While reading C.S. Lewis aloud to one of my best friends and roommate, Yandi, I realized that I miss the challenge.
I miss the challenge of delving in the apologetics and philosophy. I miss debate and discussion with friends who also cared about something other than pop culture. Conversations such as “what did you think of the latest Glee episode?” have their place, but what about discussion of the writings of Tolstoy or the poems of Walt Whitman?
I believe that though, disputes and uncanny debate over philosophy is futile, it is no more so than perusing through People magazine. Ecclesiastes states that “…all is vanity and a striving after the wind(Ecc. 2:17).” However, my question is, will People magazine really challenge your perspective of life or your perception of people?
My challenge to you is to break out of your habitual routine and engage your eyes in the reading of someone who is dead. Have a discussion about Hemingway. Read the poems of Robert Frost. I think you will be surprised at what these things spark up in your mind. With this challenge set, I would like to share with you what I read the other day that got me to thinking so much about expanding the horizon of my influence again:
Friendship, like the other natural loves, is unable to save itself. In reality, because it is spiritual and therefore faces a subtler enemy, it must even more wholeheartedly than they, invoke the divine protection if it hopes to remain sweet. For consider how narrow its true path is. It must not become what the people call a ‘mutual admiration society’; yet if it is not full of mutual admiration, of Appreciative love, it is not Friendship at all…
For a Christian, there are, strictly speaking, no chances. A secret Master of the Ceremonies had been at work. Christ, who said to the disciples, ‘Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you’, can truly say to every group of Christian friends, ‘You have not chosen one another but I have chosen you for one another.’ The friendship is not a reward for our discrimination and good taste in finding one another out. It is the instrument by which God reveals to each the beauties of all the others. They are no greater than the beauties of a thousand other men; by Friendship God opens our eyes to them. They are, like all beauties, derived from Him, and then, in a good Friendship, increased by Him through the Friendship itself, so that it is His instrument for creating as well as for revealing. At this feast it is He who has spread the board and it is He who has chosen the guests. It is He, we may dare to hope, who sometimes does, and always should, preside. Let us not reckon without our Host.”
C.S. Lewis, Friendship Needs Divine Protection (The Business of Heaven)
Love what you have to say! I accept this challenge to read and discuss the works of those gone. I have been wanting to read more poetry and try to grasp a better understanding of it anyways. All the more reason to do so now! P.S. I’m looking at your blogroll and there is no D in my name haha thanks!