I’ve been described as a voracious reader and yet in the past weeks, since my friend Larry’s death, I’ve been unable to even look at a book besides “THE Book.” Today, that changed. As I was writing away in my library, suddenly I was ready to read again. I don’t really read for entertainment or for fun. I mostly read for my work. However, my work is entertaining, fun, and rewarding. Sooooooo…
I began to read one of my many yet to be read books in my library.
You know, a library is only as good as the quality of it’s un-read books.
I picked up one from John Eldredge titled, The Sacred Romance. On page 20 and 21 I stumbled upon one of my favorite C.S. Lewis quotes. Lewis is, without a doubt, my favorite author. You cannot read him once or twice. You read his books over and over and each time you come away with something of more depth. Someday…
Here’s the quote. I hope it says something to you now, or maybe someday…
“Even in your hobbies, has there not always been some secret attraction which the others are curiously ignorant of – something, not to be identified with, but always on the verge of breaking through, the smell of cut wood in the workshop or the clap – clap of water against the boat’s side? Are not lifelong friendships born at the moment when at last you meet another human being who has some inkling (but faint and uncertain even in the best) of that something which you were born desiring, and which, beneath the flux of other desires and in all the momentary silences between the louder passions, night and day, year by year, from childhood to old age, you are looking for, watching for, listening for? You have never had it. All the things that have ever deeply possessed your soul have been but hints of it – tantalizing glimpses, promises never quite fulfilled, echoes that died away just as they caught your ear.
But if it should really become manifest – if there ever came an echo that did not die away but swelled into the sound itself – you would know it. Beyond all possibility of doubt you would say, ‘Here at last is the thing I was made for.’
We cannot tell each other about it. It is the secret signature of each soul, the incommunicable and unappeasable want, the thing we desired before we met our wives or made our friends, or chose our work, and which we shall still desire on our deathbeds, when the mind no longer knows wife or friend or work.
While we are this is.
If we lose this, we lose all.”
What did you hear?
What is your interpretation of Clive?
What “scents, smells, sights, and sounds” touch your heart?
Have you discovered, at last, the “thing” you are made for?
Tell me more…
BUILT TO LEAD 
Hushed silence. Blessed, peaceful stillness. When I was about four, I recall this silence in the memory of a sunny early afternoon when my five older siblings were at school, and my two younger ones were napping. My mother was reading in the kitchen, and I was there with her, just taking in the quiet. Another time, as a seven year-old boy, I stood outside in my yard, completely alone, bundled up and simply watching as a heavy snow came whispering down. No other sound or person intruded. Many years later, a stand of huge white birch on a frozen Wisconsin landscape, set off against a battleship-grey sky, still haunts my memory.
I guess it takes a big, noisy family to produce this appreciation…
I’m not much of a writer and reading is often something required rather than for pleasure. The quote that you have written spoke to me today. As a youngster, my most memorable times spent with my father were early mornings on the lake. Watersking as the fog was rising from the water. The smooth water and the smell from the outboard engine must have lodged a feeling within me as I continue to find peace on smooth water and the smell of a passing outboard is as pleasant to me as my wife’s favorite perfume .