{"id":1215,"date":"2008-04-23T10:41:51","date_gmt":"2008-04-23T10:41:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.hypersync.net\/wordpress\/?p=1215"},"modified":"2008-04-23T10:41:51","modified_gmt":"2008-04-23T10:41:51","slug":"cs_lewis_speaks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hypersync.net\/wordpress\/?p=1215","title":{"rendered":"C.S. Lewis speaks"},"content":{"rendered":"

bls<\/strong> from The Topmost Apple<\/a> posted this additional quote from C.S. Lewis in response to the Lewis quote I mentioned previously. It’s a good one!
\nC.S. Lewis (excerpted from the book, Letters to Malcolm, Chiefly on Prayer<\/em>):<\/p>\n

“Novelty, simply as such, can have only an entertainment value. And they [conservative church goers, which he believes make up the majority] don’t go to be entertained. They go to use the service, or if you prefer, to enact it.”
\n“Every service is a structure of acts and words through which we receive a sacrament, or repent, or supplicate, or adore. And it enables us to do these things best…when, through familiarity, we don’t have to think about it. As long as you notice, and have to count, the steps, you are not yet dancing but only learning to dance. A good shoe is a shoe you don’t notice. Good reading becomes possible when you need not consciously think about eyes, or light, or print, or spelling. The perfect church service would be one we were almost unaware of; our attention would have been on God.”
\n“But every novelty prevents this. It fixes our attention on the service itself; and thinking about worship is a different thing from worshipping.”
\n“Novelty may fix our attention not even on the service but on the celebrant. You know what I mean. Try as one may to exclude the question, ‘What on earth is he up to now?’ will intrude. It lays one’s devotion waste. There is really some excuse for the man who said, ‘I wish they’d remember that the charge to Peter was Feed my sheep; not Try experiments on my rats, or even, Teach my performing dogs new tricks.”
\n“Thus my whole liturgiological position really boils down to an entreaty for permanence and uniformity. I can make do with almost any kind of service whatever, if only it will stay put. But if each form is snatched away just when I am beginning to feel at home in it, then I can never make any progress in the art of worship. You give me no chance to acquire the trained habit…”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

She then commented, “The ‘trained habit of prayer’ is, to me, the most crucial aspect of this; how can we advance in this if we aren’t given the opportunity? If we can’t make progress of this sort, we are lost and it’s pointless to go to church at all, IMO.”
\nAmen!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

bls from The Topmost Apple posted this additional quote from C.S. Lewis in response to the Lewis quote I mentioned previously. It’s a good one! C.S. Lewis (excerpted from the book, Letters to Malcolm, Chiefly on Prayer): “Novelty, simply as … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1215","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-quotes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hypersync.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1215","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hypersync.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hypersync.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hypersync.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hypersync.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1215"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.hypersync.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1215\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hypersync.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1215"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hypersync.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1215"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hypersync.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1215"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}