I found today’s reading to be a great introduction not only to understanding C. S. Lewis, but the world in general. Today’s meditation spoke of the vastly different observation one get from looking at and looking along. Lewis emphasized that just because one stands outside events doesn’t mean one has a more complete picture.
This is especially poignant for me because I just finished a world literature class. I found myself dismissing works of literature from other cultures, from centuries past, because I didn’t understand them. My professor, when reviewing what we had read in class, helped me to see the cultural context of the author. Along with using the context to explain the text, my professor used it to show my class that we really couldn’t understand texts like the Bhagavad Gita unless we had been born in India six millennia ago.
The knowledge of the limit our perspective, properly understood, should give us a sublime humility. This knowledge frees us from always having to have the right answers. It communicates to others a vulnerability: a willing and eager ability to learn that breaks through barriers of opinion.
But of course, being humble doesn’t mean we need to be spineless. C.S. Lewis does not insist on only accepting the experiential “looking along” as valid knowledge, but insists that we must also look at. We are not dry tumbleweeds, drifting wherever the winds of opinion take us, but rather young shoots, grounded in conviction, but bending our course towards the brightest light of truth.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
I like your whole idea of being humble but not being spineless. But from another perspective one could say that looking along is sometimes harder since it's like "getting out there" and experiencing first-hand, while looking at is learning from a safe distance.
ReplyDelete