Emerging Scholars Blog

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Summer Quotations Series

Quote: C. S. Lewis on Giving Our Life to God

Hannah Eagleson concludes her Summer Quotation Series. 

Lewis' favored pub, the Eagle and Child
The Eagle and Child, the Oxford pub where Lewis’ academic calling intersected with good food and good friends

In this last post of the series, we return to the twentieth century with a quotation from C. S. Lewis that brings together many of the themes touched on by the other quotations.

 . . . it is not so much of our time and so much of our attention that God demands; it is not even all our time and all our attention; it is ourselves. For each of us the Baptist’s words are true: “He must increase and I decrease.” He will be infinitely merciful to our repeated failures; I know no promise that He will accept a deliberate compromise. For He has, in the last resort, nothing to give us but Himself; and He can give that only insofar as our self-affirming will retires and makes room for Him in our souls. Let us make up our minds to it; there will be nothing “of our own” left over to live on, no “ordinary” life. I do not mean that each of us will necessarily be called to be a martyr or even an ascetic. That’s as may be. For some (nobody knows which) the Christian life will include much leisure, many occupations we naturally like. But these will be received from God’s hands. In a perfect Christian they would be as much part of his “religion,” his “service,” as his hardest duties, and his feasts would be as Christian as his fasts. What cannot be admitted – what must exist only as an undefeated but daily resisted enemy – is the idea of something that is “our own,” some area in which we are to be “out of school,” on which God has no claim.

– “A Slip of the Tongue,” in The Weight of Glory by C. S. Lewis (emphasis added)

I’ve talked in this series about the importance of offering the specifics of the academic life to God and of inviting Him into it. This quotation offers the broad view and reminds me that God is asking for the whole of our lives, and for every part that fits into that whole.

I love the way Lewis insists that all of life must be sacrificed to God, but also that giving God everything may well include doing many things we enjoy. I first read this quotation as a teenager beginning to sort through the relationship between faith and academic study. I was afraid that perhaps I should give up studying and do something completely different; I enjoyed study, so it seemed selfish. It was really helpful to realize that God’s calling to me might well embrace many things that I enjoyed, including the pursuit of study. It was also helpful to realize that the things I enjoyed could be offered to God as well as the difficult things I had to do. I still find the quotation helpful in trying to give all my work to God, the parts I enjoy and the parts I don’t.

What are you enjoying about your academic vocation this summer? How can you see God’s presence in those things? In what areas of your academic life are you tempted to see things as “your own” and not God’s? What helps you to invite Him into those things? 

Quote: George Herbert’s Elixir

Pastor and poet George Herbert

The third quotation comes from a book much older than Orthodoxy, but ties in nicely with last week’s quote from Chesterton:

The Elixir by George Herbert

Teach me, my God and King,
In all things thee to see,
And what I do in any thing,
To do it as for thee:

Not rudely, as a beast,
To run into an action;
But still to make thee prepossest,
And give it his perfection.

A man that looks on glass,
On it may stay his eye;
Or if he pleaseth, through it pass,
And then the heav’n espy.

All may of thee partake:
Nothing can be so mean,
Which with his tincture (for thy sake)
Will not grow bright and clean.

A servant with this clause
Makes drudgery divine
Who sweeps a room, as for thy laws,
Makes that and th’ action fine.

This is the famous stone
That turneth all to gold:
For that which God doth touch and own
Cannot for less be told.

— The Temple by George Herbert (Everyman’s Library 1995)

This poem by George Herbert suggests one way to seek the constant delight described by Chesterton in last week’s quotation. Remembering that all good earthly activities are a window through which we can see God is one way of recovering delight in the everyday tasks He gives us. God touches and owns the labor of producing a paper or sitting on a committee, if we remember to invite Him into it.

What helps you to remember that each daily academic task can be a way of seeking God’s Kingdom? What things tend to make it harder to see this? How do you see the specifics of your summer work as fitting into God’s Kingdom?

Quote: Chesterton on Childlike Delight

Continuing our Summer Quotation Series from Hannah Eagleson.

G. K. Chesterton (1874-1936)

The second quotation in this series comes from G. K. Chesterton, good-humored apologist and writer:

A child kicks his legs rhythmically through excess, not absence, of life. Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, “Do it again”; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, “Do it again” to the sun; and every evening, “Do it again” to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we.

– p. 61, Orthodoxy by G. K. Chesterton, Harold Shaw Publishers, 1994

I think the childlike delight Chesterton describes is vitally needed in the academic life. There is so much repetition in the daily work of teaching or reading or conducting experiments. Grading or visiting the library or turning up in the lab can feel like an endless routine of the same things. But Chesterton reminds me that one day I may be strong enough to see the delight in every moment. To revel every time I teach A Midsummer Night’s Dream, to rejoice in the hundredth student’s growth in freshman writing, to smile when I sit back down in Special Collections to transcribe a passage from the book I have been working on for days – to do any of this is to seek the Father from whom all good gifts come.

What helps you to keep approaching your discipline with the delight Chesterton describes? What areas of your academic work are in danger of losing it? What helps you in recovering it when it is being lost?

Photo credit: Wikipedia

Quote: Simone Weil on Effort, Attention, and Unexpected Results

Hannah Eagleson’s first guest blog series, which she wrote before joining ESN as a writer/editor in 2014. At the time Hannah was a musician, writer, and recent PhD recipient living in central Pennsylvania. The Summer Quote Series offers brief reflections on quotes that she found helpful when thinking about her academic work. Thank you, Hannah! 

Our guest blogger for July, Hannah Eagleson

I’ve always loved Dorothy L. Sayers’ Peter Wimsey mysteries. There are many reasons, but two of them are Lord Peter’s love of quotations and his affirmation of work (even if he did inherit a fortune). Like Lord Peter, I sometimes find it hard to say anything without quotations, and also like Peter, I go a bit crazy if I don’t have work to do. So, combining these two interests, during the month of July I’ll be posting a series of quotations that I’ve found helpful in thinking about my academic work.

Not all of these are quotations from scholars, and not all of them were originally intended to describe the academic life. But each helps me in maintaining a wider perspective about the academic vocation, in seeing how God’s Kingdom might be at work in the details of semester schedules and library visits and scholarly writing.

I would welcome conversation in the comments or via email. I’ve offered a few possible questions after each quotation, but feel free to suggest your own, challenge my terms, or take the conversation in a different direction as well.

The first quotation comes from a contemporary of Sayers, Simone Weil. [Read more…] about Quote: Simone Weil on Effort, Attention, and Unexpected Results