as Flames in Winter
April 3, 2007
“I say you cannot really understand any myths till you have found that one of them is not a myth. Turnip ghosts mean nothing if there are no real ghosts. Forged bank-notes mean nothing if there are no real bank-notes. Heathen gods mean nothing, and must always mean nothing, to those of us that deny the Christian God. When once a god is admitted, even a false god, the Cosmos begins to know its place: which is the second place. When once it is the real God the Cosmos falls down before Him, offering flowers in spring as flames in winter.”
G. K. Chesterton, A Miscellany of Men
Groaning of Creation
March 14, 2007
“There I lay staring upward, while the stars wheeled over… Faint to my ears came the gathered rumour of all lands: the springing and the dying, the song and the weeping, and the slow everlasting groan of overburdened stone.”
J. R. R. Tolkien (1892 – 1973)
Tree of Theology
March 2, 2007
“People will tell you that theology became too elaborate because it was dead. Believe me, if it had been dead it would never have become elaborate; it is only the live tree that grows too many branches.”
G. K. Chesterton, “The Hat and the Halo” The Thing
Big Words
February 21, 2007
“Don’t use words too big for the subject. Don’t say “infinitely” when you mean “very”; otherwise you’ll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite.”
C. S. Lewis
Self-Sacrifice
February 16, 2007
“It must often be so, Sam, when things are in danger: someone has to give them up, lose them, so that others may keep them.”
J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord Of The Rings
Unanswerable Questions
January 21, 2007
“Can a mortal ask questions which God finds unanswerable? Quite easily, I should think. All nonsense questions are unanswerable.”
C. S. Lewis
How to stay an Athiest
January 12, 2007
“A young man who wishes to remain a sound atheist cannot be too careful of his reading.”
C. S. Lewis
He who seeks . . .
January 11, 2007
“There is nothing like looking, if you want to find something. You certainly usually find something, if you look, but it is not always quite the something you were after.”
J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord Of The Ring
. . . of True Worth
January 9, 2007
“All that is gold does not glitter,
not all those who wander are lost;
the old that is strong does not wither,
deep roots are not reached by the frost.
From the ashes a fire shall be woken,
a light from the shadows shall spring;
renenwed shall be blade that was broken,
the crownless again shall be king.”
J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord Of The Ring
Heaven?
January 5, 2007
His house was perfect, whether you liked food, or sleep, or work, or story-telling, or singing, or just sitting and thinking best, or a pleasant mixture of them all.
J. R. R. Tolkien, The Hobbit
