Discovering England

I have often had a fancy for writing a romance about an English yachtsman who slightly miscalculated his course and discovered England under the impression that it was a new island in the South Seas...There will probably be a general impression that the man who landed (armed to the teeth and talking by signs) to plant the British flag on that barbaric temple which turned out to be the Pavilion at Brighton, felt rather a fool. I am not here concerned to deny that he looked a fool. But if you imagine that he felt a fool, or at any rate that the sense of folly was his sole or his dominant emotion, then you have not studied with sufficient delicacy the rich romantic nature of the hero of this tale. His mistake was really a most enviable mistake; and he knew it, if he was the man I take him for. What could be more delightful than to have in the same few minutes the fascinating terrors of going abroad combined with all the humane security of coming home again?...What could be more glorious than to brace one's self up to discover New South Wales and then realize, with a gush of happy tears, that it was really old South Wales. This at least seems to me the main problem for philosophers, and is in a manner the main problem of this book. How can we contrive to be at once astonished at the world and yet at home in it? How can this queer cosmic town, with its many-legged citizens, with its monstrous and ancient lamps, how can this world give us at once the fascination of a strange town and the comfort and honour of being our own town?

-G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy, 9-10.

A Magic Castle

“The tables and chairs,” said Avon, “are just the way I like them. Even the pictures on the wall are to my fancy. Oh, Edward, someone has gone to a great deal of trouble...”

Suddenly, Avon felt very happy. “Just think,” he said, “to go on a long trip, to comes so far from where you live, and then—then to come upon a magic castle which has all the comforts of home. Oh, Edward, this has been the most exciting adventure of all. I believe I am happy at last.”

-Avi, The End of the Beginning, 128, 131.

Lost Causes

You don't throw away a whole life just 'cause it's banged up a little.

-Seabiscuit (quoted by Charles Garland, preaching in Fairmont, WV on 7/25/2008)

Visiting Paris

The thing is, Adam, time travel is like visiting Paris. You can't just read the guide book. You've got to throw yourself in, eat the food, use the wrong verbs, get charged double and end up kissing complete strangers—or is that just me? Stop asking questions. Go and do it!

-Doctor Who (quoted by Charles Garland, preaching in Fairmont, WV on 7/24/2008)

Edification/Demolition

Every time you meet another human being you have the opportunity. It’s a chance at holiness. For you will do one of two things, then. Either you will build him up, or you will tear him down. Either you will acknowledge that he is, or you will make him sorry that he is—sorry, at least, that he is there, in front of you. You will create, or you will destroy. And the things you dignify or deny are God’s own property. They are made, each one of them, in his own image.

There are no useless, minor meetings. There are no dead-end jobs. There are no pointless lives. Swallow your sorrows, forget your grievances, and all the hurt your poor life has sustained. Turn your face truly to the human before you and let her, for one pure moment, shine. Think her important, and then she will suspect that she is fashioned of God.

How do you say Hello? Or do you say Hello?

How do you greet the strangers? Or do you greet them?

Are you so proud as to burden your customer, your client, your neighbor, your child with your tribulation? Even by attitude? Even by crabbiness, anger, or gloom?

Demolition!

Or do you look them in the eye and grant them peace?

-Walter Wangerin, Ragman, and Other Cries of Faith, 129-130.

Stories are Light

Do you remember when Despereaux was in the dungeon, cupped in Gregory the jailer’s hand, whispering a story in the old man’s ear?

I would like it very much if you thought of me as a mouse telling you a story, this story, with the whole of my heart, whispering it in your ear in order to save myself from the darkness, and to save you from the darkness, too.

“Stories are light,” Gregory the jailer told Despereaux.

Reader, I hope you have found some light here.

-Katie DiCamillo, The Tale of Despereaux, Coda.

Forgiveness

Forgiveness, reader, is, I think, something very much like hope and love, a powerful, wonderful thing.

And a ridiculous thing too.

Isn't it ridiculous, after all, to think a son could forgive his father for beating the drum that sent him to his death? Isn't it ridiculous to think that a mouse could ever forgive anyone for such perfidy?

But still, here are the words Despereaux Tilling spoke to his father. He said, "I forgive you, Pa."

And he said those words because he sensed that it was the only way to save his own heart, to stop it from breaking in two. Despereaux, reader, spoke those words to save himself.

-Katie DiCamillo, The Tale of Despereaux, 207-208.

Dipped in Story

The value of the myth is that it takes all the things we know and restores to them the rich significance which has been hidden by ‘the veil of familiarity’. The child enjoys his cold meat (otherwise dull to him) by pretending it is buffalo, just killed with his own bow and arrow. And the child is wise. The real meat comes back to him more savoury for having been dipped in a story; you might say that only then is it the real meat. If you are tired of the real landscape, look at it in a mirror. By putting bread, gold, horse, apple, or the very roads into a myth, we do not retreat from reality: we rediscover it. As long as the story lingers in our mind, the real things are more themselves. This book applies the treatment not only to bread or apple but to good and evil, to our endless perils, our anguish, and our joys. By dipping them in myth we see them more clearly.

-C. S. Lewis, “Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings,” On Stories, 90.

Kid Lit

The truth is...that [fairy tales] are now associated with children because they are out of fashion with adults; have in fact retired to the nursery as old furniture used to retire there, not because the children had begun to like it but because their elders had ceased to like it.

...Am I to patronise sleep because children sleep sound? Or honey because children like it?

-C. S. Lewis, “Sometimes Fairy Stories May Say Best What's to Be Said,” On Stories and Other Essays on Literature, 47.

1 John 2:1

Behold, of what country is the love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are.

-literal translation by James Boice, The Epistles of John, 79.

Leaf by Niggle

He was a painter by nature. In a minor way, of course; still, a Leaf by Niggle has a charm of its own. He took a great deal of pains with leaves, just for their own sake.

-J. R. R. Tolkien, Leaf ny Niggle

Dancing

-Where the Hell is Matt? (2008)

Highs

I think I passed!!!

Already and Not Yet

Beneath [my] face I am a family plot. All the people I have ever been are buried there—the bouncing boy, his mother's pride; the pimply boy and secret sensualist; the reluctant infantryman; the beholder at dawn through hospital plate-glass of his first-born child...And buried in me too are all the people I have not been yet but might be someday—the Boston Strangler and St. John of the Cross, Heliogabulus and Dagwood Bumstead, Judas Iscariot and Robin Hood and Little Nell, all the lives I have not yet lived like promises not yet kept, dreams waiting for or dreading the possibility of being dreamed.

-Frederick Buechner, The Alphabet of Grace, 14-15.