But, mark my words, the man who cannot see that receiving is very different from accepting is blind indeed. Receiving is, above all, a gift, the gift of oneself, and I could not call him a miser who refuses to ruin himself with presents; the miser is one who bestows not the light of his countenance in return for your largesse. And miserly is the soil which does not clothe itself in beauty when you have strewn your seed upon it.
—Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Wisdom of the Sands
… to the mind of the majority, whatever is given in one place is stolen from elsewhere; it is their dealings in the marketplace and their forgetfulness of God that have thus shaped their minds. Yet, in reality, what you give does not lessen your store; far otherwise, it augments for you the riches you can distribute. Thus he who loves all men, by grace of his love of God, loves each man vastly more than he who, loving but one of them, extends merely to his partner the paltry field of himself.
—Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Wisdom of the Sands
Thus, too, love is no sure resting place if it does not transform itself from day to day, like a child in the womb. But you, my sedate friend, propose to loll in your gondola and to become the gondolier’s song for all your days; wherein you dupe yourself. For all that is neither ascent nor a transition lacks significance. And when you halt on the way, you will have no joy of it; for the landscape will have nothing more to tell you. Then you will discard the woman; whereas you should have begun by discarding your old self.
—Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Wisdom of the Sands
I don’t think I possess a sufficient range of social adaptability to enable me to enjoy the company of someone like Truman Capote, if the representation of him in the film Capote is close to reality. I say that not with puritanical pride, but as an admission of my limitations. Yet, as I watched this creepy character unfold and even unravel before my eyes, there was something deep inside me that admired him—or, at least, something about him. And I’ve been trying to figure out how to explain that.
Let me clarify that I didn’t admire his creepiness, his self-absorbtion, his deception. I didn’t even admire the pitiable aspects of his character and the events that molded his character. So it wasn’t the twisted aspects of my psyche responding to the twisted aspects of his (though that sometimes happens). Rather, I was mesmerized by the beauty in him—the creativity, the drive to take a mass of confusion and resolve it into a moving, life-changing piece of literature. In that sense he was truly God-like, but not in the idolatrous sense that he mistakenly craved. I mean that all the muck of his depravity could not snuff out the image of God in him.
And that left me not only with a ray of hope for myself; it forced me to reconsider the way I view others.
But them I call the rabble who hang on others’ words and gestures, and, chamelon-wise, take their color from them, truckling to their benefactors, relishing applause, and making themselves the mirror of the multitude. Never do you find such men faithful wardens of their heritage, like a citadel; nor do they hand down their password from generation to generation; but rather let their children grow at random, without molding them. And everywhere they breed, like fungus, on the face of the earth.
—Antoine de Saint-Exupery, The Wisdom of the Sands
In 1978 at Oklahoma State University I sat through a course in the New Testament. OSU had a fine wrestling, golf, and baseball programs, but their “religious studies” wasn’t ranked in the top twenty in the nation. Our professor didn’t seem to believe that any of the New Testament was true. She seemed to think it was a record of the manipulative and sexist Paul, who was (along with the other apostles) clearly expecting Jesus to return any minute, but who died in his growing disillusionment.
Those of us who actually believe the Bible sometimes feel embarrassed by those (numerous) verses that almost drool with anticipation that something really big is getting ready to happen. And if we assume that they expected something like the end of the world any minute, then we have to scramble to explain how “any minute” could mean, say, in two thousand years (or more). (more…)
If the Church doesn’t disciple the nation, the nation will disciple the Church.
—Dennis Tongoi
Knowledge and wisdom, far from being one,
Have ofttimes no connection. Knowledge dwells
In heads replete with thoughts of other men;
Wisdom in minds attentive to their own.
Knowledge, a rude unprofitable mass,
The mere materials with which wisdom builds,
Till smoothed and squared and fitted to its place,
Does but encumber whom it seems to enrich.
Knowledge is proud that he has learned so much,
Wisdom is humble that he knows no more.
—William Cowper, The Task, book 6, lines 88-97
There is in souls a sympathy with sounds,
And as the mind is pitched the ear is pleased
With melting airs or martial, brisk or grave;
Some chord in unison with what we hear
Is touched within us, and the heart replies.
How soft the music of those village bells
Falling at intervals upon the ear
In cadence sweet, now dying all away,
Now pealing loud again, and louder still,
Clear and sonorous as the gale comes on.
With easy force it opens all the cells
Where memory slept. Wherever I have heard
A kindred melody, the scene recurs,
And with it all its pleasures and its pains.
—William Cowper, The Task, book 6, lines 11-14
I’ve long been interested in William Cowper’s labyrinthine personality—the juxtaposition of grace and despair in his soul. I’ve been interested enough to read his shorter verse—including his Olney Hymns, published with John Newton (“Amazing Grace” is the most famous of those). And just today I grew interested enough to read Cowper’s The Task, a major poem of six books of about 800 lines each that started out as “a trifle.” Here’s what he said about it in the advertisement for its publication in 1785: (more…)