Like Branches

I see it is not only questions and thoughts that grow out wider and wider like branches. Joy also widens out and comes where we had never thought. — CS Lewis, Perelandra

The Spell was Broken.

“I will tell you what I say,” answered Ransom, jumping to his feet. “Of course good came of it. Is Maleldil a beast that we can stop His path, or a leaf that we can twist His shape? Whatever you do, He will make good of it. But not the good He had prepared for …

Repentance

Lord, I confesse my sin is great; Great is my sin. Oh! gently treat With thy quick flow’r, thy momentary bloom; Whose life still pressing Is one undressing, A steady aiming at a tomb. Mans age is two hours work, or three: Each day doth round about us see. Thus are we to delights: but …

Easter Wings

My tender age in sorrow did beginne And still with sicknesses and shame Thou didst so punish sinne, That I became Most thinne. With thee Let me combine, And feel this day thy victorie: For, if I imp my wing on thine, Affliction shall advance the flight in me. Lord, who createdst man in wealth …

Mental Health, Mystery & Morbidity

As long as you have mystery you have health; when you destroy mystery you create morbidity. – GK Chesterton

Words

WORDS, for alas my trade is words, a barren burst of rhyme,⁠Rubbed by a hundred rhymesters, battered a thousand times,Take them, you, that smile on strings, those nobler sounds than mine,⁠The words that never lie, or brag, or flatter, or malign.I give a hand to my lady, another to my friend,⁠To whom you too have …

Preface to Letters from Hell

I would not willingly be misunderstood; when I say the book is full of truth, I do not mean either truth of theory or truth in art, but something far deeper and higher--the realities of our relations to God and man and duty all, in short, that belongs to the conscience. Prominent among these is …

This Keen and Piercing Charity

We ought to see far enough into a hypocrite to see even his sincerity. We ought to be interested in that darkest and most real part of a man in which dwell not the vices that he does not display, but the virtues that he cannot. And the more we approach the problems of human …

The Sorcerers

The primary image of sorcery here is that of the fortune-tellers, who, having attempted to usurp God's prerogative by prying into the future, are now so twisted that eyes and feet face in opposite directions. More generally, there is an image of the twisted nature of all magical art, which is a de formation of …

Sponsa Dei

“Sponsa Dei. What is this Maiden fair,The laughing of whose eyeIs in man’s heart renew’d virginity;Who yet sick longing breedsFor marriage which exceedsThe inventive guess of Love to satisfyWith hope of utter binding, and of loosing endless dear despair?What gleams about her shine,More transient than delight and more divine!If she does something but a little …