4.18.2005

Our lifelong nostalgia, our longing to be reunited with something in the universe from which we now feel cut off, to be on the inside of some door which we have always seen from the outside, is no mere neurotic fancy, but the truest index of our real situation. And to be at last summoned inside would be both glory and honor beyond all our merits and also the healing of that old ache.... Our commonest expedient is to call it beauty and behave as if that had settled the matter. Wordsworth's expedient was to identify it with certain moments in his own past. But all this is a cheat. If Wordsworth had gone back to those moments in the past, he would not have found the thing itself, but only the reminder of it; what he remembered would turn out to be itself a remembering. The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust to them; it was not in them, it only came through them, and what came through them was longing. These things--the beauty, the memory of our own past--are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself, they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshippers. For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited. -- C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory


Friday was happy hour with some kids from the orientation class, then a horrible trip on the horrible NJ Transit down to Philly. Saturday I got to drive the 26 foot Uhaul around as we hauled and towed stuff. Just hauled, really, but we were speaking the lingo. Got the stuff moved, and I headed back here to wrap up the lesson and stay up to late. Today was a leaders meeting, church, high school group, and when I returned home the roommate was hosting a condo association meeting. Caught a quick nap and headed to evening service, then dinner at Ted & Jo's.

I have photos from the weekend but they're on the camera, which I certainly hope I left in Brec's car when Jack dropped me off at the train station, God bless him. So I'll probably try to borrow someone's camera for the work crew this weekend, and just get mine back from them at the wedding, if that's feasible. In the meantime you'll have to settle for this picture from the crap-cam, of the offering money from church, sitting next to Marcy's beer. I thought it made for a funny shot.


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