Category: good for the soul

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C.S. Lewis on friendship

A recent post about books I’ve enjoyed sent me down a course to reclaim time for reading. I ran across this quotation from Lewis which was taken out of context, so I dug around to find it. It’s from The Four Loves, and I’m glad I did because the second half of the quotation, the part that says that friendship is about creation as well as revelation, really resonated with me.

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.

It made me think about how I see new things through my friends, and how old things become new when seen through their eyes. But more than that, it brought home the central truth of friendship…

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.

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Summer Reading…and it’s still summer!

My summer reading pile is getting smaller. Sortof. I keep adding books to the pile, so it rarely gets smaller than the stack you see above.

The problem is that I have a stack at work, and a stack on the floor next to my night table…and two or three books on my desk at home.

A whole bookshelf at work. And still…I read. And read. And read!

You could say I get paid to read (and you wouldn’t be too terribly off), but I haven’t read everything I want to read. And there’s a whole bunch of stuff that I don’t even know exists and is waiting for me to discover. I know, I’m a nerd that way.

I’m going to go out on a limb here and say something a little…well…honest. Interesting people, people that I find interesting, are big readers. I don’t know if that necessarily makes me any more interesting, but there you have it. My friends are big readers. It turns out that some other very interesting people, besides my friends (yes, I think you guys are brilliant) are big readers.

In fact, the Harvard Business Review has an interesting article on the importance of reading to good leadership. I’d venture to say it does more than make good leaders. Reading things that edify us, strengthen our characters, give us vicarious adventures, can make us better people.

I’d say, it can make us better Christians. I’m still working on that.

These are some books that have had a huge impact on me:

In no particular order

1. The Return of the Prodigal Son by Henri Nouwen

2. The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery

3. A Severe Mercy by Sheldon Vanauken

4. Little Women by Louisa May Alcott

5. Letters from the Earth by Mark Twain

I’d love to know what books have impacted you! And of course, I’ll take recommendations to add to my pile.

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for my teacher buddies (and anybody else that happens to be alive and breathing)

“The greatest good we can do for others is not just to share our riches with them, but to reveal theirs.” — Zig Ziglar

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