On October 22, 1976, Clyde Kilby, who is now in paradise with Christ, gave an unforgettable lecture, I went to hear it that night, because I loved him, he was one of my professors of English literature at Wheaton College. opened my eyes to more life than I knew.
Oh, what eyes I had! He was like his hero, CS Lewis, in that sense. When he talked about the tree he saw on the way to class this morning, you wonder why you’ve been so blind all your life. Since those days, in class with Clyde Kilby, Psalm 19:1 has been at the center of my life: “Heaven declares the glory of God. “
- That night.
- Dr.
- Kilby had a shepherd’s heart and a poet’s eye.
- And he pleaded with us to stop seeking mental health in the mirror of self-analysis.
- But to drink to God’s remedies in nature.
He wasn’t naive. He knew sin, he knew the need for redemption in Christ, but He would have said that Christ bought us new eyes as well as new hearts. His call was that we stop being apathetic to the strange glory of ordinary things.
He finished his speech in 1976 with a list of resolutions, in homage to my teacher and in blessing to his soul, I offer them for his joy.
1. Al at least once a day, I have to look up at the sky and remember that I, a conscious with a conscience, am on a planet, traveling in space, with wonderfully mysterious things about me.
2. Au place of the usual idea of a careless and endless evolutionary change to which we can never add or subtract anything, I must assume that the universe is guided by an Intelligence that, as Aristotle said in a Greek theater, requires a beginning, a medium and an end. I think he will save me from the cynicism expressed by Bertrand Russel before his death, when he said, “There is darkness outside, and when I die, there will be darkness inside. There is no splendor, no immensity anywhere, just triviality for a moment, and then nothing.
3. No I must fall into the mistake that this day, or any other day, is only another 24 ambiguous and boring hours, but a unique event, full, if I wish, of valid possibilities. I should not be foolish enough to assume that problems and pain are all bad parentheses in my existence, but only possible stairs to climb to moral and spiritual maturity.
4. No I must make my life a thin, narrow line that prefers abstraction to reality. I need to know what I’m doing doing abstraction, which I’m sure I have to do often
6. I have to open my eyes and ears. Once a day, I just have to look at a tree, a flower, a cloud or a person. So I shouldn’t worry completely about asking what they are, but just being satisfied with who they are. Fortunately I have to allow you the mystery, which Lewis calls yours?Divine, magical, terrible and ecstatic?existence.
7. Do I ever have to remember the freshness of the vision I had in my childhood and try, at least for a while, to be, in lewis Carroll’s words, the child with pure, clear eyebrows and dreamy eyes of admiration?.
8. You should follow Darwin’s advice and frequently resort to imaginary things, such as good literature and good music, preferably, as Lewis suggests, an ancient book and timeless music.
9. No I must allow the evil avalanche of this century to usurp all my energies, but on the contrary, as Charles Williams has suggested, “make the moment as the moment”. I just have to try to live well now, because the only time there is now.
10. Even if I am wrong, I have to bet my life on the assumption that this world is not stupid, nor is it ruled by an absent landowner, but that today, on this very day, a course is taking place. it adds to the cosmic awning, which, when the time comes, I will easily understand, as a course of the architect who called himself Alpha and Omega.