Day 166

Or, In Regards to Kenya, etc.

I’m a believer in the power of words – that eloquently and beautifully composed ones can move you at a particular time and evolve with you so that they are infused with new layers of meaning each subsequent time you encounter them. One of these instances is this. I’ve been meaning to write something about Kenya (and I will still), but re-reading the sermon “The Weight of Glory” just blew my mind about the way I thought about the people and stories – both the beautiful and the heartbreaking – I encountered there.

There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilization—these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit—immortal horrors or everlasting splendours. This does not mean that we are to be perpetually solemn. We must play. But our merriment must be of that kind (and it is, in fact, the merriest kind) which exists between people who have, from the outset, taken each other seriously—no flippancy, no superiority, no presumption. And our charity must be a real and costly love, with deep feeling for the sins in spite of which we love the sinner—no mere tolerance or indulgence which parodies love as flippancy parodies merriment. Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbour is the holiest object presented to your senses.

- taken from C.S. Lewis’ “The Weight of Glory“

Advertisement