Quote, passage, & poem from A Severe Mercy by Sheldon Vanauken, 'An Encounter With Light':

One day later there came the second intellectual breakthrough: it was the rather chilling realisation that I could not go back. In my old easy-going theism, I had regarded Christianity as a sort of faith tale; and I had neither accepted nor rejected Jesus, since I had never, in fact, encountered him. Now I had. The position was not, as I had been comfortably thinking all these months, merely a question of whether I was to accept the Messiah or not. It was a question of whether I was to accept Him - or reject. My God! There was a gap behind me, too. Perhaps the leap to acceptance was a horrifying gamble--but what of the leap to rejection? There might be no certainty that Christ was God--but, by God, there was no certainty that He was not. If I were to accept, I might and probably would face the thought through the years: 'Perhaps, after all, it's a lie; I've been had!' But if I were to reject, I would certainly face the haunting, terrible thought: 'Perhaps it's true--and I have rejected my God!'
This was not to be borne. I could not reject Jesus. There was only one thing to do, once I had seen the gap behind me. I turned away from it and flung myself over the gap towards Jesus.

THE GAP

Did Jesus live? And did he really say
The burning words that banish mortal fear?
And are they true? Just this is central, here
The Church must stand or fall. It's Christ we weigh.

All else is off the point: the Flood, the Day
Of Eden, or the Virgin Birth--Have done!
The Question is, did God send us the Son
Incarnate crying Love! Love is the Way!

Between the probable and proved there yawns
A gap. Afraid to jump, we stand absurd,
Then see behind us sink the ground and, worse
Our very standpoint crumbling.
Desperate dawns
Our only hope: to leap into the Word
That opens up the shuttered universe.

-----

I have been enjoying this book very much, so you should expect to see at least a few more quotes & such in the near future.

From The Silver Chair:

Most of the gang were there- Adela Pennyfather and Cholmondely Major, Edith Winterblott, "Spotty" Somer, Big Bannister and the two loathsome Garret twins. But suddenly they stopped. Their faces changed, and all the meanness, conceit, cruelty and sneakishness almost all disappeared in one single expression of terror. For they saw the wall fallen down, and a lion as large as a young elephant lying in the gap and three figures in glittering clothes with weapons in their hands rushing down upon them. For, with the strength of Aslan in them, Jill plied her crop on the girls and Caspian and Eustace plied the flats of their swords on the boys so well that in two minutes all the bullies were running like mad, crying out, “Murder! Fascists! Lions! It isn’t fair!”

So when one of my siblings torments me I cry "Murder! Fascists! Lions! It isn't fair!" (The last bit always gets me...!) It goes well with "I object to that remark very strongly."

I read Magician's Nephew yesterday (and have been quoting the venerable Bulldog as many times as possible since then--see title). Long and short of it is, I contracted stomach flu early this morning, so any recent events are bound to be gruesome, painful, or at best extremely dull. (I am feeling better, and expect to be nearly mended by tomorrow...with perhaps the exception of the blood vessels on my face. Mehh.)

Well, alright, if you want me to summarize my day, I shall: I listened to three sermons, slept several hours, drank two cups of black tea, ate half a package of saltine crackers and a cup of jello, cackled over too many old episodes of Beverly Hillbillies, and watched Prince Caspian. A very profitable day, as I'm sure you can tell.

Anyway, I found this little gem of a passage in the aforementioned work of literature, and I thought (rather than writing a post on regurgitation) I might share it with the rest of you.

Coming from the last chapter or somewhere thereabouts, when Aslan sends them home:

Both the children were looking up into the Lion's face as he spoke these words. And all at once (they never knew exactly how it happened) the face seemed to be a sea of tossing gold in which they were floating, and such a sweetness and power rolled about them and over them and entered them that they felt they had never really been happy or wise or good, or even alive and awake, before. And the memory of that moment stayed with them always, so that as long as they both lived, if ever they were sad or afraid or angry, the thought of all that golden goodness, and the feeling that it was still there, quite close, just round some corner or just behind some door, would come back and make them sure, deep down inside, that all was well.

Because all is well,
-I.S.

The next two weeks are Dead/Finals weeks, respectively, and I shall be slogging through whatever amount of material I need to learn for my exams/papers. Thus in all probability I will not have much time for blogging and will not blog. All of this, of course, rests on the D.V. factor, but at least keep your expectations lower than low... and in the meantime, enjoy the quote.

God bless,
Inky