R.L. Swihart's Blog, page 64

Surprised by Joy

What I learned from the Idealists (and still most strongly hold) is this maxim: it is more important that Heaven should exist than that any of us should reach it. And so the great Angler played His fish and I never dreamed that the hook was in my tongue. But two great advances had been made. Bergson had showed me necessary existence; and from Idealism I had come one step nearer to understanding the words, ‘We give thanks to thee for thy great glory.’ The Norse gods had given me the first hint of it; but then I didn’t believe in them, and I did believe (so far as one can believe an Unding) in the Absolute.

Surprised by Joy

Even in peace-time I think those are very wrong who say that schoolboys should be encouraged to read the newspapers. Nearly all that a boy reads there in his teens will be known before he is twenty to have been false in emphasis and interpretation, if not in fact as well, and most of it will have lost all importance. Most of what he remembers he will therefore have to unlearn; and he will probably have acquired an incurable taste for vulgarity and sensationalism and the fatal habit of fluttering from paragraph to paragraph to learn how an actress has been divorced in California, a train derailed in France, and quadruplets born in New Zealand.

Ring-necked Ducks @ Borrego Springs

Ring-necked Duck @ Borrego Springs. Saw these cuties in San Joaquin M & W but couldn't get close. In BS they hang out at an abandoned golf course. Small pond = better pics.

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Surprised by Joy

 We are taught in the Prayer Book to ‘give thanks to God for His great glory’, as if we owed Him more thanks for being what He necessarily is than for any particular benefit He confers upon us; and so indeed we do and to know God is to know this.

Borrego Springs 2022: The Dragon

 

White-winged Mourning Dove in Borrego Springs

White-winged Mourning Doves @ Borrego Springs. Got these beauties (rare here not there) but didn't get the prize I was hoping for: the little Verdin. Had a great time hiking and glamping.

#rlswihart13 #borrego #borregospringsca #mourningdoves #whitewingedmourningdoves #birdsofinstagram #nature #beauty #desertlife #glamping #poetry #readmorepoetry2022

C.S. Lewis's Surprised by Joy

The reader who finds these three episodes of no interest need read this book no further, for in a sense the central story of my life is about nothing else. For those who are still disposed to proceed I will only underline the quality common to the three experiences; it is that of an unsatisfied desire which is itself more desirable than any other satisfaction. I call it Joy, which is here a technical term and must be sharply distinguished both from Happiness and from Pleasure. Joy (in my sense) has indeed one characteristic, and one only, in common with them; the fact that anyone who has experienced it will want it again. Apart from that, and considered only in its quality, it might almost equally well be called a particular kind of unhappiness or grief. But then it is a kind we want. I doubt whether anyone who has tasted it would ever, if both were in his power, exchange it for all the pleasures in the world. But then Joy is never in our power and pleasure often is.

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England’s position in 1940 was to me no surprise; it was the sort of thing that I always expect. Hence while friendship has been by far the chief source of my happiness, acquaintance or general society has always meant little to me, and I cannot quite understand why a man should wish to know more people than he can make real friends of. Hence, too, a very defective, perhaps culpably defective, interest in large impersonal movements, causes and the like. The concern aroused in me by a battle (whether in story or in reality) is almost in an inverse ratio to the number of the combatants.

Melville's Benito Cereno: The Knot

Captain Delano crossed over to him, and stood in silence surveying the knot; his mind, by a not uncongenial transition, passing from its own entanglements to those of the hemp. For intricacy, such a knot he had never seen in an American ship, nor indeed any other. The old man looked like an Egyptian priest, making Gordian knots for the temple of Ammon. The knot seemed a combination of double-bowline-knot, treble-crown-knot, back-handed-well-knot, knot-in-and-out-knot, and jamming-knot. At last, puzzled to comprehend the meaning of such a knot, Captain Delano addressed the knotter: — "What are you knotting there, my man?" "The knot," was the brief reply, without looking up. "So it seems; but what is it for?" "For some one else to undo," muttered back the old man, plying his fingers harder than ever, the knot being now nearly completed.

Christmas Gang (2021)

Christmas Morning. The kids are too old to have sugar plums dancing in their heads, but they're still sleeping. Rain not snow. I'm having coffee and hoping to return once again to see the Breakfast Club (redubbed here the Christmas Gang) in action. Somewhere CA. MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!❤️🎁❄️
#rlswihart13 #somewhereca #christmasday2021 #birdsofchristmas #christmasgang #breakfastclub #housefinch #spottedtowhee #nature #poetry #beauty #readmorepoetry2021 #greentailedtowhee #whitecrownedsparrow

Melville's Bartleby

So true it is, and so terrible, too, that up to a certain point the thought or sight of misery enlists our best affections; but, in certain special cases, beyond that point it does not. They err who would assert that invariably this is owing to the inherent selfishness of the human heart. It rather proceeds from a certain hopelessness of remedying excessive and organic ill. To a sensitive being, pity is not seldom pain. And when at last it is perceived that such pity cannot lead to effectual succor, common sense bids the soul be rid of it. What I saw that morning persuaded me that the scrivener was the victim of innate and incurable disorder. I might give alms to his body; but his body did not pain him; it was his soul that suffered, and his soul I could not reach.