37/1001

At this rate, I'll finish this reading challenge when I'm dead. I guess there are worse things.

Essay: The Inner Ring and Membership by C.S. Lewis

I'm reading these for a longer piece I have in mind. It was a good to revisit them. They are back-to-back in the The Weight of Glory essay collection. They also connect in my mind with something in that essay. I'm working on articulating it. Hopefully by Friday.

As an aside, writing is so strange. It unlike any other thinking process. I have a big thought, vague and general - like a hunk of raw marble. I can see something there and the only way to get at it is to start trying to form what I think I can see. Hammering, chiseling, a little chip here or a big chunk there - until I have this moment of thinking, "Okay, I think I've released it." And then I hit 'publish' and hope for the best. The feeling of relief is, and I apologize for being graphic but it's truly the closest thing, similar to when you really need to use the bathroom after a long car trip or something. It's like an actual load has been taken off my mind. 

Short Story: The Man Who Shot Snapping Turtles by Edmund Wilson

I wasn't super excited about reading this story for no other reason that Edmund Wilson bad mouthed Lord of the Rings when it first came out. Ridiculous, because it was a great short story. Proving even people with bad taste can write good stories. (wink)

Poem:

Today is Ash Wednesday and though my church tradition doesn't celebrate Lent, I still like to hunker down into the why of Christ's coming, living, dying and rising again as much as I can these 40 days. I decided to see if there was a George Herbert poem that would go with this season. Google didn't let me down:

The Glance

by George Herbert

When first thy sweet and gracious eye

Vouchsaf’d ev’n in the midst of youth and night

To look upon me, who before did lie

Weltring in sinne;

I felt a sugred strange delight,

Passing all cordials made by any art,

Bedew, embalme, and overrunne my heart,

And take it in.

Since that time many a bitter storm

My soul hath felt, ev’n able to destroy,

Had the malicious and ill-meaning harm

His swing and sway:

But still thy sweet originall joy,

Sprung from thine eye, did work within my soul,

And surging griefs, when they grew bold, controll,

And got the day.

If thy first glance so powerfull be,

A mirth but open’d and seal’d up again;

What wonders shall we feel, when we shall see

Thy full-ey’d love!

When thou shalt look us out of pain,

And one aspect of thine spend in delight

More then a thousand sunnes dispurse in light,

In heav'n above.