The Marvel

I’m reading a book by Donald T. Williams , Mere Humanity: G. K. Chesterton, C. S. Lewis, And J. R. R. Tolkien on the Human Condition. I’m enjoying it. It gives me a good reason to read about my three favorite authors. Dr. Williams has a poem before each chapter. Below is one that I liked.

Here’s the Marvel
by Donald T. Williams

Here’s the marvel; That the self-contained
And all sufficient triple Unity
Which for untold eternities had reigned
Complete in its own pure simplicity
Should will unnecessary worlds to be.
And yet his mind was steel, his purpose flint:
He struck off sparks of flaming ecstasy
And called the stars by name. The thing he meant?
To make his glory visible. He sent
Forth pulsing space-time-matter-energy
Which danced in pirouettes as on it went.
Just one thing more needed: eyes to see
And skin to feel, and mind to comprehend.
He called it Adam and there made an end.

To New Friends . . .

I am thankful for new friends. Here’s C.S. Lewis on the birth of friendship.

“Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another, ‘What! You too? I thought I was the only one!’”

C. S. Lewis

I am thankful for the opportunity that we have had to enter into closer friendship.

And I like this one too, that friendship is on a par with philosophy or art, it’s what makes life worthwhile.

“Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art… It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things that give value to survival.”

C. S. Lewis

Thanks, Friends!

we were meant for more!

“Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for these 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.”

C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, Bk. III, chap. 10, “Hope”

Bertrand Russell wrote,

“The centre of me is always and eternally a terrible pain – a curious wild pain – a searching for something beyond what the world contains.”

St Augustine wrote,

“You made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless till they rest in you.”

Blaise Pascal wrote in Pensees #425

“What else does this craving, and this helplessness, proclaim but that there was once in man a true happiness, of which all that now remains is the empty print and trace? This he tries in vain to fill with everything around him, seeking in things that are not there the help he cannot find in those that are, though none can help, since this infinite abyss can be filled only with an infinite and immutable object; in other words by God himself.”

What do you think, do you ever feel that there is more to this life?