[EUSTACE] ROSE QUIETLY from his place and walked away among the trees, taking care to go slowly and in an aimless manner so that anyone who saw him would think he was merely stretching his legs. He was surprised to find how quickly the noise of conversation died away behind him and how very silent and warm and dark green the wood became. . . .
The ground began sloping steeply up in front of him. The grass was dry and slippery but manageable if he used his hands as well as his feet, and though he panted and mopped his forehead a good deal, he plugged away steadily. This showed, by the way, that his new life, little as he suspected it, had already done him some good; the old Eustace, Harold and Alberta’s Eustace, would have given up the climb after about ten minutes.
Slowly, and with several rests, he reached the ridge. Here he had expected to have a view into the heart of the island, but the clouds had now come lower and nearer and a sea of fog was rolling to meet him. He sat down and looked back. He was now so high that the bay looked small beneath him and miles of sea were visible. Then the fog from the mountains closed in all round him, thick but not cold, and he lay down and turned this way and that to find the most comfortable position to enjoy himself.
But he didn’t enjoy himself, or not for very long. He began, almost for the first time in his life, to feel lonely. At first this feeling grew very gradually. And then he began to worry about the time. There was not the slightest sound. Suddenly it occurred to him that he might have been lying there for hours. Perhaps the others had gone! Perhaps they had let him wander away on purpose simply in order to leave him behind! He leaped up in a panic and began the descent.
—The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
Archives For literature
ASLAN,” SAID LUCY through her tears, “could you—will you—do something for these poor Dwarfs?”
“Dearest,” said Aslan, “I will show you both what I can, and what I cannot, do.” He came close to the Dwarfs and gave a low growl: low, but it set all the air shaking. But the Dwarfs said to one another, “Hear that? That’s the gang at the other end of the stable. Trying to frighten us. They do it with a machine of some kind. Don’t take any notice. They won’t take us in again!”
Aslan raised his head and shook his mane. Instantly a glorious feast appeared on the Dwarfs’ knees: pies and tongues and pigeons and trifles and ices, and each Dwarf had a goblet of good wine in his right hand. But it wasn’t much use. They began eating and drinking greedily enough, but it was clear that they couldn’t taste it properly. They thought they were eating and drinking only the sort of things you might find in a stable. One said he was trying to eat hay and another said he had got a bit of an old turnip and a third said he’d found a raw cabbage leaf. . . . But very soon every Dwarf began suspecting that every other Dwarf had found something nicer than he had, and they started grabbing and snatching, and went on to quarreling, till in a few minutes there was a free fight and all the good food was smeared on their faces and clothes or trodden under foot. But when at last they sat down to nurse their black eyes and their bleeding noses, they all said:
“Well, at any rate there’s no Humbug here. We haven’t let anyone take us in. The Dwarfs are for the Dwarfs.”
“You see,” said Aslan. “They will not let us help them. They have chosen cunning instead of belief. Their prison is only in their own minds, yet they are in that prison; and so afraid of being taken in that they cannot be taken out.”
—The Last Battle
MAY 26
Despair and Die
THEY BEGAN TO DRAG the bound and muzzled Lion to the Stone Table, some pulling and some pushing. He was so huge that even when they got him there it took all their efforts to hoist him onto the surface of it. Then there was more tying and tightening of cords.
“The cowards! The cowards!” sobbed Susan. “Are they still afraid of him, even now?”
When once Aslan had been tied (and tied so that he was really a mass of cords) on the flat stone, a hush fell on the crowd. Four Hags, holding four torches, stood at the corners of the Table. The Witch bared her arms as she had bared them the previous night when it had been Edmund instead of Aslan. Then she began to whet her knife. It looked to the children, when the gleam of the torchlight fell on it, as if the knife were made of stone, not of steel, and it was of a strange and evil shape.
At last she drew near. She stood by Aslan’s head. Her face was working and twitching with passion, but his looked up at the sky, still quiet, neither angry nor afraid, but a little sad. Then, just before she gave the blow, she stooped down and said in a quivering voice,
“And now, who has won? Fool, did you think that by all this you would save the human traitor? Now I will kill you instead of him as our pact was and so the Deep Magic will be appeased. But when you are dead what will prevent me from killing him as well? And who will take him out of my hand then? Understand that you have given me Narnia forever, you have lost your own life and you have not saved his. In that knowledge, despair and die.”
—The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe
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Many readers buy books with every intention of reading them only to let them linger on the shelf.
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Statistician Nassim Nicholas Taleb believes surrounding ourselves with unread books enriches our lives as they remind us of all we don’t know.
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The Japanese call this practice tsundoku, and it may provide lasting benefits.
https://bigthink.com/personal-growth/do-i-own-too-many-books?rebelltitem=1#rebelltitem1
A good bit of Lewis’s success can, I think, be attributed to the fact that he actually writes relatively little “theology” in this technical sense. Clearly, he’s read a good bit of it and been instructed by it—he does not in any sense belittle it—but he tends to seek language that captures and communicates the quality, the feel, of living and thinking as a Christian. As Austin Farrer put it: “[Lewis’] real power was not proof; it was depiction. There lived in his writings a Christian universe that could be both thought and felt, in which he was at home and in which he made his reader feel at home.” That is the universe I want to explore. It illumines the everyday, so that we may find in it shafts of the divine glory that point to God, so that we may sense the eternal significance of ordinary life.
https://www.firstthings.com/article/1998/08/the-everyday-cs-lewis
It is a growing trend that new equates to good and old to bad in today’s society. I witness this attitude a lot in historical discussions where people carry the notion that present and future attitudes on culture and society are simply better due to their newness. Don’t give up the classics due to their age.
https://aleteia.org/blogs/catholic-thinking/on-the-tiresome-notion-of-progress/
Follow up on the previous essay on constructing a library in the home. This one delves into the thought processes for library organization. His personal library would be sorted by conservative politics, Catholicism, and culture. If and when I construct my own I predict it will be sorted in a similar fashion between historical, literature, and religious books. How would you organize your library?
https://aleteia.org/blogs/catholic-thinking/how-to-organize-your-library/
sempiternal – adj. Enduring forever; eternal. From Latin sempiternus, from semper always + aeternuseternal
roborative – adj. Who Strengthens; fortifying. From Latin roborare to consolidate
recriminatory – adj. To counter one accusation with another. From re- + Latin crīmināre, to accuse
obligingly – adv. Ready to do favors for others; accommodating; in accommodation
interminable – adj. Being or seeming to be without an end; endless. From Late Latin interminābilis
quittances – n. Release from debt or other obligation; a receipt or other document certifying this. From Old French quiter to free
commodious – adj. Spacious; roomy; Archaic Suitable; handy. From Latin commodus convenient
gimcrack – n. A cheap and showy object of little or no use; a gewgaw. adj. Cheap and tasteless; gaudy. From Middle English gibecrake, small ornament
epaulette – n. A shoulder ornament, especially a fringed strap worn on military uniforms. From Latin spatula shoulder blade
neume – n. any of various symbols representing from one to four notes, used in the notation of Gregorian chant. From Greek pneuma breath
Pretty crafty idea to construct a library in your own home. I too as a young boy set as a goal that once I own my home that a library be inside. Libraries are far much more than a shelf of books and I think the author does a good job of explaining why. I would imagine my library shelves to contain countless volumes of Roman and Medieval history. While e-books are certainly a useful innovation and allow me to carry what accounts to a full library on the go I fear it will never come close to replacing the ambiance of a quiet room in which knowledge lives.
https://aleteia.org/blogs/catholic-thinking/why-you-should-build-a-library/