Last night I was talking with some friends about C.S. Lewis, George MacDonald, and G.K. Chesterton, and on my walk home I realized that books are really good friends. No matter what happens as far as my dating life goes (to use a rather specific example), books will always be there for me. Books aren’t fickle, nor are their hearts easily snatched away from you. You can take books with you wherever you go, and they’ll spend as much time with you as you want to spend with them. There’s nothing quite like curling up in front of a roasty fire with a good book and a mug of hot chocolate. Mmm…

If you go to ChristianAudio.com and click on the big orange button labeled “Free Download,” you can get a nice audiobook of G.K. Chesterton’s The Man Who Was Thursday. (It’s five MP3s of about 35 megs each.)

Lately I’ve started marking books again, and I’m finding that it’s very useful for remembering good parts that I want to quote in this blog. Beyond that, it makes me read more actively — rather than just skimming over the surface, I have to grapple with the text, to really think about it. It’s great. I’ve been using a pen half the time and a pencil half the time. Honestly, I’d rather use a pencil all the time, but I carry a pen with me everywhere I go and so I end up using it as well.

I’ve been reading the “Finding Ourselves in Our Tradition” chapter in Arthur Henry King’s Arm the Children, and these two paragraphs really struck me:

History happens forward, but we are allowed to go back. We live forward, but we are allowed to return in our minds. And the further back we go, the further forward we can go. Going back in eternity is part of going forward. We walk into the future backwards. We can’t face the future; we can’t see it. We can see the present here and the past back there, and, in terms of the past and present, we can imagine what the future will be like. That is what prophecy is about. Prophecy can be expanded in our own lives by looking at the past. The past needs to become incarnate to us so that we can understand the present and feel for the future and, indeed, find the past in the envisaged future and the future in the envisaged past. To move to and fro in a great tradition is to give oneself something like the experience of eternity. It is an important experience.

The tree is for us an image of this process, and the tree is not the roots as the past and the trunk as the present and the branches as the future. The tree is the totality: the roots are still alive, the trunk is alive, the branches are alive; the roots are seeking the tree’s sustenance and the leaves are seeking its sustenance; the whole thing happens together. The tree is an image of eternity: the tree of life, the tree of knowledge of good and evil, the tree of Jesse, the tree of the condescension of God. (p. 127)

Being an amateur genealogist, the tree metaphor really stuck out in my mind and it’s fascinating to think of the past and the future as being alive and co-existent with the present. He talks more about this in the chapter but class is about to start so I must go.

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.

At the Quote Garden, I found these two quotes which I rather like:

“One does not discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time.” ~André Gide

“A ship in harbor is safe - but that is not what ships are for.” ~John A. Shedd, Salt from My Attic

This quote from C.S. Lewis’s The Four Loves has been running through my mind a lot lately:

To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to 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. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside of Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell.

I completely agree. Opening your heart to love anything is dangerous and automatically brings the risk of being broken, but that’s the only way to reach the heights of love. The idea applies to more than just love, too — without taking risks, we can’t excel in creativity, business, etc.

Watched Emma this evening. (I guess I’m on a chick flick roll. :)) Like Sense and Sensibility, I loved it! And now I must come up with excuses that explain why a man should find such movies entertaining, for apparently guys are not supposed to like movies like this. Hogwash. If anything, more guys should watch these movies, because the men in them (at least the heroes) are admirable models to emulate. I for one will do my best to be like Mr. Knightley, Colonel Brandon, and Mr. Darcy. As one last compelling reason, I find that movies like these enrich and enliven my humanity, deepening this life experience. On the other hand, the violent action thrillers (need I name names?) tend to numb and desensitize the soul — hardly the sort of intoxication one wants to be imbibing on a regular basis, if at all. Yes, they are eminently watchable — plot hooks and special effects take care of that — but are they worth their time? Scarcely.

I’ve never really been a fan of audio books, but then again I’ve never really listened to any. Today at the bookstore I was reading in Steve Leveen’s The Little Guide to Your Well-Read Life and came across the chapter entitled “Reading With Your Ears.” He did a pretty convincing job of it and I’m going to try some out. The three main sources that come to mind are the iTunes Music Store, Audible.com, and Project Gutenberg. More on this later (once I start listening).

At times — usually when working at the computer — I start feeling like someone’s taking my head and grating carrots with it. Not a fun feeling. Until recently, I didn’t know what to do about it, either. But now I have found the solution: books. I’m serious. Today I felt that way, left work, and went to the bookstore. It didn’t take long before the grating disappeared — and it wasn’t just the mere act of going somewhere else (I’ve tested that hypothesis). Anyway, I don’t know how legitimate this “science” is :), but for me it works and I’ll take it as another sign that I’m meant for librarianhood.