Natalie Rodgers
  • Home
  • Work
    • Works on Paper
    • Paintings
    • Photo-Based Works
    • Books
  • CV
  • Thoughts
  • Contact

The Same Old Thing/I've Got Rhythm

7/18/2012

3 Comments

 
Picture
I have been reading C.S. Lewis' The Screwtape Letters this summer with a book study group, and this particular passage stood out to me recently as it relates to my interests in art (keep in mind this is being written from the point of view of a demon trying to tempt a human):

"The horror of the Same Old Thing is one of the most valuable passions we have produced in the human heart--an endless source of heresies in religion, folly in counsel, infidelity in marriage, and inconstancy in friendship. The humans live in time, and experience reality successively. To experience much of it, therefore, they must experience many different things; in other words, they must experience change, the Enemy [God] (being a hedonist at heart) has made change pleasurable to them, just as He has made eating pleasurable. But since He does not wish them to make change, any more than eating, an end in itself, He has balanced the love of change in them by a love of permanence. He has contrived to gratify both tastes together in the very world He has made, by that union of change and permanence which we call Rhythm. He gives them the seasons, each season different yet every year the same, so that spring is always felt as a novelty yet always as the recurrence of an immemorial theme." (excerpt from Letter 25 of C.S. Lewis' The Screwtape Letters)

I'm interested in extending this idea of the seasons to the day-to-day. How can novelty be found within the regularity of our everyday experience? 

Why do I ask this? Because my life is that boring? No, because my life is that un-boring. And your life is that un-boring too. If happiness is found within the balance of change and permanence, or "Rhythm" as C.S. Lewis names it, then how must we see so that we can find something novel and beautiful on the shower wall every morning? (or every evening, every afternoon, every other morning, every other evening, you get the picture...)

3 Comments
Mona
7/18/2012 08:13:24 am

Very Interesting. I need to think about this and also maybe read CS Lewis. :)

Reply
Chloe
7/19/2012 10:07:42 am

Wow, Natters. I didn't know what to expect when approaching your blog; but this-- ah! This refreshed me and distilled my focus into the beauty of who He is and what He is like, how beautifully He knows our hearts. This is a striking passage. I'm so glad you posted it and I read it. Mmm... satisfying food for the soul.

Reply
Chloe
7/19/2012 10:09:48 am

Oh, p.s. I was intrigued by the beauty of the photo in this post when first I opened the page. Not until the end of writing did I realize what it was! Way to find the magical beauty in everyday life.

Reply

Your comment will be posted after it is approved.


Leave a Reply.

    Thoughts about art, seeing, and living.

    Archives

    April 2015
    February 2015
    December 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    December 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    May 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    December 2012
    November 2012
    September 2012
    August 2012
    July 2012

    RSS Feed

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.