A Little More...

I wanted to explain the argument from desire a little more. So, I started thinking about it and remembered this quote from, guess who, C.S. Lewis. He puts things in a way I cannot.

He explains: Most people, if they had really to look into their own hearts, would know that they do want, and want acutely, something that cannot be had in this world. There are all sorts of things in this world that offer to give it to you, but they never quite keep their promise. - Mere Christianity, Book III, "Hope"

Later, he writes more: The Christian says, 'Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for those desires exists. A baby feels hunger: well, there is such a thing as food. A duckling wants to swim: well, there is such a thing as water. Men feel sexual desire: well, there is such a thing as sex. If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. If none of my earthly pleasures satisfy it, that does not prove that the universe is a fraud. Probably earthly pleasures were never meant to satisfy it, but only to arouse it, to suggest the real thing. If that is so, I must take care, on the one hand, never to despise, or be unthankful for, these earthly blessings, and on the other, never to mistake them for the something else of which they are only a kind of copy, or echo, or mirage. I must keep alive in myself the desire for my true country, which I shall not find till after death; I must never let it get snowed under or turned aside; I must make it the main object of life to press on to that other country and to help others to do the same.'

So, for example, I look at my little boy, Jackson, and think about the depth of my love for that awesome little person. I must keep in mind that my love for him is but a shadow of things to come. And, that, my friends, is an awesome thought. It makes me want to love all the more. It makes me love life all the more because of what it tells me about the God we serve. It makes me desire Heaven all the more that I might experience the ultimate reality of Love. It hurts (in a good way) to think on it. The Scriptures are clear on this point.

For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known. - I Corinthians 13:12

So we do not lose heart. Though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed day by day. For this slight momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal. - II Corinthians 4:16-18

These all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth. For people who speak thus make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. If they had been thinking of that land from which they had gone out, they would have had opportunity to return. But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared for them a city. - Hebrews 11:13-16

So, the next time you find yourself desiring something more or better than this world can offer, don't feel guilty. Embrace it. Grab hold of that and don't let go of it because it the part of God in us calling us home to Him. And, when we get there, that home will never disappoint.

Ideas really do have consequences....

For all the good wrought upon the world with the coming of the Enlightenment, there also came much harm. While we gained many wonderful advances in various fields of science, we also gave up much in the areas of ethics, epistemology, and theology. We began starting with nature instead of God, and in so doing, changed the way we looked at the world and the people who inhabit the world. After World War I, there was a group of writers known as the Lost Generation. This group includes such writers as Ernest Hemingway, T.S. Eliot, and W.B. Yeats. It is interesting to see the effects of the massive shift in worldview. This poem is but a small help in understanding what was happening to the world at the turn of the 20th century. Try to answer this question after you read the poem: What is this that is coming to change the world in the next 20 centuries like Christ had affected the previous 20 centuries? I am afraid that the answer is not a pleasant one.

The Second Coming - W.B. Yeats

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the center cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of the Spiritus Mundi (Universal Spirit)
Troubles my sight: somewhere in the sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

Dante on the Resurrection of the Body

As long as the festivity
of Paradise shall be, so long shall our
love radiate around us such a garment.
Its brightness takes its measure from our ardor,
our ardor from our vision, which is measured
by what grace each receives beyond his merit.
When, glorified and sanctified, the flesh
is once again our dress, our persons shall,
in being all complete, please all the more;
therefore, whatever light gratuitous
the Highest Good gives us will be enhanced --
the light that will allow us to see Him;
that light will cause our vision to increase,
the ardor vision kindles to increase,
the brightness born of ardor to increase.
Yet even as a coal engenders flame,
but with intenser glow outshines it, so
that in that flame the coal persists, it shows,
so will the brightness that envelops us
be surpassed in visibility
by reborn flesh, which earth now covers up.
Nor will we tire when faced with such bright light,
for then the body's organs will have force
enough for all in which we can delight. - Paradiso, Canto XIV

What do you want?

Earlier this evening, I heard some words in a song that got me to thinking. Well, actually, I was reading a good book, which started me thinking, and then, I heard the song. I don't know the singer of the song was, but he said something very interesting. He said that everybody wants to be loved. This struck as incredibly insightful. It is a true statement. Every person wants to be wanted. In fact, every person wants alot of things. Some people want power. Some want justice. Some want to be loved. Some want to love. Some just want the last piece of chocolate cake. Desires are innate to human experience, and they are, in and of themselves, good things for the most part. It is good to want things like justice and power and love and, yes, even chocolate cake. Desire was put in us to draw our attention to the Source and Fulfillment of such desires. We want justice because there is an ultimate source of Justice. Think about it. In this world, many things we consider injustices go unpunished. This is not justice. The bad guy is not supposed to get away with it. With this being the case, is it not odd that we desire such a thing as justice? Why desire justice if it doesn't always exist? The fact is that the desire to love justice comes from the Just One Himself. Desire, rightly aimed, is a wonderful gift of God, used by Him to draw us closer to knowing Him.

If you want to read a little more about this from a guy a lot smarter than me, click the link below.

The Argument from Desire

Global Warming???

While people are stressing out about global warming, I will be enjoying my SNOW day off.

If only...

I often find myself wishing I were able to go back in time and re-live some wonderful time in my life. Typically, this reminiscing takes place during periods of immense spiritual struggle. I long for the cool, calm waters of past journeys in order to soothe the raging storm within. In so doing, I find several things happening. Namely, when I long for the past, my yearning is never fulfilled. It is amazing what I will do in order to return to some mountain peak experience. I will reread books, restate prayers, recall routines. In short, I will do anything to go back and reclaim that period of fulfillment. None of it works. No matter how long I try or how hard I work, it all fails. Thankfully, there are those in our walk with Christ who can help us gain anew a fresh vision and a new experience.

As I was reading C.S. Lewis (a spiritual guide I will be forever thankful to God for) the other day, I found a paragraph or two dealing with just this issue. In this section, Lewis is giving an exposition of the Lord's Prayer. He reaches the part of the prayer that says, "Thy will be done." This is what he says about it: I am beginning to feel that we need a preliminary act of submission not only toward future afflictions but also towards possible future blessings. I know it sounds fantastic; but think it over. It seems to me that we often, almost sulkily, reject the good that God offers us because, at that moment, we expected some other good. Do you know what I mean? On every level of our life - in religious experience, in our gastronomic, erotic, aesthetic, and social experience - we are always harking back to some occasion which seemed to us to reach perfection, setting that up as a norm, and depreciating all other occasions by comparison. But these other occasions, I now suspect, are often full of their own new blessing, if only we would lay ourselves open to it. God shows us a new facet of the glory, and we refuse to look at it because we're still looking for the old one. And of course we don't get that. You can't, at the twentieth reading, get again the experience of reading Lycidas for the first time. But what you do get can be in its own way as good...This applies especially to the devotional life. Many religious people lament that the first fervours of their conversion have died away...But were those fervours - the operative word is those - ever intended to last...It would be rash to say that there is any prayer which God never grants. But the strongest candidate is the prayer we might express in the single word encore. And how should the Infinite repeat Himself? All space and time are too little for Him to utter Himself in them once...And the joke, or tragedy, of it all is that these golden moments in the past, which are so tormenting if we erect them into a norm, are entirely nourishing, wholesome, and enchanting if we are content to accept them for what they are, for memories. Properly bedded down in a past which we do not miserably try to conjure back, they will send up exquisite growths. Leave the bulbs alone, and the new flowers will come up. Grub them up and hope, by fondling and sniffing, to get last year's blooms, and you will get nothing. - Letters to Malcolm

Carpe Diem.

Dante on God's Truth

I now well see: we cannot satisfy
our mind unless it is enlightened by
the truth beyond whose boundary no truth lies.

Mind, reaching that truth, rests within it as
a beast within its lair; mind can attain
that truth -- if not all our desires were vain.

Therefore, our doubting blossoms like a shoot
out from the root of truth; this natural
urge spurs us toward the peak, from height to height.
-Paradiso, Canto IV

A Changing Perspective

I have noticed lately a subtle changing in my mind. It has been growing gradually over the last three months. Several days ago, it hit me like a wave crashing onto a surprised shore. I was watching the movie My Dog Skip. As many of you know, this is the heart-warming story of a boy, Willie, and the story of his youthful journey with his jack russell terrier, Skip. Willie and Skip grew up and had many adventures around the small Mississippi town in which they lived. They were always together, inseperable with a bond that time only strengthened. However, toward the end of the movie, Willie allowed his desire to be loved by his friends and many others in the town to rule his actions. In fact, during a baseball game in which he had played rather poorly, Willie struck Skip in his anger and embarassment. The dog frightened and demoralized retreated from the baseball field and wandered through the town. The dog eventually wound up trapped in the town's cemetary. Willie distraught and embrassed searched diligently for the dog in hopes of reuniting with him and renewing their bond of fellowship. It wasn't until late in the night that Willie finds Skip in the cemetary. Unfortunately, Skip had been attacked by some moonshiners and was in a perulious condition. The boy rushes Skip to the vet who does all he can to save Skip. Thankfully, Skip makes it through the surgery and survives. It is a gut-wrenching story with a happy ending.

You may be asking yourself, "what does this movie about a dog have to do with a changing perspective?" Well, I'll tell you. It was this movie that awakened me to this new perspective. In the past, I had always watched that movie and connected my feelings to the feelings of the boy, Willie. Well, when I watched it the other day, I related to another character in the story, and no, it wasn't the dog. I suddenly found myself wondering how the father felt. I began to ponder how I would help the little boy cope with this tragic situation. I wanted to know how I would help Jackson, my son, handle this sort of thing. It was then I realized that I would never see things the same way. I will forever be a father, think like a father, act like a father. I will always see things differently, always think differently, and most important worship differently. God as Father has taken on a new meaning to me. I have a better understanding of the actual sacrifice of Father giving the Son. I am starting to comprehend what it means to have real patience (especially at four in the morning). I see what it means to offer forgiveness and how to really ask for it. Needless to say, rearing a child is probably the most sanctifying process I have undergone. Thank God for him.

As I have been thinking on this new perspective, a saying from Paul popped into my head. It goes like this: When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known. (I Corinthians 13:11-12)

While I realize that these verses have nothing to do with child-rearing, they have everything to do with a changing perspective. They are about the ultimate change in perspective. However, this part of my life is only one part of this ultimate change. Through our experiences, we learn more and more how to see the face of God. Through Jackson and our experiences together, I gain more and more understanding of the Ultimate Knowledge of this universe.

The Perfect Church Service

Novelty simply as such, can have only an entertainment value. And they [Christians] don't go to church to be entertained. They go to use the service, or, if you prefer, to enact it. Every service is a structure of acts and words through which we receive a sacrament, or repent, or supplicate, or adore. And it enables us to do these things best - if you like, it "works" best - when through long familiarity, we don't have to think about it. As long as you notice, and have to count, the steps, you are not yet dancing but only learning to dance. A good shoe is a shoe you don't notice. Good reading becomes possible when you need not consciously think about your eyes, or light, or print, or spelling. The perfect church service would be one we were almost unaware of; our attention would have been on God. - C.S. Lewis, Letters to Malcolm

A New Prayer for a New Year

Coming off my hiatus, I wanted to share this prayer with my few readers.

Lord, high and holy, meek and lowly, Thou hast brought me to the valley of vision where I live in the depths, but see thee in the heights; Hemmed in by mountains of sin, I behold thy glory. Let me learn by paradox that the way down is the way up, that to be low is to be high, that the broken heart is the healed heart, that the contrite spirit is the rejoicing spirit, that the repenting soul is the victorious soul, that to have nothing is possess all, that to bear the cross is to wear the crown, that to give is to receive, that the valley is the place of vision. Lord, in the daytime, stars can be seen from deepest wells, and the deeper the wells, the brighter thy stars shine; let me find Thy light in my darkness, Thy life in my death, Thy joy in my sorrow, Thy grace in my sin, Thy riches in my poverty, Thy glory in my valley. Amen.