"As to the business about being ‘rooted’ or ‘at home every where’, I wonder are they really the opposite, or are they the same thing. I mean, don’t you enjoy the Alps more precisely because you began by first learning to love in an intimate and homely way on our own hills and woods? While the mere globe-trotter, starting not from a home feeling but from guide books and aesthetic chatter, feels equally at home everywhere only in the sense that he is really at home nowhere? It is just like the difference between vague general philanthropy (which is all balls) and learning to first love your own friends and neighbors which makes you more, not less, able to love the next stranger who comes along. If a man loveth not his brother whom he hath seen – et cetera. [John 4:20] In other words doesn’t one get to the universal (either in people or in inanimate nature) thro’ the individual – not by going off into a mere generalized mash."
- C.S. Lewis to Arthur Greeves: on the necessity of charity beginning “at home”, through one’s own friends and neighbors.
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| (The table at our book group this week in honor of Gr'ma's birthday which was on the same day.) |
I will have to get this book! I was just thinking the other day that I haven't been reading enough lately.
ReplyDeleteBy the way, is that your tablecloth, and are those your teapots? They are SO gorgeous. I need to come live with you for a month and apprentice as a table-setter. :)
At the beginning of the month I started trying to read every night for a half an hour before I go to bed, but it turns out that I like the books I pick out so much that I end up reading whenever I can. :-P
ReplyDeleteThat is my table cloth; I got it at the B St. thrift store for $1! Isn't it so cute?! And those are my teapots; the more ornate of them used to be Noel's grand or great-grand parents'. :) Haha, I would love it if you came to stay with me!