The Weight of Glory by C.S. Lewis

I was reading through some journal entries and came across one in 2007 that mentioned how I was reading this book. It has taken me a loooonnnngg time to read. The first reason is that each chapter is independent of the others. This book is actually a series of radio lectures CS Lewis gave during the last years of WWII and the immediate years after the war. Because each chapter covers a completely different topic and doesn't build on itself, I felt comfortable leaving it for long stretches of time without feeling like I had "forgotten something." The second reason is that I am drawn so strongly to fiction that it takes a good amount of discipline for me to continually stick to a non-fiction book. (As you can see now, discipline is something I am in great lack of.) Despite these things, this is a quick read. Each chapter feels new and the book itself is not long.

If you were to flip through the pages of my book, you would find notes scribbled in the margins. Questions, comments, worship springing up from what was read. This is a fabulous book, centered mostly on Christian Living. It covers topics such as (church) Membership, Why I'm Not a Pacifist, On Forgiveness, etc. to name a few.

My favorite chapter, titled the Inner Ring, was the most applicable chapter I have read in the last few years. It's relevance spreads across all cultures over all periods of time. It is the idea that there is an inner ring, a group of people on the inside, which you desire to be a part of. There exist a plethora of inner rings of all kinds. Here are some of my favorite quotes from this chapter:

"In the whole of your life as you now remember it, has the desire to be on the right side of that invisible line ever prompted you to any act or word on which, in the cold small hours of a wakeful night, you can look back with satisfaction? If so, your case is more fortunate than most" (150).

Unless you take measures to prevent it, this desire is going to be one of the chief motives of your life, from the first day on which you enter your profession until the day when you are too old to care. That will be the natural thing- the life that will come to you of its own accord. Any other kind of life, if you lead it, will be the result of conscious and continuous effort. If you do nothing about it, if you drift with the stream, you will in fact be an "inner ringer" (151-152).

Of all passions the passion for the Inner Ring is most skillful in making a man who is not yet a very bad man do very bad things" (154).

It is the very mark of a perverse desire that it seeks what is not to be had" (154).

P.S. If you click on any picture of any book on this blog, it will take you to the book on amazon.com where you will be able to get more information about it, and my hope is, purchase it. (You may also borrow any of these books from me if you don't want to buy them.)