thomasstaples

[thomasstaples]

Have any of you wonderful people seen the BBC Narnia series? Found out my in-laws (Wonderful people) have the whole thing on DVD, and was wondering if it was worth watching. I love C.S. Lewis in general, but Narnia isn't really favorite, and I definitely don't want to bother if it's a trashy adaptation.

#c.s. lewis #chronicles of narnia #narnia #the lion the witch and the wardrobe #prince caspian #voyage of the dawn treader #the silver chair #the last battle

[thomasstaples]

Scrolling through Till We Have Faces stuff again, and I find this absolutely wonderful poem hidden away. What a wonderful surprise!

Shiver and dodge a broken question,

Facets, angles, sharp and bright.

Try not to lodge rotten suggestion,

Send it back into the night.

--

Ungit calls for sacrifice,

Monster-faced beneath the veil.

"Holiness" must pay a price,

Drawn from far beyond the pale.

--

I will not accept the blight.

None deserves the old contagion.

Shoulder the load beneath the light,

Forge and heal an answered question.

[thomasstaples]

For anyone going into Animorphs expecting it to be just wall-to-wall body horror and war and gore and thinking “I wanna read the book where an ant turns into a human and screams until it dies, that sounds real fucked up” I feel like I should emphasize that for every raw Animorphs moment there is usually at least one moment of “they turn into dogs to sneak into an Offspring concert without paying” or “evil alien warlord gets foiled by a skunk” or “Arnold Schwarzenegger shows up”

[thomasstaples]

Why is my feed filled with booping now? I don't understand. Is this a new tumblr thing, or is the algorithm just messing with me?

#But I guess I boop all of you #is that how it works #idk

[thomasstaples]

Reading through C.S. Lewis' letters, and I got to say, his letters to children are my favorite. From his encouragements on writing (Especially Narnian fanfiction), to his overwhelming kindness, it just warms my heart.

#c.s. lewis #chronicles of narnia #fanfiction #children

[thomasstaples]

on Holy Thursday, Jesus shows us the meaning of the events of Good Friday.

first of all, Jesus’s death on the Cross is a kenotic humbling of Himself, an act of self-emptying in service. we see this in John’s gospel story of the washing of the feet. the King of Kings chooses to take on the role of the lowest servant, and calls for our own self-emptying in imitation of Him. there is no room for pride, both in the one serving and in the one being served.

secondly, Jesus’s death on the Cross is a priestly act of sacrifice. “This is my body, which will be given up for you, this is the new covenant in my blood” establishes a new priesthood and a new memorial offering which incorporates His people into the family of God. 

moreover, Jesus’s death on the Cross is an act of generous self-gift. He is not only priest, but also Himself the sacrifice, giving His own body and blood as the sacrificial lamb, as food for us to eat and be nourished by. and His body is not just given, but given for us, given to be received, for our healing and wholeness. as completely as a person can give himself, that is how wholly and fully Jesus gives Himself on the Cross.

and finally, Jesus’s death on the Cross is an act of obedience in love. the heart-wrenchingly intimate dialogue between Christ and the Father in the Garden of Gethsemane reveals that even for God the Son, following the will of the Father was not an easy thing, as simple as believing in yourself and following your heart. Jesus, whom we are asked to imitate, had to submit His will in obedience to the Father—but this obedience is not subjugation, because it is born of of the love which calls God “Abba”. if we are asked to take up our cross and die to ourselves like Christ—and we are—this is not impossible or unfair, because we are also invited into the relationship which makes that kind of obedience possible. 

[thomasstaples]

"Our business is to get them away from the eternal, and from the Present. With this in view, we sometimes tempt a human (say a widow or a scholar) to live in the Past. But this is of limited value, for they have some real knowledge of the past and it has a determinate nature and, to that extent, resembles eternity. It is far better to make them live in the Future. Biological necessity makes all their passions point in that direction already, so that thought about the Future inflames hope and fear. Also, it is unknown to them, so that in making them think about it we make them think of unrealities. In a word, the Future is, of all things, the thing least like eternity. It is the most completely temporal part of time for the Past is frozen and no longer flows, and the Present is all lit up with eternal rays. Hence the encouragement we have given to all those schemes of thought such as Creative Evolution, Scientific Humanism, or Communism, which fix men's affections on the Future, on the very core of temporality. Hence nearly all vices are rooted in the future. Gratitude looks to the past and love to the present; fear, avarice, lust, and ambition look ahead. Do not think lust an exception. When the present pleasure arrives, the sin (which alone interests us) is already over. The pleasure is just the part of the process which we regret and would exclude if we could do so without losing the sin; it is the part contributed by the Enemy, and therefore experienced in a Present. The sin, which is our contribution, looked forward."

#c.s. lewis #the screwtape letters #christianity

[thomasstaples]

"I see only one thing to do at the moment. Your patient has become humble; have you drawn his attention to the fact? All virtues are less formidable to us once the man is aware that he has them, but this is specially true of humility. Catch him at the moment when he is really poor in spirit and smuggle into his mind the gratifying reflection, 'By jove! I'm being humble', and almost immediately pride-pride at his own humility- will appear. If he awakes to the danger and tries to smother this new form of pride, make him proud of his attempt and so on, through as many stages as you please. But don't try this too long, for fear you awake his sense of humour and proportion, in which case he will merely laugh at you and go to bed." The Screwtape Letters chapter 14

#c.s. lewis #the screwtape letters #christianity #pride #humility

[thomasstaples]

"As one of the humans has said, active habits are strengthened by repetition but passive ones are weakened. The more often he feels without acting, the less he will be able to act, and, in the long run, the less he will be able to feel." The Screwtape Letters chapter 13

#c.s. lewis #cs lewis #the screwtape letters #christianity

[thomasstaples]

Book Review: The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis

★★★★★

It is funny how mortals always picture us as putting things into their minds: in reality our best work is done by keeping things out.

Regardless of religious perspective, I believe that people should read The Screwtape Letters - written from the perspective of a demon advising his nephew on how best to tempt a human, this satirical look at "sin" and "virtue" is a fascinating discussion.

Despite being an inherently religious book, this book doesn't always feel that religious. C.S. Lewis is almost as much a commentary on human nature. How we are swayed. How we delude ourselves. We like lying to ourselves and reassuring that we are in fact always in the right. It's easy to give into temptation and believe it is easier to turn away than to face our honest ugly selves. And wow, this book is powerful at forcing you to look inward.

Truth be told, I don't fully agree with everything said in this book. For instance, Lewis seems to have a very limited perspective on woman, believing that they fit into one category or another without the full emotional depth and variation he seems to afford the male "patients". But the analysis of corruption within ourselves trumped this for me.

If you have read The Screwtape Letters or even if you haven't, you'd should check out the album that got me into this book: Dear Wormwood by The Oh Hellos! It's a beautifully crafted concept album from the perspective of this book's patient throughout his trials.

[thomasstaples]

"Never forget that when we are dealing with any pleasure in its healthy and normal and satisfying form, we are, in a sense, on the Enemy's ground. I know we have won many a soul through pleasure. All the same, it is His invention, not ours. He made the pleasures: all our research so far has not enabled us to produce one. All we can do is to encourage the humans to take the pleasures which our Enemy has produced, at times, or in ways, or in degrees, which He has forbidden. Hence we always try to work away from the natural condi- tion of any pleasure to that in which it is least natural, least redolent of its Maker, and least pleasurable. An ever increasing craving for an ever diminishing pleasure is the formula. It is more certain; and it's better style. To get the man's soul and give him nothing in return that is what really gladdens Our Father's heart. And the troughs are the time for beginning the process." The Screwtape Letters chapter 9

#c.s. lewis #the screwtape letters #christianity

[thomasstaples]

"He will set them off with communications of His presence which, though faint, seem great to them, with emotional sweetness, and easy conquest over temptation. But He never allows this state of affairs to last long. Sooner or later He withdraws, if not in fact, at least from their conscious experience, all those supports and incentives. He leaves the creature to stand up on its own legs to carry out from the will alone duties which have lost all relish. It is during such trough periods, much more than during the peak periods, that it is growing into the sort of creature He wants it to be. Hence the prayers offered in the state of dryness are those which please Him best. We can drag our patients along by continual tempting, because we design them only for the table, and the more their will is interfered with the better. He cannot 'tempt' to virtue as we do to vice. He wants them to learn to walk and must therefore take away His hand; and if only the will to walk is really there He is pleased even with their stumbles. Do not be deceived, Wormwood. Our cause is never more in danger than when a human, no longer desiring, but still intending, to do our Enemy's will, looks round upon a universe from which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys."

Excerpt from The Screwtape Letters chapter 8

#c.s. lewis #the screwtape letters #christianity

[thomasstaples]

John's Passion narrative has a never-ending fascination for me, because it's where you get Jesus at his most divine--knowing everything that was going to happen, making the guards fall to their faces when he speaks the name of God--while the people around him are at their most human.

There's an entire political drama going on. Pilate the Roman pagan getting dragged into this provincial Jewish religious dispute. These Jewish leaders and Jesus providing different visions of truth to a politician who doesn't care what the truth is. There's extremely sharp political back-and-forth between the Roman and the Jewish authorities--the Pharisees trying to force Pilate's hand by saying that everyone who makes himself a king opposes Caesar, then Pilate backing them into proclaiming Caesar as their king and twisting the knife of pettiness by labeling Jesus as the Jewish king in four different languages while He hangs on the cross.

Petty, personal, political human drama taking up all their attention.

And meanwhile, God is dying.

[thomasstaples]

#hobbit thoughts #bilbo baggins #frodo baggins

[thomasstaples]

Belated thoughts from last night's Maundy Thursday service: given what we know of the disciples, it's kind of a minor miracle that no one interrupted Jesus while he was instituting Communion and said, "Dude, you're getting the Passover liturgy wrong."

[thomasstaples]

Starting my re-reading of The Screwtape Letters

#c.s. lewis #the screwtape letters

[thomasstaples]

In the best timeline, it was probably put off until just after Till We Have Faces was published, and now I'm sad that I don't live in that timeline

It is such a stone cold bummer that we live in a universe where C.S. Lewis's youthful ambition to write the libretto for a Loki opera was never realized

#till we have faces