For a friend

There is no virtue in settling for mud pies when life invites you to a banquet. Your humility is demonstrably false if it keeps you from true joy.

(Oh, c'mon. Can you believe it's really humble to say "I don't need that gift, I can make it on my own"? So you think you don't deserve it--fine, maybe you don't--maybe nobody does. Humility accepts that the gift is needed, whether deserved or not.)

For a different friend

who asked something about the previous post:

"If there lurks in most modern minds the notion that to desire our own good and earnestly to hope for the enjoyment of it is a bad thing, I submit that this notion has crept in from Kant and the Stoics and is no part of the Christian faith. Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires, not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased."

--C.S. Lewis in "The Weight of Glory"


(Of course I'm sure Lewis didn't mean to denigrate the joys of sex and drink here, though he didn't seem too fond of ambition...)