"…ceasing to be 'in love' need not mean ceasing to love. Love in this second sense – love as distinct from being 'in love' – is not merely a feeling. It is a deep unity, maintained by the will and deliberately strengthened by habit; reinforced by (in Christian marriages) the grace which both partners ask, and receive from God. They can have this love for each other even at these moments when they do not like each other… 'Being in love' first moved them to promise fidelity: this quieter love enables them to keep the promise."
"Let the thrill go – let it die away – go on through that period of death into the quieter interest and happiness that follow – and you will find you are living a world of new thrills all the time."
Part 3 – Chapter 6 – "On Christian Marriage"
~ CS Lewis, Mere Christianity
I read this book years ago, as a college student. I remember enjoying it – I've always been a fan of CS Lewis – but I don't remember now much about what I took away from it. (I actually really wish I still had the same copy I read all those years ago, because I'd love to see now what sections I marked and commented on my first go around, and how it compares to my second go. Alas, that book was lost somewhere in one of our many international moves over the last 15 years.) I am so enjoying reading it again, though. Even though Lewis wrote this somewhere around the time of World War 2, if I'm not mistaken, there has been so much that has just resonated as timely and true in the issues of our modern culture. And that's the mark of a good book, don't you think?
On My Nightstand This Week:
Devotional: Luke with the Luke for Everyone Commentary (Wright)
The Gospel of the Kingdom of Heaven (Maurice)
The Ancient Christian Devotional: Lectionary Cycle A (Crosby and Oden)
Theological: Mere Christianity (Lewis)
On Education: Norms and Nobility (Hicks)
Personal Choice Fiction: Middlemarch (Eliot)
With my Hubby: Emma (Austen)
Family Read-Aloud Literature: At the Back of the North Wind (MacDonald)
Click Here for more Words
I read it in my newly-Reformed "cage stage" and appreciated the writing but wasn't sure how to take some of the theology. I'm thinking it's time to read it again ... I don't remember this quote at all.
ReplyDeleteI love the quote at the beginning of your post! "It is a deep unity, maintained by the will and deliberately strengthened by habit..." So reminiscent of Charlotte Mason's principles, yet applied to a completely different phase of life and education. :) Beautiful.
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