Screwtape

I read The Screwtape Letters as a teenager, when I never thought about the devil or evil. Shows how very fortunate I was, and remain. I read it then as entertainment, because I liked the Narnia books and thought letters from a devil was a cool idea.

Now, I'm reading it again after realizing slowly that we really are exposed to bad, or evil, or Satan, or devils, or whatever you want to call it, ALL THE TIME. For serious. Otherwise, why would any of us think so negatively? I'm very lucky in that I have never had anyone tell me I'm fat or ugly or should really give up on dating or that I should be ashamed of myself or any of the wretched wrong things that occasionally enter my mind. So no person has given me those ideas. I certainly did not come up with them on my own. God does not plant them. "The media" and "society" do have some part in it, but I'm not convinced they're powerful enough to make me think such things. So I conclude that someone's out to get me. Thus, Screwtape revisited.

And dang. It is so good. I gave it three stars on Goodreads a couple years ago when I was entering books from the past, but I can already tell you it's going to get five this time around. Here's a sample:

"Humans are amphibians--half spirit and half animal....As spirits they belong to the eternal world, but as animals they inhabit time. This means that while their spirit can be directed to an eternal object, their bodies, passions, and imaginations are in continual change, for to be in time means to change. Their nearest approach to constancy, therefore, is undulation--the repeated return to a level from which they repeatedly fall back, a series of troughs and peaks."

And that's just leading up to the point! All hail Lewis. More to come.

Last night, I covered the queen's ball for the Sneads Ferry Shrimp Festival. I sat with Mrs. North Carolina and her husband, a delightful couple. The first thing they did was offer me a two-liter of Mountain Dew, saying, "There's no way we can finish this." This was one of those operations where, when you ask for water, they act like no one's ever wanted it before. It's sweet tea and soft drinks all the way. Even at its worst, my job never ceases to entertain me.