Mere *!@#% memory-fail
July 14, 2014 2:50 PM
There is a quote by C.S. Lewis which I can recollect only as I have paraphrased it in my mind, something to the effect of, "Many of the greatest things we do in life scare us to death." I'd love to find the actual quote and book-reference for it; it's probably in one the Chronicles, but my Google-fu and memory are both failing me at the moment.
from “The World’s Last Night” in C. S. Lewis: Essay Collection and Other Short Pieces
Perfect love, we know, casteth out fear. But so do several others things—ignorance, alcohol, passion, presumption, and stupidity. It is very desirable that we should all advance to that perfection of love in which we shall fear no longer; but it is very undesirable, until we have reached that state, that we should allow any inferior agent to cast out our fear.
From Surprised by Joy:
You must picture me alone in that room in Magdalen, night after night, feeling, whenever my mind lifted even for a second from my work, the steady, unrelenting approach of Him whom I so earnestly desired not to meet. That which I greatly feared had at last come upon me. In the Trinity Term of 1929 I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps, that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England.
posted by janey47 at 5:40 PM on July 14, 2014
Perfect love, we know, casteth out fear. But so do several others things—ignorance, alcohol, passion, presumption, and stupidity. It is very desirable that we should all advance to that perfection of love in which we shall fear no longer; but it is very undesirable, until we have reached that state, that we should allow any inferior agent to cast out our fear.
From Surprised by Joy:
You must picture me alone in that room in Magdalen, night after night, feeling, whenever my mind lifted even for a second from my work, the steady, unrelenting approach of Him whom I so earnestly desired not to meet. That which I greatly feared had at last come upon me. In the Trinity Term of 1929 I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps, that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England.
posted by janey47 at 5:40 PM on July 14, 2014
I think this is a long shot but what you said at least reminds me of a quote in "The Screwtape Letters" - "He [God] has a bourgeois mind. he has filled His world full of pleasures. There are things for humans to do all day long without His minding in the least - sleeping, washing, eating, drinking, making love, playing, praying, working. "
posted by brownrd at 9:25 PM on July 14, 2014
posted by brownrd at 9:25 PM on July 14, 2014
It could be this passage from The Four Loves?
"There is no safe investment. 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 Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell."
posted by Aravis76 at 1:58 PM on July 17, 2014
"There is no safe investment. 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 Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell."
posted by Aravis76 at 1:58 PM on July 17, 2014
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posted by empath at 5:18 PM on July 14, 2014