Monday morning with C.S. Lewis

Why, hello there. 

I don't know if anyone likes these more serious, non-photo posts I've been doing lately, but I promise I'll put some pics up soon.  I just got back from a fun weekend in Nashville, and it was well-documented, but not with my camera. 

As much fun as it was to visit with great friends in Katie's awsome town of Nash, I also loved the feeling of coming home...to my apartment, to my city, in my world.  I hope that doesn't come across as self-centered or selfish, because that's not my intent.  I think what I'm trying to say is that I'm really content with where I am right now, which is a really fun place to be, and I am so grateful to be in this spot right now. 

This morning I ran across a C.S. Lewis quote that I thought was partiularly profound.  My cousin Anna loves quotes, so this is for you.  Maybe you'll read it when you come back from camp counsel-ing.

But the most obvious fact about praise-whether of God or any thing-strangely escaped me. I thought of it in terms of compliment, approval, or the giving of honor.

I had never noticed that all enjoyment spontaneously overflows into praise unless (sometimes even if) shyness or the fear of boring others is deliberately brought in to check it.

The world rings with praise-lovers praising their mistresses, readers their favorite poet, walkers praising the countryside, players praising their favorite game-praise of weather, wines, dishes, actors, motors, horses, colleges, countries, historical personages, children, flowers, mountains, rare stamps, rare beetles, even sometimes politicians or scholars.

I had not noticed how the humblest, and at the same time most balanced and capacious, minds, praised most, while the cranks, misfits and malcontents praised least . . . I had not noticed either that just as men spontaneously praise what ever they value, so they spontaneously urge us to join them in praising it: "Isn't she lovely? Wasn't it glorious? Don't you think that magnificent?"

The Psalmists in telling everyone to praise God are doing what all men do when they speak of what they care about. My whole, more general, difficulty about the praise of God depended on my absurdly denying to us, as regards the supremely Valuable, what we delight to do, what indeed we can't help doing, about everything else we value.

I think we delight to praise what we enjoy because the praise not merely expresses but completes the enjoyment; it is its appointed consummation. It is not out of compliment that lovers keep on telling one another how beautiful they are; the delight is incomplete till it is expressed.

(C. S. Lewis, Reflections on the Psalms, [New York: Harcourt, Brace and World 1958], pp. 93-95.)