Happy Birthday George MacDonald!

"Now Phantastes ... had about it a sort of cool, morning innocence ... What it actually did to me was to convert, even to baptise ... my imagination." C. S. Lewis

When I read what C S Lewis said about George MacDonald, I had to try him out for myself. Immediately, my goal for that year of reading all I could of Lewis was vanquished.
I'd found my mentor, my soul-echo, and without the smell of a pub. I still love that Irishman who led me to MacDonald but Lewis is such a manly man. He's such a guy's guy. He couldn't begin to speak to my heart from the tavern bench or his academic desk the way my Scotsman sang from the moors. 'Baptise', immerse, set free indeed. George MacDonald allowed me to believe that God and His world are as wonderful and lovely as I'd hoped in my deepest desires.
He has taught me to think and notice; love and trust.

From Diary of an Old Soul by George MacDonald
Dec. 11 ....then shall I live such an essential life
That a mere flower will then to me unfold
More bliss than now grandest orchestral strife-
By love made and obedience humble-bold.
I shall straight through its window God behold;
God, I shall feed on thee, thy creature blest
With very being-work at one with sweetest rest.

Happy Birthday, George, soul-echo!

Love makes Real..and bunnies

This post is for me. I was reading 3 books yesterday, The Art of Counseling by Rollo May, At the Back of the North Wind, by George MacDonald, and the Bible.


The first spoke of the importance of empathy, loving sincerely and without guile. That led me to the beautiful portrait of Jesus in the gospels, and 1 Corinthians 13; 'These 3 will remain...faith, hope and love...



Then one of those moments hit me, a sudden understanding like a curtain being drawn aside.
'Faith' has to do with the past, 'hope' the future, and 'love' the oneness of the eternal present.
And all while Micah was getting his teeth cleaned,(he's got two cavities!)



Then just before I fell asleep, Eric asked me to read him some G. MacDonald (yeah!:) and here's where I opened to....



But somehow when once you have looked into anybody's eyes—deep down into them, I mean—no one else will do for you any more. Nobody ever so beautiful or so good will make up to you for that one going out of sight.
So you see, North Wind, I cannot help being frightened to think that perhaps I am only dreaming and that you are nowhere at all! Do tell me that you are my own real beautiful North Wind!"
Again she rose and shot high up into the air. Diamond lay quiet in her arms waiting for her to speak. He tried to see up into her face, for he was dreadfully afraid she did not answer him because she could not tell him she was not a dream. But her hair fell all over her face so that he could not see it. This frightened him still more.
"Do speak, North Wind!" he said at last.
"I am thinking what I can say," said North Wind slowly. "And say it so that a little boy like you can understand."
As she spoke, she was settling quietly down on a grassy hill side in the midst of a wild, furzy common. There was a rabbit warren underneath. Some of the rabbits came out of their holes in the moonlight. They looked very sober and wise, like patriarchs standing in their tent doors and looking about them before going to bed. When they saw North Wind, instead of turning around and vanishing again with a thump of their heels, they cantered slowly up to her. They snuffed all about her with their long upper lips which moved every way at once. That was their way of kissing her. Every now and then, she stroked down their long furry backs or lifted and played with their long ears.
"I think," she said to Diamond after they had been sitting silent for a long time, "that if I were only a dream, you would not have been able to love me so. You love me when you are not with me, don't you?"
"Indeed I do!" answered Diamond stroking her hand. "I see! I see! How could I be able to love you as I do if you were not there at all, you know? Besides I would not be able to dream anything half so beautiful all out of my own head. Or if I did, I could not love a fancy of my own like that, could I?"

'...and the greatest of these is love'.... love makes real and maybe love is the only, really real. Diamond gets it and the bunnies too.
'and someday these three will remain; faith, hope and love and the the greatest of these is Love. '

Rabbits are so sober looking, (that's why 'Jean-Luc*' did seem the perfect name for our rabbit...until she turned out to be a girl.) She loves apple cores but there's something she adores even more, being petted by me. Bunny loves to be loved. (We just call her 'Bunny' now.) Even a little animal like a rabbit knows what's really real.

What will remain? What is really real or 'imperishable'? Here's a word about that from Peter...

1 Peter 1:18 For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your forefathers, 19 but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect. 20 He was chosen before the creation of the world, but was revealed in these last times for your sake. 21 Through him you believe in God, who raised him from the dead and glorified him, and so your faith and hope are in God. 22 Now that you have purified yourselves by obeying the truth so that you have sincere love for your brothers, love one another deeply, from the heart. 23 For you have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable, through the living and enduring word of God.

Have our faith and hope in God who is Love himself and obey the truth so that sincere love from from God will enable us to love one another deeply from the heart.

Don't 'thump' your heals and run back into your hole, accept this imperishable gift, this really real Love, through whom, God brings everything back to Himself. (Col. 1:20)



* Ever heard of Jean-Luc Picard of the Star Ship Enterprise? He's a very sober and humorless bloke.

consent to be made..

George MacDonald writes:
“The one secret of life and development is not to devise and plan, but to fall in with the forces at work – to do every moment’s duty aright – that being the part in the process allotted to us; and let come – not what will, for there is no such thing – but what the eternal Thought wills for each of us, has intended in each of us from the first. If men would but believe that they are in process of creation, and consent to be made – let the maker handle them as the potter his clay, yielding themselves in respondent motion and submissive hopeful action with the turning of his wheel, they would ere long find themselves able to welcome every pressure of that hand upon them, even when it was felt in pain, and sometimes not only to believe but to recognize the divine end in view, the bringing of a son into glory; whereas, behaving like children who struggle and scream while their mother washes and dresses them, they find they have to be washed and dressed, notwithstanding, and with the more discomfort: they may even have to find themselves set half naked and but half dried in a corner, to come to their right minds, and ask to be finished.”

read it again and I will too.

Lord, us help to welcome every pressure of Your hand.

Unclosing Our Hands

Another fine thing in The Pr. & the Goblin is where Curdie, in a dream, keeps on dreaming that he has waked up and then finding that he is still in bed. This means the same as the passage [in Macdonald’s Lilith] where Adam says to Lilith “Unless you unclose your hand you will never die & therefore never wake. You may think you have died and even that you have risen again: but both will be a dream.”
This has a terrible meaning, specially for imaginative people. We read of spiritual efforts, and our imagination makes us believe that, because we enjoy the idea of doing them, we have done them. I am appalled to see how much of the change wh. I thought I had undergone lately was only imaginary. The real work seems still to be done. It is so fatally easy to confuse an aesthetic appreciation of the spiritual life with the life itself — to dream that you have waked, washed, and dressed, & then to find yourself still in bed. — Collected Letters of C. S. Lewis

What are the things that I have tighty clasped in my hands? Are there ideas and expectaions that I cherish outside of His Love and will for me? How can I learn to give Him all the faith He's given to me and open up my hands?
Maybe that's why I love to pray with my hands open and palms up. Once I tried a Tai Chi class but I only lasted about 5 minutes because I kept placing my palms up and this didn't fly with the instructor. She would come over and sweetly turn my palms over. I think we both realized this just wasn't for me.

I think C. S. Lewis is so cute here, 'the real work seems still to be done...' such a funny way to put it because the 'real' work is letting go, trusting, giving over the outcome to Him.

Curdie is dreaming that he will get up and save the princess. When he does really wake up, he saves many people but not the princess, she's been safe and sound all along. Sometimes all of our 'spiritual efforts' as Lewis put it, have a completely different purpose than we thought. Actually I think of our spiritual efforts are pretty useless. It's that 'unclosing of our hands' that God is waiting for, that complete willingness to trust in Him even when the thread of His leading is taking us on a difficult unexpected path.

Eph. 2:4 But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, 5 made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions--it is by grace you have been saved. 6 And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, 7 in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. 8 For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith--and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God-- 9 not by works, so that no one can boast. 10 For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.

I love the paradox here... we are not saved through our works but we are God's workmanship created to do good works and all it takes to be His little good work doer is really unclose our hands to ourselves and our death grip on our wants and desires and trust in His grace, the free undeserved gift of Love and Life He continually offers.

That's worth waking up for :)