I'm blogging to blog today, as in to let you know what's going on in my life and my head.
Life is good, no doubt about that, except for one paper that stands between me and Thanksgiving break. Ahh, Thanksgiving... apparently my mom made cookie dough so we can make leaf and acorn-shaped cookies when I get home. I have been craving those cookies all week and I look forward to making a frosting and sprinkle mess all over the counter.
Anyway, this paper is making me question things in ways I wasn't supposed to. Mainly I am thinking that if the concepts of love, suffering, grace, and redemption are so complex and mysterious, how in the world am I supposed to write a coherent essay about it in relation to this book? Some things are just too good for anyone to write about... that's why C.S. Lewis, Dostoevsky, and Flannery O'Connor are so remarkable. They were able to articulate the truths of life through their characters, symbols, and plots. I, on the other hand, am limited to analysis and research about these works and can therefore not explain these ideas as thoroughly as these masters of the written word. And yet, I must suck it up and do it. Now.
Any time now.
Alas. College.
Anyway, enjoy these quotes by C.S. Lewis (from http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/c/c_s_lewis.html, image from http://www.mrrena.com/2001/Lewis.shtml)
A man can no more diminish God's glory by refusing to worship Him than a lunatic can put out the sun by scribbling the word, 'darkness' on the walls of his cell.
A young man who wishes to remain a sound atheist cannot be too careful of his reading.
Affection is responsible for nine-tenths of whatever solid and durable happiness there is in our lives.
Aim at heaven and you will get earth thrown in. Aim at earth and you get neither.
An explanation of cause is not a justification by reason.
Can a mortal ask questions which God finds unanswerable? Quite easily, I should think. All nonsense questions are unanswerable.
Christianity, if false, is of no importance, and if true, of infinite importance. The only thing it cannot be is moderately important.
Courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point.
Don't use words too big for the subject. Don't say "infinitely" when you mean "very"; otherwise you'll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite.
Education without values, as useful as it is, seems rather to make man a more clever devil.
Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it.
Experience: that most brutal of teachers. But you learn, my God do you learn.
Failures are finger posts on the road to achievement.
Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art... It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things that give value to survival.
God cannot give us a happiness and peace apart from Himself, because it is not there. There is no such thing.
