates of God, free will, and morality. It is a spiritual drama of moral struggles concerning faith, doubt, and reason, set against a modernizing Russia.

Just some light reading, no? But just look at some of the wonderful quotes from a novel many consider to be the greatest book ever written.

A summer of increased spirituality through prayer and reading. More time spent with family and the people who mean the most. More time singing songs like this one with my daughter.

Actually, I should have said “more time getting earworms like this song out of my head.” But Lily Collins was cute-as-a-button in this movie as Snow White and Sophie loves to sing her song. Works for me.

When you can’t see the forest for the trees,
Follow the colors of your dreams
Just turn to friends their help transcends
To love, love, love, love, love

The Fruit that Endures
Before he was Pope Benedict XVI, Cardinal Ratzinger said:

“All people desire to leave a lasting mark. But what endures? Money does not. Even buildings do not, nor books. After a certain time, longer or shorter, all these things disappear. The only thing that lasts for ever is the human soul, the human person created by God for eternity. The fruit that endures is therefore all that we have sown in human souls: love, knowledge, a gesture capable of touching hearts, words that open the soul to joy in the Lord. So let us go and pray to the Lord to help us bear fruit that endures. Only in this way will the earth be changed from a valley of tears to a garden of God.” – Mass ‘Pro Eligendo Romano Pontifice,’ Homily of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, Dean of the College of Cardinals (April 18, 2005)

My writing may not be my legacy as I once thought. It sure as hell won’t be whatever I’ve posted on Facebook. My legacy will be the fruit I’ve sown in human souls. While that could occur through something I write someday I think the best way to accomplish it will be through the personal one-on-one time…with a visit, by writing a letter, delivering a card, or picking up the phone…that we know as friendship.

What’s not to “like” about that? Have a terrific summer everyone.

Faithful friends are a sturdy shelter; whoever finds one finds a treasure.
Faithful friends are beyond price, no amount can balance their worth.
Faithful friends are life-saving medicine; those who fear God will find them.
Those who fear the Lord enjoy stable friendship,
for as they are, so will their neighbors be. – Sirach 6:14-17