Saturday, January 06, 2007

Catch-up Post III: Quotes

Thursday night

Like the stars across the heavens flung
Like water in the desert sprung
Like the grains of sand, our many sons
Oh, Sarah, fair and barren one
Come to Canaan, come
~Andrew Peterson

How’s about me digging up a little something from me quote book? I’ve been feeling rather Lewis-ish (Don’t you love using words like that, like Tolkien-esque, and Hichcock-ian?), so here are a few from That Hideous Strength. I read the Space Trilogy again this summer, and find myself disliking THS a little less each time I read it. It was the same listening to A Tale of Two Cities. Those classics do grow on one. Anyway, here are a few bits I noted. First a serious one:

The name me was the name of a being whose existence she had never suspected, a being that did not yet fully exist, but which was demanded. It was a person (not the person she had thought), yet also a thing, a made thing, made to please Another and in Him to please all others, a thing being made at this very moment, without its choice, in a shape it had never dreamed of. ~C.S. Lewis~

I like that one. Not many of us like being thought of as things, I fancy, but we’re so used to ideas of people’s rights to themselves and the glory of personal freedom that maybe it strikes at us from a new angle to be thought of as a thing, “a made thing.” And it’s also good to be reminded that the person I am meant to be, the real me, is only beginning to be made. What a relief I’m not all there is of me! I’ve been rather worried lately that I’m not all here, but now it only makes sense. ;)

“The cardinal difficulty,” said MacPhee, “in collaboration between the sexes is that women speak a language without nouns. If two men are doing a bit of work, one will say to the other, ‘Put this bowl inside the bigger bowl which you’ll find on the top shelf of the green cupboard.’ The female for this is, ‘Put that in the other one in there.’ And then if you ask them, ‘in where?’ they say, ‘in there, of course.’” ~C.S. Lewis~

Now, who hasn’t seen how true this is?

2 comments:

  1. I loved THS the best of the three the first time through...especially when the gods descend (in particular, Mercury.) The tramp's situation also cracks me up- especially when he's described as looking like "a somnambulist chimpanzee dressed up as a doctor of philosophy."

    Some of Lewis' opinons about gender roles and such tend to chafe me though- and I'll readily admit, he may be right. *ponder

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  2. Anonymous7:48 AM

    I just LOVE the Space Trilogy! I think it may be (almost) my favorite Lewis work! I agree with you Rael, about THS having to grow on you a bit though...;) I think Perelandra has always been my personal favorite. But I love the quotes you shared! Funny, I don't remember that first one...but it is very thought provoking, and relieving in a way, as you said. Hmmm, maybe I will have to read the books again soon... ;)

    The second quote is hilarous! And so true - men just seem to have to have everything spelled out for them, don't they... ;) j/k
    Great post!

    ~Charity

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