I deleted the previous post. I was upset, so yeah, sorry I had to vent it here.

I am growing re-accustomed to the slower pace of life brought on by sickness. It still feels weird, so I have to be somewhat deliberate in my actions. I reflect on a passage in The Screwtape Letters that speaks on time being a gift – which ironically was what Jared Goon was affirming moments before I read it. Many times I take time as ‘my own’, when in fact I can no more control it than a five-year-old can. To consider time as a gift is liberating. What was once a guilt-ridden burden is now an appreciated treasure.

Speaking of The Screwtape Letters, I’m going back to my first love, hobby-wise. I’m reading not because I have to, but because I want to. And I’m not reading non-stimulating books like Twilight and Confessions of a Shopaholic (although they have their rightful place on my bookshelf). 

The Screwtape Letters is a 'compilation' of letters from a demon to his nephew, a demon-tempter in training. It’s funny, yet serious; ironic, yet true. C.S. Lewis’ brilliant use of satire highlights things like character, time, humility, pride, truth, love, hypocrisy, and the human life in scope. Made me realize how flighty we can be, and how we cleverly justify our actions and pride any way possible. It pointed me to this wall of ‘goodness’ we build that can hinder any potential for us being real.

Lewis may have written the book decades ago, but his words still speak today. There’s one part where he touches on post-modernity, or what he defines as the Historical Point of View (italics added).
“The Historical Point of View, put briefly, means that when a learned man is presented with any statement in an ancient author, the one question he never asks is whether it is true. He asks who influenced the ancient writer, and how far the statement is consistent with what he said in other books… or in the general history of thought… how it affected later writers… what the general course of criticism on it has been the last ten years, and what is the ‘present state of the question’. To regard the ancient writer as a possible source of knowledge – to anticipate that what he said could possibly modify your thoughts or your behavior – this would be rejected as unutterably simple-minded.”
That spoke to me, because I have recently been disturbed by how even the very idea of questioning a thing in absolutes is absurd. Not that I’m one of those who sees you with a broom and instantly throws you into a Salem court. But I'm not going to go into that. Right now it’s about a book. 

I guess you need to read Screwtape to fully understand my praise for it. It makes you think, if that’s any worth. A forewarning, though, that Lewis’ English is of the ‘older’ kind.  You might have to pause once in a while in order to digest his point.

Too bad Screwtape is not mine. I need to get a copy for myself, because I definitely need to read it again. For now, I’m at the 21st chapter of Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham. It has 122 chapters, and I don’t even know when my copy was printed.

But that’s what I like about classics.