- 2 days ago
Spanning C.S. Lewis bitter childhood, WWI and his life-changing friendships at Oxford, The Most Reluctant Convert depicts the events that shaped Lewis early life and journey from hard-boiled atheism to prolific Christianity.
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00:00:00Sattie Bazi ki isse behter jaga nahi hai khata re-charge karao
00:00:17Dao se paise bao, moke ka fayda uthau
00:00:21Aur khud ko ameer banao, bhavya jeevan bhao
00:00:25One next bet per dao lagau
00:00:27Alisha ghar nahi liena chate kya
00:00:29Hoori dunia nahi guhna chate kya
00:00:31Sapani ho jathe sek je basrat ho
00:00:33One next bet sports batting ne diya mujhe rashta
00:00:37Huwa meera rajin se zindhi ki se vaashta
00:00:39Main kar saktahun to, tu mi kar sakte ho
00:00:57I'm gonna do it
00:00:59But it's a much better
00:01:02My wife is still here
00:01:03I'm gonna do it
00:01:05I'm gonna do it
00:01:06I'm gonna do it
00:01:07I'm gonna do it
00:01:08I'm gonna do it
00:01:09I'm gonna do it
00:01:10Hey there, ready for you, Max?
00:01:36Oh, good.
00:01:37Cheers, lad.
00:01:38Thanks for strength.
00:01:39Okay, we're on our way.
00:01:54Okay, one minute till we shoot.
00:01:55Thank you, guys.
00:01:56Let's be ready.
00:01:58Yeah, here we go.
00:02:00Perfect, no.
00:02:02Okay.
00:02:03Final check to be fair.
00:02:04Just fine, sure.
00:02:06So, a red light bell, please.
00:02:09Where's my phone?
00:02:11That's my phone.
00:02:13Roll sound.
00:02:16Camera.
00:02:18All right, how's my hair?
00:02:19How's my hair?
00:02:19Second again.
00:02:20All right, guys.
00:02:21Nice and quiet, please.
00:02:23Ready for a take.
00:02:27Camera rolling.
00:02:28Set.
00:02:30One take.
00:02:31Pocket.
00:02:33Quiet.
00:02:34And by...
00:02:35And by...
00:02:37And...
00:02:38And...
00:02:39Magic.
00:02:41When I was an atheist, if you had asked me,
00:02:46Why do you not believe in God?
00:02:49I would have answered,
00:02:51Look at the universe we live in.
00:02:53Mostly empty space, completely dark.
00:02:56Unimaginably cold.
00:02:59Most scientists think it improbable that any planet in our solar system sustains life.
00:03:05And Earth herself existed without life for millions of years.
00:03:09And may exist millions more after life has once again left her.
00:03:13And what is life?
00:03:17So arranged, the creatures live only by preying on another.
00:03:22In the lower forms, this means only death.
00:03:25In the higher forms, something called consciousness enables the living to experience pain.
00:03:31Creatures are born in pain.
00:03:33Live by inflicting pain.
00:03:36And mostly die in pain.
00:03:38In the most complex of all creatures, man, another quality appears.
00:03:44Reason.
00:03:45And by reason we can foresee our own pain.
00:03:50This we call suffering.
00:03:53We can foresee our own death while keenly desiring the gone living.
00:03:58Reason enables humans to invent hundreds of ingenious ways of inflicting a great deal more pain than we could have done as irrational creatures.
00:04:07So, this power we have exploited to the full.
00:04:11This is our record of crime, war, disease, terror.
00:04:15With just enough happiness to give us an agonized fear of losing it.
00:04:21And when lost, the poignant misery of remembering how good it felt.
00:04:27Every now and then, our condition is improved by what we call civilization.
00:04:37But all civilizations pass away.
00:04:40Their own civilization will pass away is surely probable.
00:04:44And even if it should not pass away, we're all doomed.
00:04:48The universe is doomed.
00:04:49The astronomers hold out no hope that this planet is permanently inhabitable.
00:04:55The physicists hold out no hope that organic life is a permanent possibility in any part of the material universe.
00:05:02Not any...
00:05:02Fuck.
00:05:07Giving me up my Kaushal Kaush, the Malkari, one expat.
00:05:32Not only this earth, but the whole show.
00:05:34All the sons of space are to run down.
00:05:37Nature is a sinking ship.
00:05:42So, if you asked me to believe all this I just described as the work of an omnipotent, benevolent God,
00:05:49I would have laughed and said the evidence points in the opposite direction.
00:05:53Either there's no God behind the universe, a God indifferent to good and evil,
00:05:58or worse, an evil God.
00:06:00Never dreamed of raising the question if the universe is so bad,
00:06:05or even half so bad, how on earth did humans ever come to attribute it to the work of a wise and good creator.
00:06:12Oh, men are fools.
00:06:13But not so foolish as that, the direct inference from black to white,
00:06:18from evil flower to virtuous root,
00:06:21from senseless work to a workman infinitely wise.
00:06:25Stackers believe.
00:06:26Now, if I did not believe God existed,
00:06:32and I was angry at God for not existing,
00:06:34why should creatures have the burden of existence forced upon them without their consent?
00:06:39Lost my mother to cancer,
00:06:59had a strange relationship with my father that I regret even now.
00:07:05was in the trenches during the Great War,
00:07:08the hell where youth and laughter go,
00:07:11only to see horribly smashed men still moving about like crushed beetles.
00:07:18Mortichel, the wounded knee, killed the man next to me,
00:07:21splattering shrapnel, some of which I carried my body to this day.
00:07:24When I returned to Oxford after the war in 1919,
00:07:41they read the minutes to my college's last meeting in 1914.
00:07:44Nothing made me realize more thoroughly the absolute waste of those years.
00:07:50I was asked,
00:07:51were you much frightened in France?
00:07:53All the time, I said,
00:07:55but I never sang so low as to pray.
00:07:59Some people have got the impression from my books
00:08:01that I was raised in a strict and vivid puritanism.
00:08:04This is untrue.
00:08:05Mr. Lewis?
00:08:09Roger.
00:08:09As usual, please.
00:08:11You?
00:08:12Make that too.
00:08:14I'll get these.
00:08:15They'll find us a table.
00:08:16You can add this one.
00:08:18There you go.
00:08:19All done.
00:08:22No, religious experiences not occur in my family.
00:08:27Who's taught the usual things made to say my prayers
00:08:31a few times a day to church?
00:08:33Can't remember feeling much interest in it.
00:08:36Cheers.
00:08:41Father was a solicitor in Belfast, Ireland.
00:08:45He was Welsh by blood,
00:08:47passionate, rhetorical,
00:08:49laughed and cried a great deal.
00:08:52Had almost no talent for happiness.
00:08:55Mother was of a cooler race.
00:08:56She was tranquil, affectionate.
00:08:59She had a talent for happiness,
00:09:02went straight for it,
00:09:03as an experienced traveler goes for the best seat on a train.
00:09:06I lived in a large house that, to a small boy, seemed like a city.
00:09:17I am a product of long corridors,
00:09:25empty, sunlit rooms,
00:09:29attics explored in solitude,
00:09:32distant noises of gurgling cisterns and pipes,
00:09:36the noise of wind under the tiles,
00:09:39and endless books.
00:09:44Books readable and unreadable.
00:09:48Books suitable for a child,
00:09:51and books emphatically not.
00:09:53nothing was forbidden.
00:09:55In the seemingly endless rainy afternoons,
00:10:01I almost literally read my way through the house.
00:10:04Jack!
00:10:10You'll never get who I found.
00:10:12Great!
00:10:13Wait, wait for me!
00:10:15This way!
00:10:16Catch up!
00:10:17Hey, Jack, now, stop!
00:10:20Don't disturb your father!
00:10:22Boys!
00:10:24Boys!
00:10:25Boys!
00:10:29Boys?
00:10:30Boys?
00:10:30Boys?
00:10:34Boys?
00:10:40Happy days.
00:10:42My brother, Warnie, and I enjoyed them to the full.
00:10:49Until the great loss that befell our family.
00:10:55One night, my father, in tears,
00:10:57came into my room to convey to my terrified mind
00:11:02things I'd never conceived of.
00:11:04My mother had cancer.
00:11:06The doctor said we'd be gone.
00:11:08I don't think children suffer less than their elders.
00:11:10They suffer differently.
00:11:12So we have to be strong.
00:11:15And as our whole existence changed
00:11:18into something alien and menacing,
00:11:21Your mother loves you very much.
00:11:23The house became full of strange smells,
00:11:27midnight noises,
00:11:29and sinister, whispered conversations.
00:11:32My brother, Warnie, and I lost our mother gradually
00:11:43as she was slowly withdrawn from our life
00:11:46into the hands of nurses, delirium, and morphea.
00:11:50The disease followed the usual course,
00:11:58an operation, the operation in the patient's house in those days,
00:12:02an apparent recovery,
00:12:03a return of the disease,
00:12:07increasing pain,
00:12:09death.
00:12:10When mother died,
00:12:15all settled happiness disappeared from our lives.
00:12:20The great continent had sunk.
00:12:24It was only sea and islands now.
00:12:26My father never recovered.
00:12:50Under the pressure,
00:12:54he spoke wildly,
00:12:55acted unjustly,
00:12:57as this unfortunate man was losing his son
00:13:00as well as his wife.
00:13:02My brother, Warnie,
00:13:04and I had already begun to lie to him.
00:13:07We were too frightened to know
00:13:08it was hard for warmth in a bleak world.
00:13:11Mother's death occasion would,
00:13:16some might say that not I,
00:13:17my first religious experience.
00:13:21When my mother's case was pronounced hopeless,
00:13:23I remembered what I had been taught,
00:13:25that prayers offered in faith would be granted.
00:13:29Accordingly,
00:13:30I set myself to produce in prayer
00:13:33a firm belief for her recovery.
00:13:36When she died,
00:13:37I shifted ground.
00:13:38I worked myself into belief
00:13:40that there was to be a miracle.
00:13:44Oh, I approached God.
00:13:47I'm not a savior,
00:13:48I was a judge,
00:13:49but as magician,
00:13:50I simply wanted him to restore the status quo.
00:13:54And when he had done what was required of him,
00:13:58he would simply go away.
00:14:03But prayer hadn't worked.
00:14:05Oh, I was used to things not working.
00:14:07I thought no more about it.
00:14:19Mother's death,
00:14:20among other things,
00:14:21produced in me a deeply ingrained pessimism.
00:14:26I was by no means unhappy,
00:14:29but I had definitely formed the opinion
00:14:31that the universe in the main
00:14:33was a rather regrettable institution.
00:14:45Father's melancholy was a contributing factor.
00:14:49Prosperous man,
00:14:51who by our present tax-ridden standards
00:14:53have been described as incredibly secure,
00:14:56expressed to doubt life
00:14:59as one unremitting struggle.
00:15:03The best one could hope for,
00:15:08according to him,
00:15:09was to avoid the workhouse,
00:15:12this only by extreme exertion.
00:15:16Never thought to check his highly colored comments
00:15:20against the obvious fact
00:15:21that we were living very comfortable lives.
00:15:24temperamental widower still grieving the loss of his wife
00:15:28must be very wise to raise two noisy schoolboys
00:15:33who reserve their confidence only for each other.
00:15:36the same scene re-enacted time after time.
00:15:46Well?
00:15:47When he opened his mouth to reprove us,
00:15:50he no doubt intended a short,
00:15:52well-chosen appeal to our common sense.
00:15:56Have you nothing to say in your defense?
00:15:58But alas,
00:15:59he had been a public prosecutor
00:16:01long before he had become a father.
00:16:04Words came to him
00:16:06and intoxicated him as they came.
00:16:10Never in all my born days
00:16:13have I come across such recalcitrant behavior.
00:16:20Disobedience.
00:16:23Deliberate disobedience and willfulness
00:16:27such as would dismay the very founders
00:16:30of our civilization.
00:16:33What happened was a small boy
00:16:35who left the bathroom in a pickle
00:16:37found himself attacked
00:16:39like Cicero or Catelyn.
00:16:42Simile on simile.
00:16:44Rhetorical question on rhetorical question.
00:16:47The flash of an orator's eye.
00:16:49The gestures.
00:16:50The cadences.
00:16:53The pauses.
00:16:54The pauses were the cheap danger.
00:16:59Well?
00:17:02One was so long
00:17:04that my brother,
00:17:06assuming the denunciation to have ended,
00:17:09humbly picked up his book
00:17:10and resumed reading,
00:17:12a gesture which my father,
00:17:14who had only made a rhetorical miscalculation
00:17:17of about a second and a half,
00:17:18described as
00:17:20cool,
00:17:21premeditated,
00:17:22insolent.
00:17:24The disproportion between the tirades
00:17:27and what prompted them
00:17:28was ludicrous.
00:17:30From the wilderness of words
00:17:32emerged ideas I took literally.
00:17:35Perhaps I should board up the house.
00:17:40Keep you both in school all year round.
00:17:43And that we should be
00:17:44sent
00:17:45to the colonies
00:17:47to end in misery
00:17:49the career of crime
00:17:51on which you have both
00:17:52already embarked.
00:18:00Such was the effect
00:18:01of my father's rhetoric
00:18:03until I began to perceive him
00:18:06as ridiculous.
00:18:08At 14 I ceased to be a Christian.
00:18:16That age one barely notices.
00:18:20At school all the teachers
00:18:22and book editors
00:18:23took it for granted
00:18:24that religion was some sort
00:18:26of endemic nonsense
00:18:27into which humanity
00:18:28tended to blunder.
00:18:30In the midst
00:18:31of a thousand false religions
00:18:34stood our own
00:18:35the thousand at first
00:18:37labelled
00:18:38completely
00:18:39true.
00:18:42On what grounds?
00:18:43I asked.
00:18:44Why was it
00:18:45treated so differently?
00:18:48Oh, I was eager not to.
00:18:49If Adonis
00:18:50could be explained away
00:18:51then why not Christ?
00:18:53So little by little
00:18:55I became an apostate
00:18:57dropping my faith
00:18:58with no sense of loss
00:19:00and with the greatest relief.
00:19:02Oh, there was no faith,
00:19:03hope or charity
00:19:04in my religion.
00:19:05I feared
00:19:05not God
00:19:06but hell
00:19:07and heaven
00:19:07was only the lesser
00:19:08of two intolerable evils.
00:19:11Oh, I became
00:19:12a vigorous debunker
00:19:13and argued
00:19:14there's no proof
00:19:15for any religion
00:19:16and that Christianity
00:19:17is not even the best.
00:19:20Religion was invented
00:19:21to explain things
00:19:22of terrified
00:19:23primitive man.
00:19:24Thunder,
00:19:25pestilence,
00:19:27snakes.
00:19:28What could be more natural
00:19:29than suppose
00:19:29they were animated
00:19:30by spirits
00:19:31and that by singing songs
00:19:33and making sacrifices
00:19:34and making sacrifices
00:19:34one might appease them?
00:19:36Great men
00:19:37such as Hercules
00:19:38and Odin
00:19:39were thought to be gods
00:19:40after their death.
00:19:41Hence,
00:19:42after the death
00:19:43of a Hebrew philosopher
00:19:44Yeshua,
00:19:45whose name
00:19:46we have corrupted
00:19:47into Jesus,
00:19:48a cult sprang up
00:19:49and Christianity
00:19:50began just another
00:19:52mythology
00:19:53among many.
00:19:54Oh, these superstitions
00:19:56always held
00:19:57by common people
00:19:59but educated thinking
00:20:01ones have always
00:20:01stood outside it
00:20:03conceding to it
00:20:04only out of convenience
00:20:06and I was not prepared
00:20:09to believe in a bogeyman
00:20:10who would torture me
00:20:12forever
00:20:12because I failed
00:20:14to live up to
00:20:15an impossible standard.
00:20:24with my deliberate withdrawal
00:20:29from divine protection
00:20:31I underwent
00:20:32a successful assault
00:20:33of sexual temptation.
00:20:35Part of it
00:20:36was the age
00:20:37I had reached
00:20:37and the electric effect
00:20:39was a dancing mistress.
00:20:41She was the first woman
00:20:43to speak to my blood
00:20:44whom I looked upon
00:20:46to lust after.
00:20:48Good morning, boys.
00:20:49Good morning, girls.
00:20:51This was of no fault
00:20:53of her own
00:20:53a gesture
00:20:54tone of voice
00:20:55has unpredictable results
00:20:57of these matters.
00:20:59As it happened
00:20:59the schoolroom
00:21:01was decorated
00:21:01for a dance.
00:21:03She came in
00:21:03and said
00:21:05I love this man
00:21:08of bunting.
00:21:09And I was on down.
00:21:12Now let us begin.
00:21:15Follow my every move.
00:21:17Thanks, Elsie.
00:21:20Up
00:21:21and down
00:21:24and up
00:21:26and baby toes
00:21:30baby toes
00:21:32baby toes
00:21:32baby toes
00:21:33and round
00:21:35sway
00:21:35sway
00:21:37sway
00:21:39and
00:21:41This was not
00:21:41a night
00:21:42devoting himself
00:21:43to a lady
00:21:43or like a Turk
00:21:45looking at a
00:21:45Caucasian woman
00:21:46he could not afford.
00:21:48I knew what I wanted.
00:21:55You might think
00:21:56this produced guilt.
00:21:59Guilt
00:21:59was not
00:22:00a thing
00:22:01I knew.
00:22:02Well done, boy.
00:22:04Well done.
00:22:09I had been
00:22:10a tender-hearted
00:22:11boy
00:22:11but now I laid it
00:22:13hard to become
00:22:13a thump
00:22:14a cat
00:22:15a snob.
00:22:16I was
00:22:18at that time
00:22:19as non-moral
00:22:20as a human
00:22:21creature could be.
00:22:23How are you?
00:22:26Do enjoy the holidays
00:22:28won't you?
00:22:31Yes, miss.
00:22:38Oh, there you are.
00:22:40Where have you been?
00:22:41Sorry, father.
00:22:41Come on, come on.
00:22:43You won't wait, you know.
00:22:50I could not tell
00:22:51my father
00:22:52my change of belief
00:22:53though he was no fool.
00:22:55He had a streak
00:22:56of genius
00:22:57but for a man
00:22:58who was
00:22:58formidable in court
00:23:00and I presume
00:23:01efficient in his office
00:23:02he had more power
00:23:05for confusing an issue
00:23:07than any man
00:23:08I have ever known.
00:23:13Well, the first barrier
00:23:21to communication
00:23:22was
00:23:23Harving
00:23:24asked the question
00:23:25he would not
00:23:26stay for the answer.
00:23:28Tell him
00:23:29that a boy
00:23:30called Churchwood
00:23:32had caught a mouse
00:23:33and kept it
00:23:34as a pet
00:23:35he would answer.
00:23:36Whatever became
00:23:38of young Chickweed
00:23:39who was so afraid
00:23:40of rats?
00:23:42Who, sir?
00:23:44Chickweed.
00:23:47Oh, I think
00:23:49you mean Churchwood.
00:23:51It was a mouse
00:23:52not a rat
00:23:53and he wasn't afraid
00:23:54of it
00:23:55at all.
00:23:57Attempts to correct
00:23:59his version
00:24:00produced an incredulism.
00:24:02That's not the story
00:24:03he used to tell.
00:24:06My boy
00:24:07All this explains
00:24:09though
00:24:09does not excuse
00:24:11one of the worst
00:24:12acts of my life.
00:24:16I allowed myself
00:24:18to prepare
00:24:19for confirmation
00:24:20be confirmed
00:24:22to make my
00:24:22first communion
00:24:24all
00:24:25in total
00:24:26disbelief.
00:24:28Acting apart
00:24:29eating
00:24:30and drinking
00:24:31my own
00:24:32condemnation.
00:24:34I knew
00:24:35I was acting
00:24:36a lie.
00:24:37I simply
00:24:38could not
00:24:39tell my father
00:24:40my real views.
00:24:41Not that he
00:24:42would have stopped.
00:24:43Let's talk
00:24:44the whole thing
00:24:45over
00:24:45he would have said.
00:24:46But the thread
00:24:47would have been
00:24:47lost at once.
00:24:49His arguments.
00:24:51I would not
00:24:52have valued
00:24:52a straw
00:24:53the beauty
00:24:54of the authorized
00:24:55version
00:24:56the Christian
00:24:58traditional.
00:24:59though it was
00:25:00all sentiment
00:25:01and if I
00:25:02tried to
00:25:03make my
00:25:04exact points
00:25:06clear
00:25:06there would have
00:25:07been thunder
00:25:08from him
00:25:08and a thin
00:25:10peevish rattle
00:25:11from me
00:25:11nor could the
00:25:12subject
00:25:13ever have
00:25:14been dropped.
00:25:16All this
00:25:17I
00:25:18ought to
00:25:20have dared
00:25:20rather than
00:25:22the thing
00:25:23I did.
00:25:24Oh it
00:25:25seems
00:25:26impossible
00:25:26at the time.
00:25:28Cowardice
00:25:29drove me
00:25:31to hypocrisy
00:25:32and hypocrisy
00:25:34to
00:25:35blasphemy.
00:25:42The years
00:25:43passed
00:25:44then the most
00:25:45fortunate thing
00:25:47happened.
00:25:47A bit more to the right
00:25:48please.
00:25:49My father
00:25:50had declared
00:25:51that he would
00:25:51send my brother
00:25:52to a tutor
00:25:53in Surrey
00:25:54south of London.
00:25:55And you?
00:25:56In a surprisingly
00:25:57short time
00:25:58this tutor
00:25:59had so
00:26:00rebuilt the ruins
00:26:02of Warney's
00:26:02education
00:26:03that he passed
00:26:04into Sandhurst
00:26:05and received
00:26:06a prized
00:26:07army cadetship.
00:26:09For some time
00:26:10my own schooling
00:26:11had been going
00:26:12nowhere.
00:26:13It had neither
00:26:14engaged my mind
00:26:15or my heart.
00:26:17But seeing
00:26:18my brother's
00:26:18progress
00:26:19I finally
00:26:20plucked up
00:26:21the courage
00:26:21to ask.
00:26:22Jack?
00:26:22Jack?
00:26:23Are you up there?
00:26:30Come on boy
00:26:31we'll get you
00:26:32caught.
00:26:33We're ten minutes
00:26:33late already.
00:26:40Papa
00:26:41you know
00:26:43when you said
00:26:44morning off to Surrey
00:26:45you wrote
00:26:46to Mr.
00:26:46Kirkpatrick.
00:26:47Yes the great
00:26:49knock we used
00:26:50to call him.
00:26:51Warney seemed
00:26:52to benefit from
00:26:52him greatly.
00:26:54He did?
00:26:54He did.
00:26:55He's a fine
00:26:55teacher.
00:27:00I've been
00:27:00thinking
00:27:01might it not
00:27:04be good
00:27:04to send me
00:27:06to Surrey
00:27:06too?
00:27:13Well there'll
00:27:14be no other
00:27:14boys.
00:27:15you won't
00:27:17be able
00:27:17to play
00:27:17your games.
00:27:19I tried
00:27:19to look
00:27:20brave.
00:27:21No
00:27:21other
00:27:22boys.
00:27:23Never
00:27:24to play
00:27:24games.
00:27:26I was
00:27:27transported.
00:27:28Peace.
00:27:47Ah yes
00:27:47this is a day
00:27:48the rest of my life
00:27:49really began to happen.
00:27:51I was still in my teens when I made my way over to England and down to Surrey to meet my new tutor.
00:28:05I wasn't sure what to expect.
00:28:08At first sight, he seemed decent enough.
00:28:14Hello.
00:28:15Now this is me.
00:28:17That's William T. Kirkpatrick.
00:28:18The great's not.
00:28:23This grip's like iron pinces.
00:28:25Fall away.
00:28:30I remember feeling the need to make conversation in a deplorable manner that Mr. Hughes my father.
00:28:38I was quite surprised by the scenery of Surrey, sir.
00:28:40It's really much wilder than I expected.
00:28:42Stop.
00:28:43What do you mean by wildness?
00:28:45And on what grounds have you based your expectations on the floral and geology of Surrey?
00:28:52What's it, maps?
00:28:53Photographs?
00:28:54Books?
00:28:56Sorry, sir.
00:28:56As answer after answer was torn to shreds, Kirk concluded that my comment was meaningless, and that I had no right to have any opinion whatsoever on the subject.
00:29:08It never occurred to me that my thoughts need to be based on anything.
00:29:11That conversation lasted three minutes, and set the tone for my two years in Surrey.
00:29:22Kirk's ruthless dialectic was the only way he spoke.
00:29:27Kirk lived with his wife in a comfortable and secluded cottage on the edge of the village.
00:29:43It was all rather wonderful.
00:29:45I felt welcomed as soon as I stepped inside.
00:29:55The whole place was stuffed with books.
00:29:59I had come home.
00:30:01And this is my wife, Louisa.
00:30:04Pleased to meet you, Mrs. Kirkpatrick.
00:30:06Our pleasure's off inside.
00:30:07I will show you up to your room.
00:30:08Why?
00:30:09You come down when you're ready.
00:30:11And you'll start knocking that mind of yours into shape.
00:30:14There you are.
00:30:21Hope you like it.
00:30:25Oh, and by the way, don't worry about my husband.
00:30:28He likes to argue.
00:30:30A lot.
00:30:33Most boys would have cowered at all this.
00:30:35I loved the treatment.
00:30:37It was red beef and strong beer.
00:30:41After a few knockdowns, I began to put on some intellectual muscle.
00:30:44And became a bit of a sparring partner to my new tutor.
00:30:53If I could please myself, I'd always live as I lived here.
00:30:58Breakfast at eight.
00:31:00At my desk by nine.
00:31:01To read and write to precisely one.
00:31:04Then lunch.
00:31:05That was absolutely delicious.
00:31:08Thank you, Mr. Kirkpatrick.
00:31:09Fine.
00:31:10Oh, yes.
00:31:11I was encouraged to eat as well as to think.
00:31:19Off for a walk by two.
00:31:22Not with a friend.
00:31:23Walking and talking are two great pleasures.
00:31:25But it is a mistake to combine them.
00:31:28Our noise blots out the sounds and silences of the outer world.
00:31:32My return and the arrival of tea would coincide in exactly four.
00:31:43Taken in solitude.
00:31:44Eating and reading are two pleasures that combine admirably.
00:31:49Work till seven.
00:31:51Deep into the classics.
00:31:52Not sparing the horses.
00:31:54Good talk all evening.
00:32:03All challenging, brain-rattling stuff.
00:32:06In bed by eleven unless you're making a nighter at the pub with your cronies.
00:32:12Possible.
00:32:13You're still a little shaky on accuracy.
00:32:15And I fear you've missed my point about the classics entirely.
00:32:22He that neither knoweth nor will be taught by the instruction of the wise.
00:32:29This man is not...
00:32:33Herodotus.
00:32:35He knew a thing or two.
00:32:38That's not Herodotus.
00:32:41It's Hesion.
00:32:43Herodotus.
00:32:44It's from his poem, Days in Work.
00:32:47I have it somewhere.
00:32:51Here.
00:32:52Come on!
00:32:57My work was mostly Latin and Greek.
00:33:02Homer first, though still relished the brightness and music of it,
00:33:07then the two great boars.
00:33:09Cicero and Demosthenes could not be avoided.
00:33:15Followed by Lucretius.
00:33:16Oh, the glory.
00:33:19Herodotus.
00:33:20Aeschylus.
00:33:21You ripper dees.
00:33:23Have no taste for Virgil.
00:33:24In the evening, we mastered French, Italian, and German, plunging into the likes of Voltaire, Faust, and the Inferno.
00:33:32Kirk was my great teacher.
00:33:37My debt remains to this day.
00:33:41As for religion, he was a Presbyterian atheist.
00:33:44On Sundays, he gardened in Issa Clarence.
00:33:48Among the poets I was reading at the time, one stood apart.
00:33:59William Butler Yeats.
00:34:02He believed that there was a world beyond the material curtain, and that contact with that world was possible.
00:34:09Oh, I regarded Yeats as a learned, responsible writer.
00:34:14Later, when I met him, I was awed by his personality, and he rejected the whole materialist philosophy out of hand.
00:34:22If Yeats had been a Christian, I would have discounted if I had Christians placed, disposed of, forever.
00:34:30Ever.
00:34:32Yeats offered something else.
00:34:34A perhaps.
00:34:36And through this perhaps, a drop of disturbing doubt fell into my materialism, and introduced me to something I've had trouble with ever since.
00:34:45A ravenous desire for the supernatural.
00:34:48Or, to put it bluntly, the occult.
00:35:00I once tried to describe it in a novel.
00:35:06It's a spiritual lust, and like the lust of the flesh, has the fatal power of making everything else seem uninteresting while it lasts.
00:35:16Oh, I love the vagueness of it.
00:35:18Circles, pentangles, Ouija balls, seances, all seemed able to raise a spirit.
00:35:27Oh, this magic, no connection to my atheism, swayed me in different moods, and that it was spawned by both Christians and rationalists, appealed to the rebel in me.
00:35:41My descent was from eccentricity to perversity.
00:35:48The world and the flesh had made their appearance.
00:35:51Now came the devil.
00:35:54Had there been an elder in the neighborhood who dabbled in dirt?
00:36:00Oh, they have a nose for potential disciples.
00:36:05I might now be a Satanist or a maniac.
00:36:08Then, in the super abundance of mercy, came that event which I have attempted to describe in many of my books.
00:36:23I was in the habit of walking a few miles to Leatherhead Station and taking the train back to Kirk's.
00:36:35While waiting for the train, I rummaged in the second-hand bookstore and picked out an unusual title, Fantasties, by George MacDonald.
00:36:52But it looked a little unusual.
00:36:55I hadn't the faintest notion of what I'd let myself in for.
00:37:03This one, please.
00:37:04No, somethings, please, sir.
00:37:07Thank you, Reverend, sir.
00:37:11Sorry, Dr. Vickery, I'm here.
00:37:13As I began to read my new book, I was electrified.
00:37:35I felt like a miner who had struck gold.
00:37:38In those pages, I met all that had charmed me and Yeats and others.
00:37:44Then everything was changed.
00:37:46The bright shadow coming out of this book transformed everything, and it would affect my own writing forever.
00:37:53It was as if I'd died in the old country and come alive in the new.
00:38:00All my occult and erotic fancies began to feel sordid, disarmed.
00:38:05What I really wanted was just out of reach.
00:38:10Not because of something I could not do, but because of something I could not stop doing.
00:38:16Oh, if I could only let go, unmake myself.
00:38:22I did not know the name of this new quality.
00:38:27Oh, I do now.
00:38:30Holiness.
00:38:31That night, as I read Fantastis, my imagination was baptized.
00:38:41The rest of me took a little longer.
00:38:46I first met it as a memory that would arise suddenly without warning from a depth of not years, but centuries.
00:38:59The memory was from childhood, when my brother brought you the lid of a biscuit tin,
00:39:06garnished with twigs and flowers to make a toy garden.
00:39:10It was the first beautiful day.
00:39:12How big is it?
00:39:13I have saved 10 people until now.
00:39:15And now I'm going to go there, where I get quickly money and I get a big hand.
00:39:20One X Bat Perth.
00:39:22There were so many money, but you can get from a lot of people.
00:39:26One X Bat.
00:39:26The company of Sattie Baji.
00:39:27The company of Sattie Baji.
00:39:28I had ever known a sensation of desire but before I knew what I desired the desire was gone
00:39:38withdrawn the world turned common again since then my constant endeavor was to get it again
00:39:48in reading every book going on every walk listening to every piece of music occasionally
00:39:57the sky would turn far more often I frightened it away by my greed to have it
00:40:06I call this desire joy which must be distinguished very sharply from happiness or pleasure except
00:40:19that anyone who has ever experienced joy will want it again apart from that it might be called
00:40:27a particular kind of grief but that's the kind we want it is the scent of a flower we have
00:40:37not found the echo of a tune we've not heard news from a country we have not yet visited
00:40:49joy would exchange it for all the pleasures in the world but joy is never in our power
00:41:02joy and pleasure is
00:41:12at eighteen I arrived at Oxford the fabled cluster of towers and dreaming spires had never looked
00:41:21even more beautiful less than a term later like most of my generation I enlisted the army
00:41:29or sent to the front lines in France on my nineteenth birthday to be exact
00:41:35first bullet I heard brought not fear but the thought this is war this is what Homer wrote about
00:41:48five months later I was wounded and sent home in between I had the good luck to fall sick with trench fever
00:41:58compared to the trenches a hospital bed and a book were heaven itself
00:42:10and how are you tonight Lieutenant Billy fine thank you nurse
00:42:13well Stanley time for your inspection I think
00:42:17yes nurse except that the night nurse was conducting a furious affair with my roommate
00:42:24I was too sick to be embarrassed but the sound of two lovers whispering in the night time
00:42:32is a tedious noise
00:42:36it was here I first read G.K. Chesterton never heard of him had no idea what he stood for
00:42:43nor could understand why major jaconquist of me his humor was the kind I liked oh not jokes
00:42:50still less a tone of flippancy oh that I cannot endure rather his humor was the bloom of his argument
00:43:00strange as it seems I liked him for his goodness oh not that it had anything to do with being good
00:43:06myself I did not have the cynics nose for hypocrisy and smugness so common among my peers
00:43:20in Chesterton as in Macdonald I did not know what I was letting myself in for
00:43:27a young man who wishes to remain a sound atheist cannot be too careful of his reading
00:43:36after my convalescence I returned to the front lines
00:43:50I'll wait
00:43:51I'm waiting.
00:44:08Sir, no noise!
00:44:10I'm going to get down!
00:44:13Please!
00:44:14I'm going to get down!
00:44:14Open it!
00:44:16Help me!
00:44:16I'm going to get down!
00:44:17I'm going to get down!
00:44:19I'm going to get down!
00:44:21the moment i was hit and found that i was not breathing i concluded this is death
00:44:31i felt no fear no courage just the thought here lies a man dying it wasn't even interesting
00:44:43the fruit of this experience is there appeared a fully conscious eye whose connection with me
00:44:50was coming to an end and i whoever that may be care of two followings oh it was more than an
00:44:59abstraction i tasted it
00:45:03as for the rest of the war the cold the fear the fright the corpses
00:45:17was a costly interruption to rational life
00:45:23now it feels like it happened to someone else
00:45:28except for the recurring nightmares
00:45:34when i returned to oxford i put on a new look which meant to act with the greatest good sense
00:45:51and to have no more flirtations with the supernatural
00:45:56directly after the war i spent a fortnight with a man i dearly loved who was going mad i held him
00:46:07as he wallowed on the floor and screamed devils are tearing me apart i'm falling into hell
00:46:15i knew this man had flirted with all sorts of occult ideas as i had oh perhaps there was no connection
00:46:23but i took it as a warning to stay on the beaten track the approved material center of the road
00:46:32with the lights
00:46:33with the lights on
00:46:34the early days of my new look were quite happy
00:46:40busily engaged in my studies of classics philosophy
00:46:43at the time we were all struck up by freud and his new psychology
00:46:48by my mid-twenties
00:46:50i was elected a fellow at maudlin college
00:46:53hence my career as a scholar and tutor began
00:46:56the answer of course is that he didn't take his position
00:47:00they even provide rooms for me here to read to write for my tutorials
00:47:06i had arrived
00:47:09i felt like i'd found a home with some of the finest scholars i would ever meet
00:47:15we were young clear-headed
00:47:18invincible
00:47:19then one day my very dear friend
00:47:23owen barfield who satisfied my hunger for debate and rational opposition
00:47:28announced that he had changed his views
00:47:32he was no longer a materialist
00:47:35but had become a theist
00:47:37i was shocked
00:47:39i thought barfield was safe
00:47:41he came in such a free-thinking family
00:47:43he barely even heard of christianity
00:47:45barfield brought up all the abominations
00:47:48god
00:47:49spirit
00:47:49afterlife
00:47:50i said
00:47:52damn it
00:47:52no it's medieval
00:47:54damn it
00:47:55it's medieval
00:47:57you may say that jack
00:48:00but the medieval you are
00:48:01has a lot to teach us
00:48:02you mean that the world is flat
00:48:04oh come on jack be serious
00:48:07open your mind
00:48:08i have
00:48:11and as a wise man once said to me
00:48:13heath and neither know it
00:48:15they started our great war
00:48:17a philosophic disputation
00:48:19had lasted for years
00:48:20i remember barfield asking
00:48:23jack
00:48:24do you believe that logic and reason bring forth indisputable truth
00:48:29i do
00:48:30and are your moral and aesthetic judgments valid and meaningful
00:48:33they are
00:48:34then materialism must be abandoned
00:48:36there is a hopeless discord between what our minds claim to be
00:48:40and what they really must be if materialism is true
00:48:43we claim our minds to be reason perceiving universal intellectual principles moral laws possessing free will
00:48:51but if materialism is true our minds missed in reality be merely chance arrangements of atoms in scars
00:48:58i of course argue back
00:49:00we are to accept reality as it is revealed to us by our senses
00:49:03and the findings of science have concluded that human reason is merely cognitive maps resulting from natural selection with random mutations over millions of years to confer on humans a reproductive advantage over other species
00:49:17i have to say something
00:49:19i have to say something
00:49:20i have been defending materialism for years
00:49:24look
00:49:26if my clearest reasoning tells me
00:49:28that my mind is nothing more than the accidental result of atoms colliding in skulls
00:49:33there must be some mistake
00:49:35how should i trust my mind
00:49:36how should i trust my mind
00:49:37how should i trust my mind
00:49:38when it tells me that my most profound thoughts
00:49:40are merely mental patterns resulting from heredity in physics
00:49:47barfield's notion
00:49:48that if materialism is true my conscious mind is nothing more than atoms colliding in skulls
00:49:56this was simply unbelievable to me
00:50:00i could not force my thought into that shape any more than i could scratch my ear with my big tail
00:50:07it was as vital as a physical impossibility
00:50:11mind
00:50:12reason
00:50:13imagination
00:50:14consciousness
00:50:15must be more than mere biochemistry
00:50:17it must be
00:50:19a real participation something further up
00:50:22further in
00:50:25rock bottom reality
00:50:27had to be
00:50:29intelligent
00:50:33it's astonishing i've not seen this before
00:50:36willful blindness i suppose
00:50:38if i was careful not to attach
00:50:40rock bottom reality to god
00:50:42my
00:50:43skepticism would not allow me to go that far
00:50:46rather i attached it to the universe itself
00:50:51still it had immense potency
00:50:54behind the material curtain lay the hidden glory
00:50:57barfield and i began to talk religiously about an absolute
00:51:04of course this was a religion cost nothing
00:51:06wasn't personal
00:51:07wouldn't do anything
00:51:08wouldn't lead to dark places where men scream they're being dragged into hell
00:51:12it was there
00:51:14it was there
00:51:15never come here
00:51:16make a nuisance of itself
00:51:19within the faculty i befriended hego dyson and j.r.r. talkie both christians
00:51:32i
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00:52:53About this time, one of my fellow tutors, the hardest-boiled atheist I'd ever known, sat in my rooms outside the fireplace and remarked,
00:53:03The evidence for the historicity of the Gospels, surprisingly good, wrong thing, all that mythology about the dying God, wrong thing, looks as if it really happened once.
00:53:16I was shattered. If he, the cynic of cynics, who's never since shown any interest in Christianity would not, as I still would have put it, safe, where could I turn?
00:53:32Before God closed in on me, I was in fact offered a moment of free choice.
00:53:37I was sitting on a bus going up Headington Hills, thinking I was wearing a suit of armor, trying to keep something out.
00:53:44I could unbuckle the armor, or keep it on. Choice felt momentous.
00:53:52I chose to unbuckle. Did not seem possible to do the opposite. The initiative did not lie with me.
00:54:02If Hamlet and Shakespeare could ever meet, it would have to be Shakespeare's doing. He could write himself into the play.
00:54:09What I called spirit began to show an alarming tendency to become personal.
00:54:19Into my mind crept a horrible novelty. I'd really believe something.
00:54:24When I had blundered into that, I knew I could play a philosophy no longer.
00:54:28It was time something should be done. The absolute had arrived.
00:54:34Making a nuisance of itself, issuing a command. All my acts and desires were to be brought in line with this absolute spirit that I now believed.
00:54:42For the first time, I examined myself with a serious practical purpose.
00:54:52What I found appalled me. Depth after depth of pride, of self admiration, of zoo of lust, of bentham of ambitions, of nursery of fears, of harem of fond of hatred.
00:55:08Oh, my name is nature.
00:55:12Amiable agnostics talk cheerfully of man's search for God.
00:55:15May as well talk of the mouse's search for the cat.
00:55:18All I ever wanted was not to be interfered with, to call my soul my own.
00:55:23Keep out private. This is my business.
00:55:26Let no one talk glibly of the comforts of religion.
00:55:30Is it a small thing to give yourself blindly to a guide, one as own showing may very well be leading into poverty, ridicule, death?
00:55:38Oh, I knew I would not amount myself to do anything intolerably painful. I would be reasonable.
00:55:44Will it be reasonable?
00:55:46No assurance was offered. It was all or nothing.
00:55:52As the dry bones shook in Ezekiel's dreadful valley, the absolute spirit began to stir and heave and throw off its grave clothes.
00:56:05He said, I am the Lord. I am that I am. I am.
00:56:22You must picture me alone in my room at Maudlin.
00:56:29Night after night, feeling whenever my mind lifted, even for a second from my work, the steady, unrelenting approach of him whom I so earnestly desired not to meet.
00:56:44That which I greatly feared had at last come upon me.
00:56:56In the Trinity term 1929, I gave in and admitted that God is God.
00:57:06Knelt and prayed perhaps that night the most dejected, reluctant convert in all England.
00:57:15Let you not then see the divine love that would accept a prodigal on such terms.
00:57:28Kicking, struggling, resentful, darting his eyes in every direction, looking for a chance to escape.
00:57:35The hardness of God is kinder than the softness of man.
00:57:42His compulsion is my liberation.
00:57:47You must understand that the conversion I just described was only to theism, pure and simple, not Christianity.
00:58:09I know nothing of the incarnation.
00:58:11The God to whom I surrendered was not human.
00:58:14I had no belief in an afterlife.
00:58:16That to me felt like a bribe.
00:58:18My argument against God was that the universe was so cruel and unjust.
00:58:23But where had I got this notion of cruel and unjust?
00:58:26I call a lie crooked because I have some idea of a straight line.
00:58:30What was I comparing the universe with when I called it cruel and unjust?
00:58:34If the whole universe has no meaning, I should never know it has no meaning.
00:58:40All of my reasonable mind was convinced that the universe cannot explain itself.
00:58:45That God is behind the universe.
00:58:46That he has purposes and is to be obeyed simply because he is God.
00:58:51I suppose my religion was like that of the Jews.
00:58:58As soon as I became a theist, I started attending my parish church on Sunday.
00:59:03College chapel during the week.
00:59:05Not because I believed in Christianity, but because I thought one should fly one's flag.
00:59:18Church was an unattractive affair.
00:59:23I like clergy as I like bears, but I have no more wish to be in church as to be in a zoo.
00:59:28Church to me meant ugly architecture.
00:59:29The music meant poetry.
00:59:30The music meant poetry.
00:59:31Inns are extremely disagreeable to me.
00:59:44And the botheration of it all, the crowds, the notices, the perpetual organizing.
00:59:53Before our final prayer, a quick announcement.
00:59:57If you would like to join Edith on the flower inter.
01:00:00She's desperate for volunteers.
01:00:02Do please speak to her at the back by the font afterwards.
01:00:06Let us pray.
01:00:07Lighten our darkness, we beseech thee, O Lord.
01:00:11And by thy great mercy, defend us from all perils and dangers of this night.
01:00:18For the love of thy only Son, our Savior, Jesus Christ.
01:00:23Amen.
01:00:24My new conviction in a higher being did not exactly make me a paid-up member in the Church of England.
01:00:42But, now that I believe in God, I wanted to know more of him, from any source, pagan or Christian.
01:00:52The question was no longer to find the one true religion among many, but where had the thing grown up?
01:01:01Paganism was the childhood of religion.
01:01:05Where had it reached maturity?
01:01:08As for the materialists, their view was out of court.
01:01:12If reason is only the accidental result of atoms colliding in skulls,
01:01:18I could see no reason to believe that one accident should give the correct account for all other accidents.
01:01:25My allegiance was now with the mass of humanity and dance, sang, prayed, worshipped.
01:01:37There isn't really an infinite variety of religions, you know.
01:01:41To me, the only ones worth considering are Christianity and Hinduism.
01:01:46Islam is only the greatest of the Christian heresies.
01:01:49Buddhism is only the greatest of the Hindu heresies.
01:01:52All that is best in Judaism and Plato survives in Christianity.
01:01:57And Hinduism bears no historical claim.
01:02:00That had been put into my head by that hard-boiled atheist who said,
01:02:04All that mythology about a dying God looks as if it really happened once.
01:02:11One day, Tolkien and I took a stroll on Allison's walk.
01:02:16As we talked, I said,
01:02:19Tollis, I have, with considerable resistance, come to believe in God.
01:02:26But not Christianity.
01:02:28Oh, Jack.
01:02:29I cannot believe something I do not understand.
01:02:31How can the life and death of someone else, whoever he was, 2,000 years ago, help us in the here and now?
01:02:37When you meet a God sacrificing himself in a pagan story like Dionysus, Ulda, Osiris, or even in a fairy tale,
01:02:44you like it very much and are mysteriously moved by it, provided you meet it anywhere except for the Gospels.
01:02:50For the story of Christ is a myth working on us in the same way as other myths with one tremendous difference in that it really happened.
01:02:58Suddenly, a rush of wind, it dropped at us, startling me.
01:03:06So many leaves fell to the ground, I thought it was raining.
01:03:10I held my breath.
01:03:12Come on, Jack, you're too slow to catch a cold.
01:03:15You know Dyson ain't sitting on those steps waiting to be let in.
01:03:25I don't know if Tollis remember that moment.
01:03:28I did.
01:03:29His words at home.
01:03:31No matter how unwilling, I was beginning to move.
01:03:45Tollis and I talked deep into the night.
01:03:52Hugo Dyson joined us.
01:03:54Fief.
01:03:55Fief.
01:03:56Fief.
01:03:57Sensational fire.
01:03:58Make a mess to that.
01:04:00Now this stuff, good hairs on the chest.
01:04:03Yes.
01:04:04Yes.
01:04:05Yes.
01:04:06Here we go.
01:04:07Here we go.
01:04:08Here we go.
01:04:09Fantastic.
01:04:10Look, I may be prepared to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher,
01:04:15but I simply can't accept his claim to be God.
01:04:17Oh, come on, Jack.
01:04:19How could a mere man be called a great moral teacher
01:04:21and say the sort of things Jesus said?
01:04:23Such as?
01:04:24That he always existed.
01:04:26You're a coming gun to judge the world.
01:04:28Such men are judged frauds.
01:04:30Lumatics.
01:04:33In spite of my resistance,
01:04:35they convinced me that nothing else in all literature
01:04:38is just like the Gospels.
01:04:40Myths are likely in one way with its stories of the miraculous.
01:04:44History is likely in another with its attention to minute details,
01:04:48but nothing is simply like it.
01:04:51And no person is like the person depicted.
01:04:56I'm sure there are many people who believe themselves to be God.
01:05:00Our hospitals are full of them.
01:05:02Oh, come on, Jack, be serious.
01:05:04No great moral teacher has ever made that claim except Jesus,
01:05:07and you know it.
01:05:08And he went on and on and on.
01:05:11What do you mean?
01:05:13Well, claiming to forgive sins,
01:05:15and that he himself is the injured party in every transgression.
01:05:18Look, in anyone else this would be thought silly.
01:05:21Suppose you told me that two of your colleagues
01:05:23had lost you a top professorship
01:05:25by telling lies about your character.
01:05:27And I replied,
01:05:29freely forgive them both.
01:05:31Would you not think this sheer lunacy?
01:05:33It would be sheer lunacy.
01:05:35Yet, even those who opposed Jesus admitted
01:05:37that he expressed moral truth of depth and purity,
01:05:40full of wisdom and shrewdness.
01:05:43Wisdom and shrewdness.
01:05:45Did you make him sound like Solomon the Greatest?
01:05:48On the contrary, history repeatedly calls him humble and meek.
01:05:51Not that you want to notice that, of course, Jack.
01:05:53Humility and meekness are the last things one would ascribe
01:05:55to someone who makes claims whether you're being a megalomaniac.
01:06:03The Great Knock taught me to shame inconsistency.
01:06:06If Jesus' statement was a false, Christianity is of no importance.
01:06:10It's true.
01:06:12It is of infinite importance.
01:06:14But one thing it cannot be is moderately important.
01:06:18Sir, what are you saying?
01:06:24Simply, that either this man was and is the son of God,
01:06:28or else he is a liar, a lunatic, or a fraud.
01:06:32But all this patronizing nonsense about him being some great modern teacher,
01:06:36it's not an option to us.
01:06:38Nor was it intended to be.
01:06:42I felt a resistance to this almost as strong as my resistance to theism.
01:06:48Every step from the absolute to spirit of God
01:06:51was a step toward the more concrete.
01:06:54And now, to accept the incarnation that God became man
01:06:59was a further step in the same direction.
01:07:02Oh, this too was something I had not wanted.
01:07:10And remember very well when, but hardly how, the final step was taken.
01:07:15As being driven by my brother Warney to Whipsnage Zoo
01:07:18in the sidecar for motorcycle one sunny morning in the autumn of 1931,
01:07:23when we set out, I did not believe that Jesus Christ is the son of God.
01:07:29When we reached the zoo, I did.
01:07:32I had not spent the journey in thought or great emotion.
01:07:37It was more like a man who after long sleep has become aware.
01:07:42He is now awake.
01:07:46My conversion and shed new light on my search for joy,
01:07:58the overwhelming longings that emerged from fantasties in my brother's toy garden,
01:08:05were merely signposts to what I truly desired.
01:08:08They were not the thing itself.
01:08:10I concluded that if I find in myself a desire that no experience in this world could satisfy the most probable explanation,
01:08:21I was made for another world.
01:08:23At present, we're on the outside of that world.
01:08:28The wrong side of the door.
01:08:32We cannot mingle with the splendors we see.
01:08:36But all the leaves of the New Testament are rustling with the rumor that it will not always be so.
01:08:44One day, God willing, we shall get in.
01:08:53Meanwhile, the cross comes before the crown.
01:08:57And tomorrow is another morning.
01:09:01A cleft is open in the pitiless walls of this world.
01:09:06And we have been invited to follow our great captain inside.
01:09:12Following him is, of course, the essential point.
01:09:18That Christmas, I took the short walk to my parish church.
01:09:35Their walk marked the end of one journey and the beginning of another.
01:09:41As I looked around, I thought not only of my own potential glory hereafter, but also that of my neighbor's glory.
01:10:02It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses to remember that the dullest,
01:10:11most uninteresting person you meet may one day be a creature that if you saw it now,
01:10:17you would be strongly tempted to fall down and worship, or else a horror,
01:10:23or a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare.
01:10:29All day long we are helping each other to one or the other of these two destinations.
01:10:38It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities that I should now conduct all my dealings.
01:10:45There are no ordinary people.
01:10:51I have never met a mere mortal.
01:10:55Nations, cultures, civilizations, these are mortal, and their life is to ours as that of a nut.
01:11:05It is immortal to be dealt with, work with, marry, snub, exploit.
01:11:14The weight or burden of my neighbor's glory should be laid daily on my back,
01:11:21a load so heavy.
01:11:25Only humility can carry it, and the backs of the proud will be broken.
01:11:37Moreathan!
01:11:38Archangel 4
01:11:4725
01:11:4820
01:11:5020
01:11:5220
01:11:5322
01:11:5522
01:12:0022
01:12:0222
01:12:03Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us, therefore let us keep the feast.
01:12:33The body of our Lord Jesus Christ, unlike my first communion 17 years earlier, I now believe.
01:13:03Thank you very much, that's a cut there, thank you.
01:13:19All right, thank you.
01:13:25Thank you, thank you.
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