The Disconcerting Downfall of Verbiage

Language is one of my favourite things God has created, something so magical and beautiful and yet so confining. I love the shape of words as they meander across a crisp page (I keep a journal with all of my favourite words in alphabetical order!)...and I love the way words feel when you form them in your mouth, when you alter them with inflection or intonation or an accent. I absolutely devour words whenever they come my way--especially quaint words or words that look/feel/sound exactly like their meanings. And naturally my soul simply sings when words are linked together in a manner that perfectly and beautifully expressed some noble thought or lovely image or intense emotion...

As someone who loves words and language so dearly, modern literature and poetry are disconcerting! I am continually shocked by the lack of excellence in modern vocabulary and verbiage. With few exceptions, the beauty and excellence of verbal expression seem to be waning...it is as if a luminous and glorious moon were nearing complete eclipse. I certainly do not want to live in the darkness of prosaic, base, ignoble utlization of language. Without a proficient understanding of language, how narrow, how insipid, how unimaginative, how contstrained, how limited would be the "shorelines of wonder" amd the "waves that break upon the idle seashore of the mind"! How frightening and dismal to not merely lose sight of the beauty of words, but to relinquish even the desire to see that loveliness...to have part of your mind shriveled, stagnant, and small...

"I am concerned that our reading and our writing is gravitating to the lowest common denominator so completely that the great themes of majesty and nobility and felicity are made to seem trite, puny, pedestrian...I am concerned about the state of the soul in the midst of all the cheap sensory overload going on today. You see, without what Alfred North Whitehead called "an habitual vision of greatness", our soul will shrivel up and lose the capacity for beauty and mystery and transcendence...To write pedanticaly about radiance or infinity or ubiquity stunts the mind and cramps the soul. To find the right word, to capture the perfect image, awakens the spirit and enlarges the soul."

"The true purpose...is to cherish and unfold the seed of immortality already sown within us; to develop, to their fullest extent, the capacities of every kind with which God who made us has endowed us." --Anna James

"The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them." --Mark Twain

"A large, still book is a piece of quietness, succulent and nourishing in a noisesome world, which I approach and imbibe with "a sort of greedy enjoyment"." --Holbrook Johnson

"Here are beauties which pierce like swords or burn like cold iron...in reading great literature, I become a thousand men and yet remain myself...I transcend myself; and I am never more myself than when I do." --Clive Staples Lewis

"What is well-written...it is the very blood of thought!" --Gustave Flaubert

I have many of my favourite poems hyperlinked at the lower right on the homepage of this blog...go read some :)

Musings on God, Evil, Glory, His Character...

In Personal Responsibility classes this week, we have been discussing the relationship between a "Good God" and natural/moral evil. To be perfectly honest, these issues are not new to me and I admit my mind wanders in class--I find myself considering not the topic, but how my own perception of God has been altered by the moral evil I have experienced and understood...

Every discussion seems to return to the conclusion that God's allowance/sovereign decrees of evil and condemnation are not fully comprehensible. I don't take this lightly! Some of my close family members are unsaved, and it unbearably pains me to know they are slowly dying an eternal death. I have had difficult losses even in my personal life. In the end, I have to rest on God's own assertions that His purposes are perfect and good, that all is working together for His glory...which is the ultimate and supreme end. I have to live believing that evil, no matter how great, is for the purpose of glorifying my God...

To live like that, I have to believe that God's character is worthy of glorification that is attained through the allowance/decree of evil and condemnation. The more I ponder Who He is as revealed in the Bible--and more tangibly, in my life--the more I see His worth. If nothing else God has made Himself more worthy and wonderful to me through my experiences and my awareness of the reality of eternal seperation. I have witnessed and felt His character more deeply, and the bitterness of life has only provided a contrast that has made Him sweeter...

I need to remind myself of this sometimes...my little hardships and others' greater hardships, all are to glorify a God who is utterly worth glorification at any cost. What helps me live this belief? SEEING and SAVOURING Who God is, all the marvelous attributes of His character. How could I serve a God whose glory was not worthy of every small or magnificent sacrifice? I would rather be terrifed by God's incomprehensible decrees than follow a god whose character was less worthy!

C.S.Lewis said, "Cramped or terrified, we must be...I prefer terror...Have you never, when walking in a wood, turned back deliberately for fear you should come out at the other side and thus make it ever after in your imagination a mere beggarly strip of trees?"

Thank God that He is so great we must never fear finding out the limits of Himself.