Time-less

C.S. Lewis, in his second letter to me at Oxford, asked how it was that I, as a product of a materialistic universe, was not at home there. 'Do fish complain of the sea for being wet? Or if they did, would that fact itself not strongly suggest that they had not always been, or wd. not always be, purely aquatic creatures? ' Then, if we complain of time and take such joy in the seemingly timeless moment, what does that suggest?

It suggests that we have not always been or will not always be purely temporal creatures. It suggests that we were created for eternity. Not only are we harried by time, we seem unable, despite a thousand generations, even to get used to it. We are always amazed at it -- how fast it goes, how slowly it goes, how much of it is gone. Where, we cry, has the time gone? We aren't adapted to it, not at home in it. If that is so, it may appear as a proof, or at least a powerful suggestion, that eternity exists and is our home.

A Severe Mercy
The Severe Mercy page 203
Sheldon Vanauken

Adjectives

One day in early March in a class in world civilisations I pointed out that no textbook writer was ever purely objective and that his particular bias could often be discovered through his choice of adjectives. Among my examples was that of an 'enlightened emperor' of China who, doubting his own religion, invited missionaries of other religions into China to present their beliefs. The class was puzzled. The emperor, I said, might be called 'open-minded' but to call him 'enlightened' -having the light of spiritual truth -when he did not, in fact, believe anything, must mean that the author, if not simply careless, must hold that to believe in nothing was to have the light of truth.

A Severe Mercy
The Barrier Breached
page 130
Sheldon Vanauken

Answers to Prayer

In the course of a discussion about the efficacy of prayer, he [C.S. Lewis] made the point that it was altogether healthier to find yourself being used as the answer to someone else's prayer And he told the story of his nagging impulse to go and get an unneeded haircut, finding when he gave in to it that his barber had been steadily praying that Lewis would come by.

A Severe Mercy
Thou Art the King of Glory
page 110
Sheldon Vanauken