Some thoughts from C. S. Lewis

At the suggestion of Fr. Tim, I have been reading a battered little paperback from the public library, “The Weight of Glory” by C. S. Lewis, which is a collection of nine addresses that he made during the years of World War II.

Two quotations and an observation: The first is from “The Inner Ring”

The quest of the Inner Ring will break your hearts unless you break it. But if you break it, a surprising result will follow. If in your working hours you make the work your end, you will presently find yourself all unawares inside the only circle in your profession that really matters. You will be one of the sound craftsmen, and other sound craftsmen will know it. This group of craftsmen will by no means coincide with the Inner Ring or the Important People or the People in the Know. It will not shape that professional policy or work up that professional influence which fights for the profession as a whole against the public... But it will do those things which the profession exists to do and will in the long run be responsible for all the respect which that profession in fact enjoys and which the speeches and advertisements cannot maintain. (p. 156)

The pursuit of the Inner Ring is a precise description of much of the activity I have observed among the Important People in the American Guild of Organists over the years, and (from a greater distance) the activities of clergy in our diocese and the larger Episcopal Church. I am confident that it is equally true in other areas of endeavor, especially those which by their nature are relatively small groups of people.

I have known some of the “sound craftsmen,” people such as my teacher Dr. McDonald, my friend Del Disselhorst, and too many others to name. I would love to be such a craftsman myself. But that desire is dangerous. So soon as any of us wish for such a thing, we are at risk of making that wish our motivation. The only answer is to “keep yo' han' on-a the plow” as the old Spiritual says – to attend faithfully to the work at hand with total disregard as to what others think of it.

That is hard to do. Pride readily creeps into even the best work, and so soon as it does, the work is flawed, as is the workman. In the following, from the address “Learning in War-Time,” one can readily subistute “the musical life” for “the intellectual life,” for the point is the same. The additions in brackets are mine.

The intellectual life is not the only road to God, nor the safest, but we find it to be a road, and it may be the appointed road for us. Of course, it will be so only so long as we keep the impulse pure and disinterested. That is the great difficulty. As the author of the Theologia Germanica says, we may come to love knowledge [or Music] – our knowing – more than the thing known: to delight not in the exercise of our talents but in the fact that they are ours, or even in the reputation they bring us. Every success in the scholar's [or musician's] life increases this danger. If it becomes irresistible, he must give up his scholarly [or musical] work. The time for plucking out the right eye has arrived. (page 57)

The observation: For a brief period of my life, I was in weekly attendance at the Chapel of Westminster Choir College, with Erik Routley as Chaplain and Preacher. Dr. Routley knew Professor Lewis, and when I read Lewis, it always reminds me of Routley's sermons. So far as I know, they were never published, and that is a loss. I owe Lewis a lot, and I owe Routley even more. May both of these men rest in peace.