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"Praying"
by Mary Oliver, Thirst It doesn’t have to be the blue iris, it could be weeds in a vacant lot, or a few small stones; just pay attention, then patch a few words together and don’t try to make them elaborate, this isn’t a contest but the doorway into thanks, and a silence in which another voice may speak.
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 photographer unknown Well, these are our two starting points. In one way (our old phrase!) God includes evil, in another way he does not. What are we to do next? My beginning of the `next' will be to deny another remark of yours - where you say `no good without evil'. This on my view is absolutely untrue: but the opposite `no evil without good' is absolutely true. I will try to explain what I mean by an analogy.
Supposing you are taking a dog on a lead through a turnstile or past a post. You know what happens (apart from his usual ceremonies in passing a post!). He tries to go the wrong side and gets his lead looped round the post. You see that he can't do it, and therefore pull him back. You pull him back because you want to enable him to go forward. He wants exactly the same thing - namely to go forward: for that very reason he resists your pull back, or, if he is an obedient dog, yields to it reluctantly as a matter of duty which seems to him to be quite in opposition to his own will: tho' in factit is only by yielding to you that he will ever succeed in getting where he wants. Now if the dog were a theologian he would regard his own will as a sin to which he was tempted, and therefore an evil: and he might go on to ask whether you understand and `contained' his evil. If he did you cd. only reply `My dear dog, if by your will you mean what you really want to do, viz. to get forward along the road, I not only understand this desire but share it. Forward is exactly where I want you to go. If by your will, on the other hand, you mean your will to pull against the collar and try to force yourself forward in a direction which is no use - why I understand it of course: but just because I understand it (and the whole situation, which you don't understand) I cannot possibly share it. In fact the more I sympathise with your real wish - that is, the wish to get on - the less can I sympathise (in the sense of `share' or `agree with') your resistance to the collar: for I see that this is actually rendering the attainment of your real wish impossible.' I don't know if you will agree at once that this is a parallel to the situation between God and man: but I will work it out on the assumption that you do. --C.S. Lewis "'Good will,' murmured John Adair. 'No one ever stops to think what that means. Not an easy thing. Unregenerate man had he the courage to inquire into what he is really willing right down below the surface, would get a very nasty shock. Very rare, as rare as peace. When a man has both, the angels make quite a song and dance about it.'" -Elizabeth Goudge, Pilgrim's Inn
" But we pine." C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory
"You have never met an ordinary person." C.S. Lewis
"Quia per incarnati Verbi mysterium, nova mentis nostrae oculis lux thrae claritatis infulsit: ut dum visibiliter Deum cognoscimus, per hunc in invisibilium amorem rapiamur."
"Because by the mystery of the Incarnate Word the new light of Thy brightness hath shone upon the eyes of our mind: that we, knowing God seen of the eyes, by Him may be snatched up into the love of that which eye hath not seen." Missale Romanum via Evelyn Underhill  "We should elude much enfeebling spiritual worry, and proportionately increase our effective contribution to the world's redemption if we kept more steadily in mind the patent fact of our own limited knowledge: that the richness and splendour of the spiritual universe which surrounds and penetrates our narrow universe of sense is mostly unperceived by us as we are now. It is true that as spirits anchored to this world yet belonging to that, we do already live within that spiritual universe. But like new-born kittens, our eyes are not yet opened to our situation; we can only vaguely recognize the touch upon the fur." - Evelyn Underhill
Psaume 72
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"Ideas
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"Perhaps this is one of the secrets of life--to know 'glory' when we see it."
--Charlotte Mason
Virtual Life?
A wee explanation: this website was created as a way to amplify the daily surprise of seeing glory in one small life. The notebook entries represented here are all selected from things actually lived and noted on paper in an effort to live the full life British educator Charlotte Mason so ably championed.
In Appreciation
Photos chosen are linked to their original posts in most cases because I have found something of value there and hope my readers will likewise find a helpful resource. In the case of miss-attribution or if you desire your work not be linked, please let me know.
Photos chosen are linked to their original posts in most cases because I have found something of value there and hope my readers will likewise find a helpful resource. In the case of miss-attribution or if you desire your work not be linked, please let me know.
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