I just read C.S. Lewis’s essays “Membership” and “The Inner Ring” for today’s CSL Society meeting. In the former, Lewis says that “We live, in fact, in a world starved for solitude, silence, and privacy: and therefore starved for meditation and true friendship.” I couldn’t agree more — while I love socializing and being with other people, I need my solitude. Without it, I wouldn’t — couldn’t — be who I am. Perhaps I’m particular because I’m a book person and reading most often isn’t a group affair, but I think it’s a human need. The world today is too noisy and there are far too many demands on our attention.

“There is, in fact, a fatal tendency in all human activities for the means to encroach upon the very ends which they were intended to serve.” All too true. My favorite quote, though, is this: “Those who are members of one another [meaning the Church, families, etc.] become as diverse as the hand and the ear. That is why the worldlings are so monotonously alike compared with the almost fantastic variety of the saints. Obedience is the road to freedom, humility the road to pleasure, unity the road to personality.”

One last quote before I’m off to the meeting. (”The Inner Ring” was good and reminded me a lot of Mark in That Hideous Strength, but it’s not really an issue for me — at least not at the moment — and so it’ll be put on the back shelf of my brain for future reference.) Here it is:

True personality lies ahead — how far ahead, for most of us, I dare not say. And the key to it does not lie in ourselves. It will not be attained by development from within outwards. It will come to us when we occupy those places in the structure of the eternal cosmos for which we were designed or invented. As a colour first reveals its true quality when placed by an excellent artist in its pre-elected spot between certain others, as a spice reveals its true flavour when inserted just where and when a good cook wishes among the other ingredients, as the dog becomes really doggy only when he has taken his place in the household of man, so we shall then first be true persons when we have suffered ourselves to be fitted into our places. We are marble waiting to b shaped, metal waiting to be run into a mould…. There is no question of finding for [man] a place in the living temple which will do justice to his inherent value and give scope to his natural idiosyncrasy. The place was there first. The man was created for it. He will not be himself till he is there. We shall be true and everlasting and really divine persons only in heaven, just as we are, even now, coloured bodies only in the light. (Emphasis mine.)

Alas, I’ve got to go, but it’s a good quote.

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