Tag: C.S. Lewis

Yet our little sister does not play the victim. She presses on, a sufferer who labors as best she can while shadows and thorns press in against her. And she prays to God like the woman persistent in her case when contending with an unjust judge; and since God is just, since He is the Good and Righteous Judge of All the Earth, our little sister’s hope remains “deeper still.”

How else does their work inspire you to think differently about your own relationship to your own places? Take action in your own property, if you have it, and in your local community.

We taste myth when we read Piranesi, because in the story, like in Barfield’s exploration of how the meaning of words changes over time, we are taken out of our modern sensibilities (if only for a moment), and thrust into an ancient mode of thinking.

If beer and football are just the modern bread and circuses of a declining empire, then these are spectacles best avoided. However, if such gridiron microcosms of the human experience can unite us with our neighbors and point us to the bigger and more real story, then football, for all its flaws, deserves a yell, maybe two.

Baxter articulates two central features of the Medieval Model: the ordered and iconic nature of reality. Reality is not a chaos waiting for us to impose structure on it or make it what we want; it is rather a cosmos with a nature independent of our wishes, demanding us to conform to it and pointing us back to its Creator.

Wiley, throughout his book, handles the paradoxes and tensions of Tolkien’s text not as inconsistencies to be brushed aside, but rather as brushstrokes of a master artist at work. For such a meticulous and calculated author, an author who spent decades crafting his mythology, why would Tolkien permit such a cloud of mystery to surround this unforgettable and prominent character?

Ordinary practices may not seem to warrant the kind of energy and attention we devote to global and international affairs, especially given the present calamity. But they most certainly do. After all, even the biggest tasks—including the call to partner with God to rule, bless, and love the world—are accomplished one step at a time.

If such substitution and exchange were genuinely possible, would we agree with Lewis that no gift was more gladly given? Would we too readily assume we could bear another’s burden and so sink ourselves under more than we could carry? Or, would our burdens be lightened by such sharing?

The Green Knight is a subversive film that recommends the culturally decaying virtues of generosity, courtesy, fellowship, chastity, and piety. It is a true myth worth telling.

Both Prior and Gibbs agree that ultimately virtue orients us toward one end, to “love God and enjoy Him forever.” Loving God is difficult; it too requires our attention in a culture that is constantly distracting us. And while virtue brings about human flourishing that can be observed from the outside, loving God requires us to remember who we are on the inside. It is the place where we are to be good alone … in the presence of One.