A timely reminder from C. S. Lewis to me

"It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which, if you say it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all our dealing with another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. 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 and everlasting splendours. This does not mean 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 neighbor is the holiest object presented to your senses. If he is your Christian neighbor, he is holy in almost the same way, for in him also Christ vere latita the glorifier and the glorified, Glory Himself, is truly hidden"- C. S. Lewis, "Weight of Glory"

Writing, Thinking, Living, Transforming

"The point is that we live such a wi-fi-enabled, out-sourced, off-site, backed-up life that we use our brains for little more than remembering where we store our passwords than what it is (stories, ideas, responses, reflections) they protect. Ours has evolved into such a non-oral tradition "tradition," that the thought of memorizing sonnets from a poem or narrative stories from the Bible for meaning and not information seems archaic and unnecessary. If we think we need it, we can find it; we don't need to learn it. And if we don't think we need to learn it, well, who cares?"~Craig Dunham

 "Biblical literacy programs need to do more than produce informed quoters. They need to produce transformed readers."~David Nienhuis

Craig Dunham is a teacher of New Testament and Ethics at one of the local Christian private schools. He has written three posts, so far, to his blog detailing the difficulties his students have in expressing themselves in writing and what he see as the causes of those difficulties. This first link would be hilarious if it weren't simultaneously troubling and sad on a number of levels. His other posts talk about biblical and theological illiteracy , illiteracy problems in general (and this is not limited to "Why Johnny can't read."/phonics/whole language questions), and  the influence an incorrect understanding and use of technology has on this developing problem. All factors combine to create young adults who have no foundation for thinking through an increasing complex world that they, and we,  must live in. More links and thoughts later.