C.S. Lewis - Farewell to Shadowlands

"But indeed, after the water and the earth, I thought we had already crossed the brook in a sense."
"You will always be thinking that," said the Guide. "We call it Death in the Mountain language. It is too tough a morsel to eat at one bite. You will meet that brook more often than you think: and each time you will suppose that you have done with it for good. But some day you really will."
- The Pilgrim's Regress, Book 9, Chapter 6

And for us this is the end of all the stories, and we can most truly say that they all lived happily ever after. But for them it was only the beginning of the real story. All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read: which goees on forever: in which every chapter is better than the one before.
- The Last Battle, Chapter 16: Farewell to Shadowlands

C.S. Lewis

I'm a day late, but I wanted to remember him on the anniversary of his death. I've always liked him, but he became a personal hero after I read his Letters to Children. How can you not love someone who respected and took time for children the way he did?

"It was when I was happiest that I longed most...The sweetest thing in all my life has been the longing...to find the place where all the beauty came from." from Till We Have Faces

"The essence of religion, in my view, is the thirst for an end higher than natural ends..." from A Christian Reply to Professor Price Phoenix Quarterly

A Month of Grace

Grace is a cosmic fact.

Grace is either a gift from above or a state within, a help of some kind or an experience reverently felt.

Grace is the benign effluence of the Overself, the kindly radiation from it, ever-present in us. The theological use of this term to mean particular help given by God to man to enable him to endure temptation and act rightly is a serious and arbitrary narrowing down of its original meaning. It may mean this sometimes, but it also means the loving mercy God shows to man, which appears variously as enlightenment of the mind or relief of the heart, as change of outward physical conditions or a dynamic revolution-working energy acting on the aspirant or on his life.

The grace is always present since the Infinite Power, from which it originally comes, is always present.

There are little graces, such as those which produce the glimpse; but there is only one great Grace: this produces a lasting transformation, a deep radical healing and permanent enlightenment.

Paul Brunton

Make Your Own Graph Paper

Free Online Graph Paper - you tell it how many squares per inch, and it creates a pdf file! Graph paper is one of my favorite things in the whole world. Thank you, Mama Squirrel!

A Month of Grace

Gifts are as the gold which adorns the temple; grace is like the temple that sanctifies the gold.
William Burkitt

But grace means more than gifts. In grace something is transcended, once and for all overcome. Grace happens in spite of something; it happens in spite of separateness and alienation. Grace means that life is once again united with life, self is reconciled with self. Grace means accepting the abandoned one. Grace transforms fate into a meaningful vocation. It transform guilt to trust and courage. The word grace has something triumphant in it.
Yrj Kallinen, Finnish thinker writing about Paul Tillich's thinking

The Poem

A string of words is a dangerous thing,
For no man knows where it will stop
Save he take up the strands, and following,
Discover its end, or read till he drop.

Unfurled on the page lay the poem before him,
Inviting him in with its ink-lettered glory,
Calling him sweetly to read of its verses--
(Oh, the innocent lure of those letters!)
So he took it up slowly; and the tugging words caught him
And carried him on, like a stream rolling swiftly
In its widening course, ever deeper and stronger,
O'er difficult passages, from line to line leaping,
Ceaselessly flowing from its source to the sea:
Then he stood at the prow of his vessel of thought
On an ocean of language, and the surging waves
Bore him up higher and higher, till breathless
He clung to a lifeline of thought--and the billows
Upswelled to a toppling summit, and he saw
Through the spindrift a deepening valley--
(And the sea bore him on, while the wind sang past)--
Then he fell from his boat and was tumbled by currents
Under words, over words, eddying round him,
Till they caught him and tossed him and sucked him down under
And he drowned in the plunging word-swell of the sea.

For a string of words is a dangerous thing,
And no man knows where it will stop
Save he take up the strands, and following,
Discover its end, or read till he drop.

Just David

I started this book two nights ago. And so far I like The Mouse and His Child better. David is innocent, good, eager, a child of nature - and I'm finding him annoying and not very likable. I can't put my finger on why. He doesn't "get" anything. When asked to fill a woodbox, he gets distracted watching spiders and butterflies, and when asked to weed the garden that supplies the family diet, he can't understand why he should pull out all the pretty plants. Then he neglects his work because he was suddenly struck with a desire to play his violin when he sees some pansies, and he can't wait to play it because he'll "lose the song." He seems to be a high maintenance child.

And I don't like the farm couple who get stuck taking care of him any better. They have absolutely no patience for a child who just lost his father and doesn't seem to understand. Instead of helping him along, they just get irritated about the extra work he makes for them.

And I don't like the dead father who created this predicament for David and the couple. He could have taught David to think of others and be helpful. But David only seems to think about himself and his impulsive desires. It's all innocent and sweet, but it still feels self-obsessed.

And I have a sinking feeling that the author is going to make it out as if David's free-spiritedness will bring light and harmony and joy to everyone around him because they, too, will discover the fulfillment and peace of thinking of their own inner longings instead of constantly being preoccupied with their daily routine chores.

Mozart

AO's composer this term is Mozart, and, for the first time in a long time, we're taking time to really explore Mozart. We're playing Mozart music (originally using free downloads from ClassicalArchives, but more and more playing CD's as we add to our collection), we read The Wonder Boy by Opal Wheeler, and Tim and I are reading the Mozart biography by Marcia Davenport. It requires just a bit of editing for students. When we read about a piece that piques our curiosity, we go to amazon.com and buy a used copy. We bought the Six Haydn-Quartets because we read about Mozart composing them and wanted to hear them. After reading the reviews at amazon, we settled on a set recorded sixty years ago by the Budapest Quartet (a Russian group!) Tonight we read this in Davenport's biography:

" . . . the G minor quintet (K. 516) with two violas. This quintet is a glimpse into Wolfgang's soul; an epic statement; a summing up; a prophecy. The man who has been called superficial gathered all the hidden pain and passion of nine troubled years and gave them an expression that lives and will live forever in its sheer elemental truth. The piece sets and holds a keynote of intense, passionate excitement which more than accounts for the apparent absence of this in Wolfgang's visible life. It is possible to interpret the work in terms of his own misforfunes, expounded and then protested in vivid poignancy. But it is better to know that he, true artist, rose above autobiographical emotion and turned his personal passion into universal force. The tragic mood of the first four movements, culminating in the black sorrow of the last Adagio, is swept away in the supreme bliss of the final Allegro. This is no conventional happy ending, but a moment when Wolfgang opens the door to his spirit, which is clear and radiant and beautiful, and not to be extinguished by any mortal hardship. That he knew always. No biographer, no commentator, critic, or interpreter can ever reveal Wolfgang Mozart entirely. Every attempt to know him truly, to relive his life, is incomplete without his own musical revelations. Such are this quintet and his Requiem. To know them deeply is to know him."

As it turns out, that quintet is included on the Budapest Quartet CD, so Tim and I were able to hear it. I plan to listen to it once every day until it becomes familiar, and until I begin to understand what she's talking about. At first listen, I didn't think the sorrow was "black." It was just melancholy. I'd call it brown.

Finished Book 1

I finished the first book of my Stacks challenge - The Mouse and His Child by Russell Hoban.

It's about a wind-up toy mouse who turns and lifts a little mouse into the air, like a father swinging his child in the air in circles. They're in a store with other toys and a grand Victorian mansion. They're sold, and they soon break and are thrown out, and the rest of the book is about their search to recapture their glorious past when they felt like they belonged in a kind of family in the mansion. It was not bad, decently written, I thought.

I'll read Just David next.

Checking In

My best friend was here for a visit - it was too short, just a few days. The funny thing is, we met on a music message board because we both liked a particular songwriter, and now, five years later (or is it six?) we didn't even play his music. We had too many other things to listen to, and too many other things to do and talk about.

We're both starting a new exercise routine - The Bar Method. I bought the DVD so we could both check it out together and we like it, so she's getting her own copy. It's a combination of isometrics, resistance, yoga and weights. Low impact, not too boring. I did the routine for the first time this evening. They say you start to notice a difference after ten times. We'll see.