C.S. Lewis

“Keep Back Nothing”

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“Your real, new self (which is Christ’s and also yours, and yours just because it is His) will not come as long as you are looking for it. It will come when you are looking for Him.

Does that sound strange? The same principle holds, you know, for more everyday matters. Even in social life, you will never make a good impression on other people until you stop thinking about what sort of impression you are making.

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.

The principle runs through all life from top to bottom, Give up yourself, and you will find your real self. Lose your life and you will save it. Submit to death, death of your ambitions and favourite wishes every day and death of your whole body in the end submit with every fibre of your being, and you will find eternal life. Keep back nothing. Nothing that you have not given away will be really yours. Nothing in you that has not died will ever be raised from the dead. Look for yourself, and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin, and decay.

But look for Christ and you will find Him, and with Him everything else thrown in.”  -C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

There is nothing for me to add except to say…brilliant. And also, maybe that we should incorporate “twopence” back into our common conversations.

Dirt Under My Nails

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“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even 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. To love is to be vulnerable.” – C. S. Lewis

Water cascades down stone tiles, there is certificate upon certificate in frames on the walls, and a background of piano keys that do nothing to stir my soul. I’m waiting on a leather sofa across from a wooden screen. It looks Asian, but I’m as unsure of this as I am of the knee-high boots and yoga pants I’m wearing. The assistant is doing a checklist of all my supplements, poking her pinky around an iPad. I’m immediately defensive because I know how I’ve been slacking.
“Well, I take fish oil every other day.” She reminds me about the benefit of a daily intake.
Yes, I know. Should I take this while my oldest snarls her acidic tongue at her brother or when my youngest begins to scream like someone has pierced her with an arrow? Just wondering, because really, I’m grateful to be out of bed.

Some days I can’t bear. Period. There is no fill in the blank because it’s all of it, that is overwhelming me. The fake waterfalls, the operator music. This forced ambiance and I, we’re not clicking. I want the casket because everyone standing at my gravesite makes me feel heavy. Impenetrable? Yes, please. I think I won’t survive unless I lock up my heart.

I’m angry? Oh. I’m angry. Why?

My pen keeps going on the page, words are coming like crumbs dropped along a path so I find my way. I follow them.

Longing. I’m longing for something. Probably connection. It’s always that. And security. A place to let down. Somewhere that is safe, and all this Fung Shoo isn’t it. Give me the smell of cattle, move my neighbors no less than two acres on all sides, let my face feel the sun through a labyrinth of branches and the grass tangle itself in my hair until my arms grow goose bumps from the shifting winds of storm fronts. Give me country, where I most often hear the voice of God.

“Do something that makes you out of breath. Run up the stairs instead of walk, dance with your kids,” my doctor tells me. “Punch the mattress.”
This, gets my attention. I’ve learned recently that out of the three types of reactions: flight, fight, or freeze, I fight. I’m a fighter. So the coffin isn’t actually going to work for me. Maybe for a quick nap, because who can’t use one of those from time to time? And after a little rest I’ll kick back the lid, dig into the dirt until my fingernails are caked, and climb to all the relationships who love me enough to do death with me, to vulnerability.

Gloom and doom, we have some business to do.