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Raise a Glass to Perelandra by C.S. Lewis (Space Trilogy #2)
17 Plays4 days ago
In this episode a long time coming, Eric and Hunter get lost in the unfixed land of Perelandra.
The quote about the length of books is attributed to Abbè Terrasson in Kant's Critique of Pure Reason:
"Abbé Terrasson remarks with great justice that, if we estimate the size of a work, not from the number of its pages, but from the time which we require to make ourselves master of it, it may be said of many a book—that it would be much shorter, if it were not so short."
Elon Musk's Tesla Roadster in space: https://www.cnet.com/science/space/elon-musks-tesla-is-still-floating-in-space-after-7-years/
Poe's Imp of the Perverse: https://poestories.com/read/imp
New thumbnail by Andrew Mosher
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Transcript
Introduction to 'Raise a Glass' & Hosts
00:00:06
Speaker
At he had almost the same sensation.
00:00:09
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he had looked up and shuddered to see as he supposed ah man colored beetle of unusually hideous shape
00:00:22
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by the breeze and instantly the very curves and
00:00:42
Speaker
Hello and welcome to Raise a Glass, the podcast where we talk about the stories and storytellers that shape us. My name is Hunter Danson. And my name is Eric Lintola.
00:00:53
Speaker
And today we are talking about the story Paralondra by C.S. Lewis. It is the second in C.S. Lewis's Space Trilogy.
00:01:05
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And it is a short book, but oh man. Oh man. Woof.
Discussion on 'Perelandra' by C.S. Lewis
00:01:12
Speaker
It's C.S. Lewis. so But before we get there, um Eric, what's in your glass?
00:01:19
Speaker
Went back old school today, and I'm sad to say that here in the Rochester area, to the best of my knowledge, we have no modern-day milkmen or milkwomen, milkpeople. But we still do have milk, and so I've got a glass of whole milk, and not just a glass of whole milk.
00:01:40
Speaker
But a graham cracker to dip in it because what is more delicious? just Well, there are things that are more delicious, but just like the simplicity and deliciousness of a graham cracker dipped in milk. It's so good.
00:01:57
Speaker
Simple things. Especially when the milk's cold.
00:02:03
Speaker
I can do with it being a little bit colder than it is now, but that's my fault. Okay. like something in like the the high 30s, low 40s is what I want milk-wise.
Eric's Choice of Drink & Weather Talk
00:02:14
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you like a 34 or maybe even little bit higher than that. Yeah.
00:02:24
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Hunter, what is in your glass today? ah Well, since C.S. Lewis is from across the pond, I have some chamomile tea. Love it.
00:02:38
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It's very strong. So I'm hoping the strongness will counteract the sleepiness of chamomile. m Because sometimes if I have a calming drink, I get sleepy.
00:02:49
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um And I want to stay wide awake for this one. um But what are what do you raising your glass and or graham cracker and and pouring...
00:03:07
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your class and or throwing your Graham cracker on the floor about this week?
Exploration of 'Sisu' and Film Connection
00:03:15
Speaker
Um, I,
00:03:26
Speaker
it's March in upstate New York, which means that it's technically spring. Um, but spring in this area is cold, muddy, snow, muddy, cold, muddy, snow, muddy, cold, muddy, summer.
00:03:48
Speaker
And it's not quite at the summer part yet. And, I was outside of with our kids and were like, but we're playing some baseball today after, after i was done with the work and it just started snowing again.
00:04:03
Speaker
Like I love s snow, but come on. I'm pouring one out for that. Pouring one out for the snow. Um, and then i'm going to raise a glass, uh, to a movie that my dad has recommended a few times to me. Um,
00:04:19
Speaker
but I just watched it for the first time. it is named after um my dad's favorite Finnish word. um Finnish as in from Finland, from which my dad's family came.
00:04:30
Speaker
And the word is sisu, which does not have a direct English translation, but I like to think of it as stick-to-itiveness. Okay. like You will like just continue determination to... Grit. Grit.
00:04:46
Speaker
And... and And yet I think both of those words pale in comparison to the the thing itself. And so there's a, a series of movies for which I brought, watch the first one just called Sisu and imagine a John wick like meets like, but like much grittier, gritty John wick in end of world war II in Finland.
00:05:20
Speaker
It follows this dude who, I think he says five words in the entire movie, who's just trying to escape the war and mine gold.
00:05:32
Speaker
And he finds gold. And then um these Nazis end up, bumps into these Nazis. And he's just trying to go about his own business. And they just make his world. Yeah.
00:05:46
Speaker
This guy dies like 20 times, but he just refuses to die. like but it is ah very intense movie. It's definitely not a movie that you don't like bloody gory things. like it's fair Which you don't usually. Usually I don't, you know but it was phenomenal. And...
00:06:10
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it was phenomenal um and
00:06:16
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Yeah, im I'm glad I watched it. glad my dad's recommended it. And i think the third one just came out. I don't i don't know. Let's check out Sisu 2 or whatever it's called.
Hunter's Playroom Setup & Minecraft Reflections
00:06:25
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um Yeah.
00:06:27
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It's...
00:06:31
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Yeah, this this guy is just like... Imagine like Jason Statham 2.0 or 3.0. Mm-hmm. Like, he's like...
00:06:41
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like make he's like ah like or like Like a gritty version of Jason Statham, but like more so. Okay. ah Yeah. How about you, Hunter? What are you raising and pouring one out for?
00:06:58
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um I'll go with my pour first. I'm pouring one out for this like sitting situation I'm in right now um because I normally record at my desk, but because it's a school night,
00:07:14
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And my wife needs to sleep. um I'm in our like playroom where the couch is. And it's just really, it's not good for my back.
00:07:27
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um So, but you know, I'm making it work. um Thanks for, thanks for leaving it all out there for, for the show.
00:07:38
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. You know, in case you listeners have ever wondered how much Hunter cares for you. and says Yes. Yeah. It's getting those reps. Yeah. I mean, just, it's not even like making me stronger. It's just making my posture worse. Yeah. But, uh, you know, uh, and I am raising class to,
00:08:04
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ah Minecraft. um okay you know i I said some disparaging things about the Minecraft movie, but i i didn't play Minecraft for a long time.
00:08:18
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um ah just... I like games that are story-driven and that give me a like clear goal. um Not Minecraft. Yeah, Minecraft is not like that. But as far as games go, i do recognize that...
00:08:36
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there's a lot of potential for creativity. Um, yeah. And you know, it's still a video game. So I think it's important to exercise moderation, but, um, like we played as sort of like as family, we had a, we had an on X-Box and we had two controllers and it was like my son's first time playing Minecraft and he like loves Minecraft, even though we've almost never played it.
Humorous Take on Podcast Length
00:09:03
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Um, but he just loves Minecraft. We read the Minecraft books, chapter books. Okay. Um, a with Jody and Morgan and Poe, and they can like enter the world of Minecraft. tell these hoies Magical VR glasses.
00:09:26
Speaker
Um, okay but it, it was fun. You know, we built our own little shelter uh, the beach and we did some mining and um Wesley wants to kill the ender dragon but I told him that's you know it's going to take a while for us to to get there because we have to get all our stuff upgraded and all that kind of thing but anyway Minecraft is can be fun yeah it's a reason why it's such a beloved game oh yeah parents and kids alike i think in terms of video games it
00:10:05
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does a pretty good job of transcending. I've only ever played it once, and I was like, oh, I understand why people like this. Yeah, yeah. I was very pleasantly surprised.
00:10:21
Speaker
And see, this is why this podcast takes so long. We kind of get better at the intros.
Overview of 'Perelandra' Plot
00:10:28
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um Could have made that like a... Two minutes altogether. Now, each thing we said was two minutes. I know.
00:10:35
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Yeah. Ten minutes later. Um... So we're gonna do Paralandra. Um... Paralandra? i I've always said it Paralandra. You don't have the R&A of Rochester, New York.
00:10:52
Speaker
No. I do not. Rochester. Um... Um...
00:10:59
Speaker
um This is the second book in his space trilogy. i don't think that you have to read the first one in order to read this.
00:11:11
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um But it does help a little bit with, with the context and it helps wrap your mind around what CS Lewis is doing. Because I think as, as we get into the episode, i I just think the force of his imagination the,
00:11:31
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The way that he is able to just blow open paradigms yeah into new territory is really incredible.
00:11:43
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And I think Paralandra is really where it shines um in the ways that he... does these thought experiments and really also more than thought experiments in telling this story.
00:11:59
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um Well, why wouldn't you want to read the first one? Out of the Silent Planet is a great, great science fiction. And and this, this is a book that I think is better.
00:12:13
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they and i think it is better because of the first book. I think it stands on the shoulders of the previous book. In the sense of it it can handle a bigger vision because of of the base in which the world, the universe has been built.
00:12:35
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Right.
00:12:39
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Yeah, I agree with that. I'm just really excited about this, right? We we we talked about the first book out of the Silent Planet on our first episode three and a half years ago. Well, yeah more than three and a half years ago.
00:12:52
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It's yeah. Well, yeah it's almost exactly three and a half years
Ransom's Journey & Cosmic Role
00:12:56
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ago. It doesn't matter. It was in August 31st. It came out 2022. Wow. Yeah.
00:13:05
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ah yeah That's crazy, isn't it it? was like, I had one child and he was four months old at that time.
00:13:15
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But that's a long time ago. we had a lot of change in our lives. Three and a half years ago. My guess. How do I do math? This is 2026.
00:13:22
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So 2022 plus three is 2025. So three and a half years ago, three and a half. um I said four and a half, didn't I? Yeah. We're doing a great job so far.
00:13:35
Speaker
We both should have taken something stronger than what we grabbed to drink. um We talked about the first one in August of 2022, which is about three and a half years ago. And... and And this has been, ah I feel like, ah an episode that's been a long time, like, in the Hapa because of that.
00:13:55
Speaker
We've been talking about doing this book for a long time. Yes. Well, and we've talked about it at different points. i I feel like this is my favorite sci-fi book. Okay.
00:14:10
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Because it reads more like a theology A theological text, I think, often. i think more than theological. It's like...
00:14:24
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It's like mythical. Yeah, well, it's that too. It is supposed to be a mythical. mythical um it And it's it's a writing that I would call dense, but not thick.
00:14:36
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like you You sit in it and
Thematic Depth of 'Perelandra'
00:14:38
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you want to read it and it it takes you time. it's There's 190 pages... but it reads much longer than 190 page book. And it's not because it's hard to read as much as because you just can't read it quickly or you don't want to read it quickly.
00:15:00
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Yeah.
00:15:04
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Yeah. There's a, a quote and I'll have to find the attribution. i believe it's like,
00:15:15
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might be St. Thomas Aquinas or something like that. But he said that if we measured the length of books by
00:15:32
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how difficult they were to understand, or at least like like wrap your mind around, then some books would be shorter if they were longer.
00:15:44
Speaker
And Pearl Andra, I think, is one of those books that's short, but it is very long in that you read it and you don't really stop reading it after it's closed. Yeah.
00:16:05
Speaker
So, you know, because of the nature of that, i feel like if we tried to
00:16:12
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fully summarize the book and go into all the nooks and crannies that he goes into. And, um, I think that the episode would be too long. Uh, and I don't think we're, yeah, yeah.
00:16:25
Speaker
We wouldn't succeed. Yes, we wouldn't succeed. And that's not the point of our podcast. You know, we're, we're not, we want you to go and read it. Ultimately.
00:16:37
Speaker
um we don't want
Art, Literature, and Life Impact
00:16:39
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you to just take our word for what something means. So I think, I have a few quotes. I wrote down some things that I remembered after my first read that stuck with me and that shaped me.
00:16:52
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Um, and I don't know if you have similar things, Eric. Um, yeah, I do have a few. Yeah. I figured we could kind of like trade,
00:17:04
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um
00:17:07
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We're not going to give a whole, know, we won't be able to speak to the entirety, but I would like to give enough of an overview that somebody can follow along. Are you okay if i yeah share? Yeah, go for it. Yeah.
00:17:20
Speaker
Paralandra is the second in C.S. Lewis's space trilogy, follows a philologist ah by the name of Ransom. Ransom, in the first book, Out of the Silent Planet, goes to the planet of Mars, which he learns is called Thulcandra.
00:17:38
Speaker
and interacts with different beings, none of which are humanoid. So about Earth created, or a a planet and the beings created before um the Garden of
Confronting Evil & Philosophical Insights
00:17:52
Speaker
Eden, before the creation of of humanity on Earth.
00:17:57
Speaker
The second book follows Ransom's journey, not back to Mars, but to the planet of Venus or Perilondra. When he lands on Venus, it is a seemingly unin unhabited uninhabited, at least by humans, as many animals, um planet with a very dense atmosphere.
00:18:23
Speaker
When he lands, he ends up on um floating islands. So think of giant... like giant like seaweed mats that have can sustain life and plants and vegetation and animals um that are floating across giant oceans.
00:18:44
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Or a giant ocean, we don't know. As he's going about, he interacts he meets a a woman, um a woman who um is green um and...
00:19:00
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that matters only in that, um, her features represent and are very clearly a female, like, like a humanoid. Um, but her, she is also a being for which like, he can't even always look at her.
00:19:18
Speaker
Um, He interacts with her, he talks with her. um You end up finding out, and spoilers, this is a spoiler-filled podcast, um that she is an Eve-type character, like Adam and Eve.
00:19:32
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um And the the villain of the first book, um what's his name, west Weston? Yeah, Weston. Was it... Yeah.
00:19:44
Speaker
Yes. There's like two guys. Weston's one of the main ones. Yeah. Weston ends up back on this planet. um And his job, he's trying to um He acts like a Satan or snake character trying to get
Theological Reflections in Fiction
00:20:00
Speaker
the woman to sleep ah on the one fixed land or on the fixed land, which Melendil, this whole thing is an allegory of like Garden of Eden, but what would that look like post-Malendil?
00:20:15
Speaker
Jesus' is death and resurrection m with an additional character it. I would say it's like super allegorical. Yes. Because he takes it way beyond allegory.
00:20:28
Speaker
Yeah, which is one of the things... kind makes point of like... Saying that is not allegory. But yeah anyway, we'll get into it. We'll get into it. um I'm already taking longer than I hoped to. So Ransomlands on Paralandra meets the Eve mother.
00:20:47
Speaker
Bumps into we Weston, who's trying to convince Eve to sleep on the mainland, the the the land that is not a floating mat on the ocean.
00:21:00
Speaker
Fixed land.
00:21:04
Speaker
turns out Weston is being controlled by it ah the devil. One would assume or one pretty, pretty much. And, um, ransom decides or realizes the only thing he can do to help in this situation is to, um, kill the physical body of Weston, uh, who is already dead.
00:21:29
Speaker
Um, And they get into a a fight to the death that occurs over the course of Many pages and many terrains. It kind of reminds me of um Gandalf fighting um the Balrog. The Balrog. went to the lowest, lowest point of the ocean, to the highest mountain.
00:21:53
Speaker
And there I struck him down. um and bet there is some. There's definitely... yes They were friends. Yeah, they were friends, and it creates some really cool storytelling ah before Ransom ends up going back to Earth. um And I'm not going to give away the final ending in this moment. but Yeah.
00:22:19
Speaker
Yeah.
Broader Themes in 'Perelandra'
00:22:22
Speaker
And this whole story is accounted by, is being recounted by a friend of Ransom's. um o I don't know if he explicitly says it, but I just read it as being C.S. Lewis.
00:22:33
Speaker
I read it as C.S. Lewis hearing this story from his friend Ransom and sharing it. Yeah. There's... Yeah, i he never I don't think he ever really says who exactly the narrator is, even though he says, I, you know...
00:22:53
Speaker
Does he say that though in out ah in them That Hideous Strength? can't remember. No, he he says ay in That Hideous Strength. Okay. um But he doesn't exactly say what his relationship is to...
00:23:10
Speaker
it
00:23:15
Speaker
But anyway. Okay, Hunter, don't you start us off? Start us off with something that's stuck out to you, and then i I'll go next and we can go back and forth. Okay, so yeah, i'm I'm going basically the things that the order is where they come in the book, basically. So the earliest one I have is um page 82.
00:23:43
Speaker
And depending on your copy of Paralondra, it might not be the same. What chapter is it? It's chapter chapter six, hey towards the end.
00:23:57
Speaker
um And it is, he's describing Professor Weston, who has just arrived on Venus.
00:24:09
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And Professor Weston was a man obsessed with the idea, which is at this moment circulating all over our planet in obscure works of scientific fiction.
00:24:21
Speaker
in little interplanetary societies and rocketry clubs, and between the covers of monstrous magazines, ignored or mocked by the intellectuals, but ready, if ever the power is put into its hands, to open a new chapter of misery for the universe.
00:24:39
Speaker
It is the idea that humanity, having now sufficiently corrupted the planet where it arose, must at all costs contrive to seed itself over a larger area.
00:24:49
Speaker
That the vast astronomical distances which are God's quarantine regulations must somehow be overcome. This for a start. But beyond this lies the sweet poison of the false infinite.
00:25:03
Speaker
The wild dream that planet after planet, system after system, in the end, galaxy after galaxy, can be forced to sustain everywhere and forever the sort of life which is contained in the loins of our own species.
00:25:19
Speaker
A dream begotten by the hatred of death upon the fear of true immortality. Fondled in secret by thousands of ignorant men and hundreds who are not ignorant.
00:25:31
Speaker
the destruction or enslavement of other species in the universe, if such there are, is to these minds a welcome corollary. In Professor Weston, the power had at last met the dream.
00:25:48
Speaker
And this is a quote which I connected in my mind to just the spirit of progress and manifest destiny.
00:26:00
Speaker
Manifest destiny, the progress for progress sake. You know, the billionaires spending rock, sending rockets into space with cars on them.
00:26:12
Speaker
Um, and this, well, Elon Musk, when he sends his ship, he put like a subcar on it.
00:26:24
Speaker
Why? I don't know. He just thought it was cool, I guess.
00:26:31
Speaker
I don't remember the details that well. oh that's That but it makes your point. You know, it's... this This idea of, like, space colonization, you know, that we have destroyed our planet, so we should go somewhere else and destroy another planet. And it's like, you know, it sounds ridiculous, and I think there's a lot of us that don't like it. And yet, you know, we're still spending...
00:27:01
Speaker
billions and billions of dollars on space exploration and talking about it and writing books about it. And, um, it's a premise of almost every science fiction book, right?
00:27:14
Speaker
Yeah. And it's, um,
00:27:19
Speaker
you know, i and I love, I just love the phrases that he uses the the sweet poison of the false infinite.
00:27:29
Speaker
And a dream begotten by the hatred of death upon the fear of true immortality.
00:27:47
Speaker
And I think that it puts it so well because even if we go to the stars...
00:27:58
Speaker
we're still going to die. You know, that like it's not like, okay, you get to live on some concrete box on Jupiter's moon. Like what?
00:28:13
Speaker
you You still have to live a life and you still have to make something of that. um Yeah. And ultimately the things that let give us like that make life worth living are right in front of us, you know, it's around us. It's, it's other people it's within ourselves. It's, you know, um,
00:28:36
Speaker
the hatred of death upon the fear of true immortality. And, you know,
00:28:50
Speaker
I love the way in this series how C.S. Lewis... He...
00:29:03
Speaker
makes God tangible. Or imagines a way in which...
00:29:13
Speaker
we can interact tangibly with God and with angels. And it's not it doesn't feel...
00:29:21
Speaker
contrived or silly. Um, it's, it's really beautiful to me. Um, the way that the L deal are the L deala are depicted as are kind of like angels.
00:29:39
Speaker
Um,
00:29:45
Speaker
and I just, I just love how he,
00:29:53
Speaker
presents like true immortality as so much more glorious than, you know, spreading our destruction to the stars.
00:30:06
Speaker
i was, it was reminds me of an episode of doctor who with David Tennant, said it years and years ago and him and I think his companion is Rose at that time.
00:30:18
Speaker
They go in the future to interact with the last human being to ever live. And they end up in this random, don't museum on some random planet. um Museum type thing or whatever.
00:30:32
Speaker
And the woman they interact with is, and yeah this is Doctor Who. little campy. But she's like just skin stretched, like a skin that but kind of looks like just like a painting stretched out between like, stretched out on a canvas and she's got a face it.
00:30:53
Speaker
And she's like, I am human. they get like And like the episode ends up with her you know eventually like dying because nobody sprayed her enough times with water to keep her face moist.
00:31:08
Speaker
Oh my goodness. But like it's it's hitting at this point of like, what does it really mean right to be human? and And I'm thinking about this this desire to...
00:31:21
Speaker
make progeny everywhere and, and, you know, force your will on things and survive is there are certain aspects of that that are really good that they're, they come from a really good place, but they can go so easily warped yeah into a miss misunderstanding.
00:31:50
Speaker
how many science fiction book movies are about, you know, humans not actually being human or the the most human characters are the least human, you know, are the robots or the monkeys. Right.
00:32:04
Speaker
right
00:32:17
Speaker
So that's my first one. Yeah. Yeah.
00:32:22
Speaker
Oh, Hunter, I've got to stick to three. This is not fair. i mean... Well,
00:32:32
Speaker
but I mean, the things I want to talk about, the things that I remember, you know, have to do with with art, have to do with myth, and have to do with creation. Those are some big...
00:32:47
Speaker
those are Those are, I think, three i think but i think those are three of the huge... um At the very least, myth and creation are central themes to the book. And I think the reason why i earlier said this is my favorite sci-fi book... not It's not the most addictive sci-fi book. There are others I would you maybe more easily read or read more quickly again and again.
00:33:08
Speaker
But ah every read of this is just so...
00:33:14
Speaker
it's just so glorious to think about is the beauty of art. Um, that's part of it. Um, but I think before we get to those pieces, it might be important to share some favorite moments.
00:33:28
Speaker
Um, and so I will follow in your footsteps. Um,
00:33:37
Speaker
Hmm.
00:33:45
Speaker
How about this? This is page 54 of mine, which is not the same as yours. This is chapter five, slightly before what you shared. um
00:34:02
Speaker
It's for me,
00:34:05
Speaker
when Ransom is talking with the mother about the corner. In history. Okay.
00:34:19
Speaker
"'Oh, my lady,' he said, Ransom said, "'why do you say that such creatures,' referring to the creatures of Thalchondra, or Mars, of which are not human humanoid, "'why do you say that such creatures linger only in the ancient worlds?' "'Are you so young?' she answered. "'How could they come again?
00:34:37
Speaker
Since our beloved became a man, how should reason in any world take on another form? Do you not understand?' That is all over. Among times there is a time that turns a corner, and everything this side of it is new.
00:34:52
Speaker
Time does not go backwards. And can one little world like mine be the corner? I do not understand. Corner with us is not the name of a size.
00:35:03
Speaker
And do you, said Ransom with some hesitation, and do you know why he came thus to my world?
00:35:12
Speaker
Skipping forward, yes. I know the reason. But it is not the reason you know.
00:35:20
Speaker
There is more than one reason, and there is one i know and cannot tell you, and another that you know and cannot tell to me.
00:35:31
Speaker
Skip forward. And after this, said Ransom, it will all be men. You say it as if you were sorry. I think, said Ransom, I have no more understanding than a beast. I do not well know what I am saying, but I love the furry people who ah whom I met in Malacandra. I'm sorry. Malacandra is Earth, isn't it? Oh, yes. Malacandra is is is Mars.
00:35:59
Speaker
I'm sorry. Are they to be swept away? Are they only rubbish in the deep heaven? I do not know what rubbish means, she answers answered, nor what you are saying.
00:36:13
Speaker
You do not mean they are worse because they come early in the history and do not come again. They are their own part of the history and not another. We are on this side of the wave and they are on the far side.
00:36:25
Speaker
All is new.
00:36:31
Speaker
i think that piece to me, I really feel like I could stop at any page and just talk about whatever it is that we're reading in this. um But that piece sticks out to me um
00:36:45
Speaker
largely because of an understanding of like, we've talked so much in the last episode about timeline, uh, and,
00:36:57
Speaker
um, and labyrinths. Right. But this idea of a corner of history, right. This is, this is, I'm coming from a theological background. I'm coming from a deep love of, of, uh, the Bible word to God. and um,
00:37:15
Speaker
And the cross. And this this idea that that is a a turning point in in all of history emanating out of Ocandra, out of Earth, is a truly a truly amazing thing.
00:37:34
Speaker
And that...
00:37:41
Speaker
And this this passage, and that there are a couple other passages like it, i was thinking about as I was driving home today,
00:37:52
Speaker
helps me think about one of the questions we ask all that people ask all the time. If you could live anywhere and any time in history, where would you live and why? And people have all different answers, and they're all different spaces.
00:38:04
Speaker
um Many people will share, like, hey, I'd like to live right now. um, more version, right. And, and, you know um, for all sorts of reasons, um, but plumbing being a big one of them,
00:38:20
Speaker
but it's, it's easy to think of one time of history being better than another. And I think that this is, is sharing in here that just because something's newer or because it's older or because it's different doesn't mean it's lesser or greater.
00:38:38
Speaker
um and And I think this is really emphasized later when when Ransom meets the king and the queen, when he realizes what the true image of God and in human form was to look like and why that was.
00:38:55
Speaker
It's one of my things. Okay, I'll stop there. um and And I think he realizes that him being lesser,
00:39:06
Speaker
does not or that I think he realizes that them being greater and and him being lesser. and What am I trying to say? I'm trying to say that his his his worth is not diminished by their greater glory.
00:39:26
Speaker
Yeah. um And I think in the same way, this book is saying that the the beauty of the Malachandrians is not diminished because they came at a different point in history. Yeah.
00:39:43
Speaker
Cosmic history. Cosmic history. Yeah. And I just think that that's a really amazing thing. And then there's this other idea that after God took on human form,
00:39:59
Speaker
that all forms that fully reflect God's image henceforth
00:40:07
Speaker
are human, humanoid, because that's the form that God chose to take. It doesn't mean that there's not big animals and other things, but like that.
00:40:21
Speaker
And yet it's also not explicitly trying to say that simply because that the the likeness of God is just a physical thing because it's it's not.
00:40:33
Speaker
um
00:40:37
Speaker
And I feel like this is a passage that is
00:40:42
Speaker
kind of starts a large part of that that opening of your mind yeah throughout this book.
00:40:52
Speaker
And then then, okay, the part I was going to read after this, like right after that conversation, he says, he had, in quotes, had enough. not in the half comic Not in the half-comic sense whereby we use those words to mean that a man has had too much, but in the plain sense, he had had his fill, like a man who has slept or eaten enough.
00:41:14
Speaker
Even an hour ago, he would have found it difficult to express this quite bluntly, but now it came naturally him to say, ah do not wish to talk anymore, but I would like to come over to to your island, so we we so that way we may meet again when we wish.
00:41:33
Speaker
Just another its just like another little interaction. And this is why i feel like I could read any piece of this story. Because you're going to hit on those types of things all around. Okay, Hunter, what's next for you? Where are you at? Oh, There's so many ways you could go with that.
00:41:56
Speaker
Oh, boy.
00:42:01
Speaker
I heard a pastor describe C.S. Lewis once he he was quoting him in his sermon. and he said, he must have had four brains because he was so smart.
00:42:11
Speaker
And I don't i don't think necessarily think it has to do with like intelligence or IQ, but he just has such an active mind.
00:42:24
Speaker
He just goes. He doesn't... he just goes he goes where he doesn't
00:42:32
Speaker
His mind was able to connect things together, go in that direction, and then can communicate in such a way that he was able to bring people along with him. And that's... To have all of those skill sets together is is more rare than to have any one or two of them. Yeah.
00:42:57
Speaker
Okay. So the next one I have is...
00:43:08
Speaker
in chapter 10 and it's around when weston slash satan is beginning the temptation okay of the lady and
00:43:34
Speaker
What happens is that basically God, Mel Eldil, has given the lady who is kind of like the Eve of this world a command, and he else has also given it to the king, the Adam of this world,
00:43:49
Speaker
um a giving them a command not to sleep on the fixed land. They can go and walk around on the fixed land.
00:44:01
Speaker
She shows Ransom the fixed land, but they cannot sleep there. They cannot spend the night on that piece of land. They have to sleep on the floating um
00:44:15
Speaker
beds and that are on the planet. um And I think one thing that's also remarkable about this is that
00:44:25
Speaker
you know, this was published in 1944. Okay? And
00:44:31
Speaker
okay and He knows about the atmosphere of Venus. Like, not necessarily what it's composed of, because the atmosphere is poisonous, but that, like, you can't see through the atmosphere of Venus.
00:44:46
Speaker
And he he works that into to it. It's like free space. Yeah. Yeah. You know, 1944. I'm not enough history buff. okay um i' am not enough of a history bu
00:45:03
Speaker
To say exactly. you know What sort of technology is that. But we hadn't gone to space yet. I don't think we were. Even close really. But. um
00:45:17
Speaker
Yeah. And you could say. yeah okay it's not realistic. You couldn't breathe on Venus or whatever. It's like.
00:45:25
Speaker
You know, you have to suspend your disbelief. Science fiction. Science fiction. And I would almost argue that the the thinking that C.S. Lewis does about the worlds, too, and there's things that he says when Ransom is traveling through space, um you know, like he gets like a sun.
00:45:49
Speaker
he gets tanned on one side because because of the way he faces the sun. as he's going through space. Um, so he's like half white and then like half tan on one side. Um, it's, it's so cool.
00:46:06
Speaker
Uh, I love it. It's, it's something very Star Trek about it to me. And, um, um,
00:46:18
Speaker
So the Weston comes and he's trying to convince the lady to sleep on the fixed land. And what he sort of fixes on are these stories about, about women who made like a tragic slash heroic slash, you know, active, like important decision.
00:46:45
Speaker
um is sort of the thread that connects all these stories. And he sort of tries to use the power of imagination to kind of like suggest to her that she could do this thing that she must do it without telling the King, um without telling Adam, because then, you know, she, she would be taking on all of the risk herself.
00:47:15
Speaker
Yeah. And, You know, of course, Ransom tries to argue. and the thing about the the devil slash Weston is that he's just... Anytime Ransom thinks he gets an upper hand, the devil comes back with some absurdity and um uses all of these...
00:47:39
Speaker
logical twists and stuff to twist his words around. And like, you can use any philosophy and any theology get twisted to as well. And kind of, um,
00:47:54
Speaker
and it's just a side note about the stories. I was thinking about the story of Ariel and the interpretation that Disney makes of it. um, And how Ariel, um, this might be too much of a side note, I'm not sure, but, um, how Ariel.
00:48:13
Speaker
wants to be part of the human world. And King Triton is like, no, that's a really bad idea. You shouldn't do that. And she just keeps, disobe she disobeys her father and goes up to the human world and like makes this horrible decision with Ursula. Like, okay, you could say that King Triton is being a little bit controlling, but at the same time, Ariel also is like, it's a very dumb decision to give your voice away to Ursula.
00:48:42
Speaker
you know, this witch who is clearly like, there is no way in your mind when that this witch could be good. Like, more unfortunate super far like yeah, it's, uh, I only know this because we have watched it quite recently with our kids, but, um,
00:49:04
Speaker
And it's like, okay. Anyway. And yet that, but so Ariel makes a decision to like, you know, on her own disobedience to do something, um because she wants to do it.
00:49:23
Speaker
And, uh, in the actual story, the little mermaid there, it is, it is the opposite of a happy ending. um The prince marries someone else and Ariel is basically stuck without a voice and with legs and she watches him basically his whole life ah in love with somebody else and her feet hurt.
00:49:49
Speaker
It's like stepping on nails to her. um And eventually she's sort of rewarded. She gets to be an angel. Hans Christian Anderson is a strange man, but um
00:50:05
Speaker
I think it speaks to something ah i'm still and trying to figure out where you're going with it. If you finish that, maybe maybe it's worth it.
00:50:18
Speaker
There was the faintest touch of theatre theatricality, the first hint of a self-admiring inclination to seize a grand role in the drama of her world.
00:50:31
Speaker
And I think the phrase that he uses is like a tragedy queen. um And I mean, look, I don't, I don't hate the little mermaid, but I don't think I'm alone in saying that like it is problematic in the way that Ariel, you know, changes herself and gives up her voice to be with a man And a man, and Prince Eric, like, doesn't do anything throughout the Hey, he's a good-looking dude. He's pretty great. Don't be hating on Prince Eric. yeah
00:51:06
Speaker
I mean, but that's all he is. That's does. It's not his fault. not his fault they didn't give him any space to grow into, okay? Prince Eric could have done it. Prince Eric would have been wonderful. Prince Eric the best. Just he has the same name doesn't mean...
00:51:22
Speaker
so long lover boy. And he just stands there. Did you see him row that boat? He's got some strong arms. it Also really bends into peer pressure.
00:51:34
Speaker
Yeah. Um, and so it's, it's problematic on a lot of different levels, but I just, I connected it to like this, this sense of like, cause my daughter loves Ariel and you know, she's very charismatic and, um,
00:51:52
Speaker
You know, she sings some great songs. and I think part of that world is a good song. and But wanna to be it's funny watching it as a parent because, you know, as a child, you're like, oh, King Triton is so mean. And as a parent, you're like, well, no, he's kind of just like...
00:52:14
Speaker
you know, at a certain point you have to, you have to say no. Yeah. And especially with toddlers, Ariel is not a toddler, but you know, she's, she's taken some really extreme steps in disobeying her father. And, and like the scene where he destroys all her human stuff.
00:52:33
Speaker
I'm just like, actually, i mean, his demeanor is a little harsh, but honestly, the decision I agree with, you know, ah but this a very long tangent, but. Okay. Bring us back to what what is the.
00:53:01
Speaker
So the image that stuck in my mind was when he's in all these conversations with the unman is what uh, C.S. Lewis, uh, calls Weston, um, because it becomes very clear that there's something controlling Weston, uh, in Weston's body. And he calls him the unman.
00:53:25
Speaker
And.
00:53:29
Speaker
Ransom is sort of like in battle with the unman, mostly just debating, um, with the lady and trying to contradict him. And, um,
00:53:45
Speaker
C.S. Lewis describes what it is like to live with the un-man. um And he says...
00:53:56
Speaker
He had full opportunity to learn the falsity of the maxim, that the Prince of Darkness is a gentleness. There it is. Again and again, he felt that a suave and subtle Mephistelese with red cloak and rapier and a feather in his cap, or even a somber, tragic Satan out of Paradise Lost, would have been a welcome release from the thing he was actually doomed to watch.
00:54:20
Speaker
It was not like dealing with a wicked politician at all. It was much more like being set to guard an imbecile or a monkey or a very nasty child. What had staggered and disgusted him when it first begun saying, ransom, ransom, ransom,
00:54:37
Speaker
ransom and and it just does this for hours, continued to disgust him every day and every hour. It showed plenty of subtlety in intelligence when talking to the lady, but Ransom soon perceived that it regarded intelligence simply and solely as a weapon.
00:54:54
Speaker
which it had no more wish to employ in its off-duty hours than a soldier has to do bayonet practice when he is on leave. Thought was for it a device necessary to certain ends, but thought in itself did not interest it.
00:55:08
Speaker
It assumed reason as externally and inorganically as it had assumed Weston's body. The moment the lady was out of sight, it seemed to relapse.
00:55:21
Speaker
A great deal of his time was spent in protecting the animals from it. Whenever it got out of sight or even a few yards ahead, it would make a grab at any beast or bird within its reach and pull out some fur or feathers.
00:55:33
Speaker
Ransom tried whenever possible to get between it and its victims. um And it's just this, like, awful, awful... I would not want to be Ransom in this situation regarding this...
00:55:52
Speaker
thing How does this connect with you? Because in um our episode on James Baldwin, I was thinking about you, I just read this part part again.
00:56:06
Speaker
You talked about the devil and how different versions of the devil and the evil are portrayed. And it seemed like... I'm wondering how this fits into that that conversation.
00:56:21
Speaker
So... I mean, what I got out of this was kind of the stupidity of evil. Like, just the innatenity of... There's just no reason for anything he's doing. And the only reason is just that it's annoying or it frustrates him. or It's the imp of the perverse, um which is a phrase that...
00:56:53
Speaker
comes from Edgar Allen pose. I think it's an essay of the same name, the imp of the perverse, but
00:57:01
Speaker
it's what you insert. We, you can observe in young children when they just kind of do things just to, just to disobey you, just to make you mad or push your buttons.
00:57:14
Speaker
um Things that like don't benefit them or can't even really be that pleasurable to them for any reason. But, you know, they just do it because they can do it.
00:57:27
Speaker
um And as I've observed.
00:57:34
Speaker
Evil happening in our society and.
00:57:41
Speaker
you know We sort of think there's lots of movies about these big conspiracies that have to happen. you know Like in the second Captain America movie, there's HYDRA.
00:57:53
Speaker
And you know they're so clever about it and all this stuff. And it's like, well, you know i just don't think... I just think it's a lot simpler if you just look at greed...
00:58:05
Speaker
And you'd look at the decisions people make. It's just greed. There's no like grand conspiracy. It's just like people being greedy and proud.
00:58:17
Speaker
And, um, and that's, you know, that is, um, has been the eternal fault of the human race. That's why Jesus had to come.
00:58:30
Speaker
Um, and,
00:58:34
Speaker
to see that, like, eat that that spirit personified like this um was very cathartic a way.
00:58:47
Speaker
Why is it the way you chose?
00:58:58
Speaker
Because I think it's something particular to the... power of fiction where if you try to deal with ideas like this, like ideas about evil,
00:59:18
Speaker
it can get very overwhelming, i think. Yeah. And yet in fiction, you can, you can give a face and a name to it and kind of face it and it becomes smaller. Okay.
00:59:34
Speaker
You know? Yeah. Yeah.
00:59:42
Speaker
There's a whole past about that, actually.
00:59:47
Speaker
In this book, when he, when Ransom decides that he is what his, his job is to do, Oh, yes. That whole chapter is like...
01:00:02
Speaker
could do a whole episode on just that chapter. Yeah.
01:00:09
Speaker
Chapter 11. Yeah,
01:00:13
Speaker
ended up like... I think was drawing drawing arrows down the side of pages and like, oh, this is just a whole good great section. I just kept drawing arrows. Mm-hmm.
01:00:31
Speaker
What I'm talking about is on page 121 for me. It's at the end of this section. um
01:00:38
Speaker
Then came blessed relief. he suddenly realized that allll eat that He suddenly realized that he did not know what he could do. He almost laughed with joy. All this horror had been premature.
01:00:49
Speaker
No definite task was before him. All that was being demanded of him was a general and preliminary resolution to oppose the enemy in any mode which circumstances might show to be desirable.
01:01:00
Speaker
In fact, and he flew back to the comforting words a child flies back to its mother's arms, to do his best, or rather, to go on doing his best, for he had really been doing it all along.
01:01:13
Speaker
What bugbears we make of things unnecessarily, he murmured, settling himself in a slightly more comfortable position. A mild flood of what of what appeared to him to be cheerful and rational piety rose and engulfed him.
01:01:32
Speaker
And yet that's that's only one step in his journey to
01:01:41
Speaker
the decision to fight the young man. Yes.
01:01:46
Speaker
Yes.
01:01:55
Speaker
ah So there's this whole passage. um Can I jump in? Do you have more of your thought that you wanted to talk about? ah
01:02:06
Speaker
No, you go for it. All right. There's this whole passage about his name. His name is Ransom. It's his last name, and it talks about how...
01:02:17
Speaker
um
01:02:20
Speaker
he'd known for many years that his surname was derived not from ransom, but from Randolph's, but from Randolph's son. And it always thought about it as just kind of a funny thing that at most ironic, um, that his or punny, you know, a pun that it'd be his last name would be ransom.
01:02:42
Speaker
Um,
01:02:47
Speaker
um,
01:02:49
Speaker
but But he says to this as he's thinking about it, um aligned with what his role would be in this um garden mythos.
01:03:01
Speaker
Because he does share earlier that his role in this is to be an additional character in the garden, in the of the garden narrative with...
01:03:17
Speaker
um
01:03:20
Speaker
with the the the the serpent.
01:03:25
Speaker
there' so much to check this okay He says this.
01:03:31
Speaker
He knew now why the old philosophers had said that there is no such thing as chance or fortune beyond the moon. before his mother had been born before his ancestors had been called ransoms before ransom had been the name for a payment that delivers before the world was made all these things had so stood together in an in eternity that the very significance of the pattern at this point lay in their coming together in just this fashion.
01:03:57
Speaker
And he bowed his head and groaned and repined against his fate, to be still a man and yet to be forced upon up into the metaphysical world to enact what philosophy only thinks.
01:04:10
Speaker
My name also is Ransom, said the voice.
01:04:22
Speaker
That's the first time, i think that's the first time, maybe a second time, that Malaldil, God, speaks directly to Ransom. Yeah.
01:04:33
Speaker
And it's...
01:04:37
Speaker
Yeah, it's about three quarters of the way through this book. And Ransom's like finally like set him up for himself up for the task to realize why he was sent to this planet and what his his job is or his role is.
01:04:53
Speaker
And then realize, oh, it's not an accident that my last name is what it is.
01:05:02
Speaker
And then the statement from God, like, my name is also ransom, and it then talks a little bit about Jesus. and This is, again, me coming from my, I just read this story, and I feel like I understand, I
01:05:23
Speaker
Let me read this. Sorry. No. I mean, this whole section where he's talking about the name and, you know, he says to human philologists, it would be ah like a merely accidental resemblance of two sounds. It was in truth, no accident.
01:05:45
Speaker
The whole distinction between things accidental and things designed like the distinction between fact and myth was purely terrestrial. um And he refers to this idea that because he is not on earth, the philosophy and theology and, you you know, religious thought,
01:06:13
Speaker
doesn't really apply here because all of that thought was thought on earth, not on Venus, on Paralandra.
01:06:25
Speaker
And
01:06:29
Speaker
I think it's a really beautiful acknowledgement that, you know, the beginning of wisdom is the fear of God.
01:06:40
Speaker
and fear as in awe, um not like terror, but like,
01:06:47
Speaker
you know, realizing when you contemplate the infinite that, you know, just because we have observed something on earth doesn't mean that, you know,
01:07:08
Speaker
that is the only, the terrestrial viewpoint is the only valid viewpoint. um There's a great analogy in another science fiction book, um which I think we'll have to talk about at some point. It's a three body problem um and the dark forest and and that trilogy.
01:07:27
Speaker
um But this, the, he, in the three body problem, he talks about this um thought experiment where you have,
01:07:39
Speaker
ah like a turkey farm, basically. And the turkeys observe that the farmer comes every day and gives them food and water and takes care of them.
01:07:57
Speaker
And so they conclude, okay, the farmer comes every single day, And he brings food and water, and that is how it will always be. Because that's what we have, that's all we have ever observed.
01:08:12
Speaker
And then the farmer comes on Thanksgiving Day and kills all the turkeys. and And so it's this idea that, like, you know, our laws of physics and things that we observe, like, are are subject to change just because we have observed all of these things in our limited viewpoint and in our experiments does not mean that they can't change. And I think if you get into quantum physics, that that stuff gets real, as they say.
01:08:45
Speaker
But um i'm ah C.S. Lewis, I think, just pegged this way of thinking so early. Yeah.
01:09:03
Speaker
To enact what philosophy only thinks, you know, forced up into this metaphysical world.
01:09:15
Speaker
And to have to like, to have to physically interact with it.
01:09:20
Speaker
Not just think about it.
01:09:24
Speaker
I hope I didn't just totally throw us off, but.
01:09:30
Speaker
No, it's, yeah, I would, I would push back that the theology, um, ah around, like the story around Christ, God entering into the story of, of Thalcundra is relevant
01:09:50
Speaker
to this story. um Yeah. And it's historical. Did say that it wasn't? ah you You put that with with myth and philosophy as being things that are are can be different in different spaces. and And the impact, and I shared that quote earlier, of Jesus' death and resurrection and the reason for that is different in this experience, in this particular place, for this particular planet, in this particular Yeah.
01:10:20
Speaker
there and maybe that's the point you were making. i just want I think I meant like the thought about it or like the conclusions that are drawn, know, aren't, aren't the only conclusions that can be drawn about the event.
01:10:36
Speaker
Yeah. Okay.
01:10:40
Speaker
Let me go from here into a related thing. I'm going to, we talked a little bit about myth and there's more we could talk about. Like we we interact with, or we see mermaids in this story.
01:10:53
Speaker
I thought that's maybe where you're going with with the story of Ariel. yeah. oh yeah this And you know there are other things that he asked this question of of early on, of maybe even on Malachandra, that the individuals he met were the the prefaces for Cyclopses on Earth, and maybe all things that seem myth in...
01:11:16
Speaker
on earth are actual facts in other places and things that seem like myths or come across as myths and other planets are facts on earth like he he asks this question it's a great question it's really fun to think about and there's so many questions like that this story asks but i'm gonna jump to a a quote um this is uh in chapter 14.
01:11:43
Speaker
um Right, you know about a page before the the end of chapter 14. And it's the last interaction that Ransom has with the Unman.
01:12:01
Speaker
The Unman has followed him um through ups and downs, right? Belrog-esque and Gandalf fighting-esque situation here.
01:12:13
Speaker
ah And
01:12:17
Speaker
Ransom is in the final moment to, like, has ability to to destroy the body of the unman. here here's Here's the full quote for which I quoted part of it earlier.
01:12:34
Speaker
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, here goes. i mean, amen. Amen. said Ransom and hurled the stone as hard as he could into the unmanned face.
01:12:45
Speaker
The unmanned fell as a pencil falls. The face smashed out of all recognition. Ransom did not give it a glance, but turned to face the other horror. This other horror is a centipede type character, um, creature that's been following him, which he talks earlier about being truly terrible, like scary, mutilated, know, menace, blech.
01:13:10
Speaker
but where had the whore gone the creature was there a curiously shaped creature no doubt but all loathing had vanished clean out of his mind so that neither then nor at any time could he remember it nor even understand again why one should quarrel with an animal for having more legs or eyes than oneself all that he had felt from childhood about insects and reptiles died that moment died utterly as hideous music does when you switch off the wireless apparently it had all even from the beginning been a dark enchantment of the enemy's
01:13:46
Speaker
Once as he had sat writing near an open window in Cambridge, he had looked up and shuddered to see, as he supposed, a manicoloured beetle of unusually hideous shape crawling across his paper.
01:13:59
Speaker
A second glance showed him that it was a dead leaf, moved by the breeze, and instantly the very curves and re-entrance which had made its ugliness turned into its beauties.
01:14:12
Speaker
at this moment he had almost the same sensation he saw at once that the creature intended him no harm had indeed no intentions at all it had been drawn thither by the unmanned and now stood still tentatively moving its antennae then apparently not looking liking its surroundings it turned laboriously around and began descending into the hole by which it had come As he saw the last section of its tripartite body wobble on the edge of the aperture and then finally tip upward with its torpedo-shaped tail in the air, Ransom almost laughed.
01:14:50
Speaker
Like an animated corridor train, was his comment.
01:14:57
Speaker
This is
01:15:02
Speaker
This encapsulates...
01:15:08
Speaker
one of the main thing, this encapsulates why I find T.S. Lewis's writing is so fascinating and so impactful and why i love this particular story so much.
01:15:24
Speaker
Because he takes these completely, take these situations, which it's really hard for us to understand. um like how do you how do you communicate the terror you feel in a moment and how that terror for a thing can change and he communicates ah about them in ways that are
01:15:51
Speaker
practical and and can connect with a pretty wide audience of people that don't have that experience. Like this whole idea um that what looks like a bug on your desk and its ugliness, that those very things that made it ugly can make it beautiful if you see it and realize it's a leaf.
01:16:17
Speaker
Like how your perception of the matter... Mm-hmm. and understanding of what a thing is can completely change how you feel and how you interact with it.
01:16:31
Speaker
And what's terrible can be glorious or what's ugly can be beautiful.
01:16:40
Speaker
There are other scenes in this book that, that do that. And, and yet this particular scene, and it's a climactic scene, in the story it is definitely maybe the climax of the book, um, or at least of ransom's story arc in it. Um, one aspect of it.
01:17:02
Speaker
Um, it's just, it's such a, yeah, it stuck with me and it it's something that I, I think about fairly often, like multiple times a year. Um, you have,
01:17:20
Speaker
Moments in your life and what you think of this, this happens to you. I'm not sure if I could, if I can name to you, if there's a, a type of thing that encapsulates or that if there's a moment that triggers the memory.
01:17:36
Speaker
Um, um, but I wanted to tie the conversation into art. And so maybe that's, maybe that's the triggering the, the, the piece that triggers it.
01:17:47
Speaker
Um,
01:17:53
Speaker
one of the
01:17:59
Speaker
art of which writing is one of the art forms, um, visual arts, performative arts and so on. Others
01:18:12
Speaker
can encapsulate and portray and help us experience truth and possibility and future, you know,
01:18:24
Speaker
visions in ways that
01:18:32
Speaker
regular day interactions cannot.
01:18:37
Speaker
And this story in that particular scene and throughout it utilizes the medium that it's in of art
01:18:51
Speaker
to help us see what can be. or in many ways what is or will be. i This is clearly a work of of fiction, and yet there are such deep theological truths to mine out of it, and and human into human truths to mine out of it, that I feel like, for me, it reads more
01:19:24
Speaker
as a as spiritual text. And I don't mean that in like some heretical way, um but it's, it's, it's kind of like a different approach to reading a Bible story.
01:19:37
Speaker
um Again, not in a heretical way, like, but in a a way of like helping me understand more beautifully the nature of God.
01:19:50
Speaker
And the purpose of creation and the way in which we are called to live. And it's it's very rare for a science fiction book to impact the way you choose to live.
01:20:08
Speaker
um yeah I'm sure there are some that do that. Yeah. You know, there are... You can find some that impact the way you think at different points or that like stick stick in your mind. like we I love Dune.
01:20:24
Speaker
There are certain parts that that stick in my mind. I know you're not a big fan of Dune, but I love it. But this book actually helps impact the way I interact with the world.
01:20:35
Speaker
Yeah. it It helps me think of things in ways I've never thought of them. it It feels in many ways...
01:20:48
Speaker
don't know... how... C.S. Lewis was able to write this book.
01:21:02
Speaker
It's...
01:21:11
Speaker
i was... I want you to bear with me on this thought because the beginning of it might sound strange, but when I was reading that hideous strength and I was, I was going over Paralonder,
01:21:25
Speaker
I had a thought that C.S. Lewis could have been a great novelist. And I mean, great with a capital G like Tolstoy. Great.
01:21:36
Speaker
Because the way that he writes is honestly to me feels a lot like Tolstoy in the way that it is accessible. And yet it it feels effortless almost.
01:21:54
Speaker
um And, and, and yet it communicates these truths. So that are so deep that it says the unsayable.
01:22:05
Speaker
um And, and, I feel like if C.S. Lewis had sat down to write a novel and and um what I mean by a novel is like not science fiction, not fantasy, not myth, just wrote a book about set in the real world, you know, in a fiction novel.
01:22:29
Speaker
um ah think it would have been amazing. And, and, this is not to the say i This is not to say that I don't think these things are lesser. I don't think that's that's... I don't believe that. I don't believe that science fiction or fantasy... Like, nothing is lesser because of the genre.
01:22:48
Speaker
I think that's clear from our conversations about Tolkien. Hopefully. But... Hopefully this might have scope of what we talk about. Yeah, yeah. um
01:22:59
Speaker
But when I... You know, what when you talk about with this this passage... And the way that he writes, I think that is is really what, you know, capital N novelists try to do.
01:23:14
Speaker
And so many try and so many fail. ah You know, writing is is very difficult. um
01:23:26
Speaker
But, you know, as I think more about it, I feel like i get i you know I hold Paralandra up with you know the greatest fiction I've ever read because because of that element that you're talking about where it takes these deep truths of life, the experience of living,
01:24:00
Speaker
and it puts it on the page. And just because it's on a different planet, I guess it kind of enables him to really put Jesus and God and creation and the book of Genesis creation all of these elements that we talk about so much, you know, both of us are sort of raised in church culture and have talked to us for years. These stories are familiar to us.
01:24:36
Speaker
And yet
01:24:41
Speaker
you can talk about them so much that they almost don't feel real. You know, when you, when you, when you, you talk about Noah's Ark for the 30th time, it's like,
01:24:55
Speaker
you struggle to think of it as I have like a canned thing that I'll say about Noah's Ark. You know, this is like the conclusion that I've drawn because I've talked about it so much. And yet in Pearl Andra, he makes it all new.
01:25:11
Speaker
you know, he makes it all fresh and actually, because I think that's the power of fiction and why to me, you know,
01:25:22
Speaker
Like, I like theology, of obviously, um but there's a certain sense in theology where you're just playing with the ideas. And I think the real power of C.S. Lewis, even in his purely theological works, is that he never once forgets what it is like to actually try and live with those truths rather than just think about them.
01:25:52
Speaker
And try to try to live them out. Like, what does it really mean to love my enemy? You know, it's like, who is my enemy and how do I love them?
01:26:08
Speaker
Where do I find the strength to do that? Who do I look to? Who do I look up to? um
01:26:21
Speaker
I think that that is a great segue into my last one. for We're talking about the power of C.S. Lewis to connect to your real life lived experience.
01:26:32
Speaker
um Is one quote from Ransom that's repeated three times. This can't go on. This can't go on.
01:26:47
Speaker
this This is a quote that he repeats when he realizes that this fight that he has been having with the unmanned where he's trying to debate with him like stop him and like try and get the lady to dismiss the unmanned.
01:27:06
Speaker
He realizes that this interminable struggle can't go on. That something drastic has to happen and it's not going to happen by him talking It's not going to be a sentence, yeah you know?
01:27:22
Speaker
um
01:27:25
Speaker
And i
01:27:33
Speaker
can't say too much and reveal personal details, but I had a ah situation in life that I was observing um that I was close to.
01:27:45
Speaker
um it wasn't my direct family, but
01:27:55
Speaker
It's like it was an unsafe situation that I felt needed to change.
01:28:06
Speaker
And
01:28:10
Speaker
I was i read the read this book and I, you know, him said, this can't go on. And he says it three times. And I guess connecting to, like,
01:28:22
Speaker
earlier when we were talking about the unmanned is...
01:28:29
Speaker
Ransom makes the decision, and then he has to carry it out. And he goes through this really long, painful, drawn-out battle to kill the unmanned.
01:28:42
Speaker
And... I've never done anything like that, but, you know, I made this decision to say something, to talk to people, to try and ah make a change.
01:28:57
Speaker
And it wasn't enough. I had to say it again and again and again and again um in order to get the people who were really responsible um, in this situation to, to do their duty.
01:29:15
Speaker
Um, and
01:29:22
Speaker
i was thinking about ransom that, that moment when there's a part where he says,
01:29:39
Speaker
You know, the thing fighting the young man seemed impossible. Mm-hmm.
01:29:49
Speaker
But gradually something happened to him, which had happened to him only twice before in his life. Mm-hmm. It had happened once while he was trying to make up his mind to do a very dangerous job in the last war.
01:30:01
Speaker
It had happened again while he was screwing his resolution to go and see a certain man in London and make to him an excessively embarrassing confession which justice demanded.
01:30:12
Speaker
In both cases, the thing had seemed a sheer impossibility. He had not thought but known that being what he was, he was psychologically incapable of doing it.
01:30:23
Speaker
And then, without any apparent movement of the will, as objective and unemotionable as the and unemotional as the reading on a dial, there had arisen before him with perfect certitude the knowledge, about this time tomorrow you will have done the impossible.
01:30:40
Speaker
The same thing happens now. Mm-hmm.
01:30:49
Speaker
You might say, if you liked, that the power of choice had been simply set aside and an inflexible destiny substituted for it. On the other hand, you might say that he had delivered from the rhetoric of his passions and had emerged... I believe this is a typo.
01:31:07
Speaker
ah On the other hand, you might say that he had been delivered from the return from the rhetoric of his passions and had emerged into unassailable freedom. Ransom could not, for the life of him, see any difference between these two statements.
01:31:23
Speaker
Predestination and freedom were apparently identical.
01:31:34
Speaker
I had something very similar happen to me. um I don't know if you've ever experienced a moment like that, Eric, but...
01:31:47
Speaker
Small moments of that, not a... Yeah. and Not to that. Not...
01:31:57
Speaker
I won't say my decision was as important as Ransom's, but it was very important to me and in my family. So... so
01:32:13
Speaker
Well, Ransom even in this space says right after that, um after he's made the decision. In that sense, he stood for Millel Thiel, but no more than Eve its would have stood for him by simply not eating the apple, or than any a man stands for him in doing any good action.
01:32:31
Speaker
as there was no comparison in person, so there was none in suffering, or only such comparison as maybe be between a man who burns his finger putting out a spark and a fireman who loses his life in a finger inf fighting a kind of conflagration because that spark was not put out.
01:32:47
Speaker
He asked no longer, why me? It might as well be he as another. It might as well be any other choice as this. The fierce light which he had been resting on this moment of decision rested in reality on all.
01:33:07
Speaker
The importance of your decision in that moment is neither more nor less than
01:33:17
Speaker
importance of this decision in this moment.
01:33:28
Speaker
Isn't it amazing how great writing and even sometimes really bad writing, let everything else in between, can help us experience and prepare us for how to interact with our world? This is another C.S. Lewis quote. Like, if your kids are going to grow up in a world full of demons and monsters,
01:33:53
Speaker
and monsters at least have set them up to have have heard stories of brave heroes and heroines who fought against them. Yeah. I mean, you know, if I could somehow redeem my whole tangent about Ariel, if you think about Grimm's fairy tales and of which I feel like conscious Christian Anderson is
01:34:23
Speaker
at least adjacent to. um
01:34:29
Speaker
i think that, you know, i don't think they're quite as as grim. They're not all bloody and and scary. Some of them are just really weird. Some of them are quite scary.
01:34:41
Speaker
But I think the point is, I really, decision that my wife and I have made is is to tell the real stories to them and not try to water it down.
01:34:53
Speaker
because I think children, you know, children need to know that there are wolves out there. They need to be prepared.
01:35:05
Speaker
Um, and, you know, I think that's part of my issue with the Disney film is that Ariel makes this very questionable decision and she's rewarded for it and everything is fine.
01:35:23
Speaker
Um, And it doesn't like doesn't work like that in the real world. There's not always a third act of story. Exactly. Or sometimes there's a fourth and a fifth act.
01:35:34
Speaker
Right. I had a friend recently say to me that a goal of theirs and in raising their children is to have them experience things and think through things in their own household growing up so that they don't have to learn those same lessons through harder means later in life.
01:35:55
Speaker
yeah
01:36:03
Speaker
We're getting towards some of the last pieces and I wanted to get your your answer to a question, Hunter. i have... okay um I have, unfortunately, multiple answers to it myself. I'm hoping you only have one, but we'll see.
01:36:20
Speaker
This is the very last... i think it's the last chapter. yeah last chapter. There's a beautiful set of moments and and paragraphs that end with a statement, Blessed is he. Hmm.
01:36:41
Speaker
Hopefully you remember this moment. um So this is in the last last chapter. They're making statements, they being the king, the queen, and the Eldials.
01:36:56
Speaker
One of Perilandra, the other one of Malachandra, are making statements about Malaldiel. And each one ends in a statement, blessed is he.
01:37:11
Speaker
And there's, i don't know, a dozen or so paragraphs. 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19 paragraphs. That end with statement, blessed he. And I was wondering if there's any them that have stuck your mind.
01:37:25
Speaker
nineteen paragraphs that end with the statement blessed is he um and i was wondering if there's any of them that have stuck in your mind
01:37:41
Speaker
And I will answer first with one and then give you give you some time to think. And then after you share, I will then share possibly another one because I'm like that.
01:37:55
Speaker
Once again, oh no one said, they who add years to years in lumpish aggregation or miles to miles and galaxies to galaxies shall not come near his greatness.
01:38:09
Speaker
The day of the fields of Arbol will fade and the days of deep heaven itself are numbered. Not thus is he great. He dwells, all of whom dwells, within the seed of the smallest flower and is not cramped.
01:38:23
Speaker
Deep heaven is inside him who is inside the seed and does not distend him. Blessed is he.
01:38:38
Speaker
Oh, I don't remember one specifically, but I sort of like, I read this so fast. I read it kind of like the climax to a Robert Jordan novel.
01:38:51
Speaker
the Wheel of Time book where I just really enjoyed the ride, you know? Yeah. um Except, you know, C.S. Lewis took me places. um um
01:39:12
Speaker
And I guess it's, it comes towards the end, last, so.
01:39:23
Speaker
All that is made seems planless to the darkened mind, because there are more plans than it looked for. In these seas there are islands where the hairs of the turf are so fine and so closely woven together that unless a man looked long at them, he would see neither hairs nor weaving at all.
01:39:46
Speaker
but only the same in the flat. So with the great dance. Set your eyes on one movement and it will lead you through all patterns and it will seem to you the master movement.
01:39:58
Speaker
But the seeming will be true. Let no mouth open to gain say it. There seems no plan because it is all plan. There seems no center because it is all center.
01:40:11
Speaker
Blessed be he.
01:40:17
Speaker
And I feel like I have to read the next one because it follows. Yet this seeming also is the end and final cause for which he spreads out time so long in heaven so deep, lest if we never met the dark and the road that leads no whither and the question to which no answer is imaginable,
01:40:38
Speaker
we should have in our minds no likeness of the abyss of the Father, into which, if a creature drop down his thoughts forever, he shall hear no echo echo returned to him.
01:40:50
Speaker
Blessed, blessed, blessed be he.
01:41:01
Speaker
My brain has just, it can't, can't connect. And then, and then what, what happens next? This is really what I remembered is this moment of vision that he has where he like gets to so look into the eternal and, and like try to sort of see the great dance, you know?
01:41:25
Speaker
um
01:41:30
Speaker
Everything is a chord
01:41:34
Speaker
in this when we talk about the great dance. Chords of different lengths. And then he's he's trying to describe what he sees, and then he's like, and by now the thing must have passed together out of the region of sight as we understand it.
01:41:54
Speaker
Hunter, we could just read this book along with the Genesis account and then talk about it. And I think there'd be some really, really fun ways to do it. like it At one point, this book seeks to give a an answer to that one of the questions that I'm sure anybody...
01:42:13
Speaker
especially young kids who are reading the Bible, like ask about like, you know, how is it that people live so long? Um, cause it will say Genesis that people lived 120 years or 240 years or 540 years. And, obviously what? And, and so
01:42:35
Speaker
right towards the end, there's this question. Um, does it mean piebald, which is the name that, um, the mother with this part is called Tenedril, uh, has called him cause he looked like a specific, um, like mouse thing. Um, but does it mean he will die?
01:42:55
Speaker
i do not think so. Said the father to I think that any of his race who has breathed the air that he has breathed and drunk the waters that he has drunk since he came to the holy mountain will not find it easy to die.
01:43:10
Speaker
Tell me, friend, was it not so in your world that after they had lost their paradise, the men of your race did not learn to die quickly? I had heard, said Ransom, that those first generations were long livers, but most take it for only a story or a poetry.
01:43:29
Speaker
And I had not thought of the cause.
01:43:40
Speaker
and who it It matters not to me. And the yes, I just said it that way. It matter matters not to me whether this be true.
01:43:52
Speaker
Claim it. ah It's just such a... beautiful way of of thinking about scripture and thinking about um the way that God creates and the interactions that humans have with nature and with with creation, and with with life and death and time, that I wouldn't think about.
01:44:23
Speaker
if I was or wouldn't be exposed to if I was or I'm not exposed to in different genres or in a day-to-day life. I think about life and in more terms of historical history and historical facts, which I think is largely based off of the culture that I was raised in.
01:44:44
Speaker
um But when you add... this genre to the conversation, you can expose and think through and and
01:45:00
Speaker
truths and and stories and reality in a different way.
01:45:10
Speaker
and we've We've already talked about that and you've you dove well into that conversation.
01:45:17
Speaker
it's just a ah joy to, to see that and to, to read it. Hmm.
01:45:28
Speaker
I think I could connect to my last one. for it. Um, which is when he sees the face of the King. Okay. The first time, um, the King has not been here. We don't know where he is.
01:45:44
Speaker
um It turns out that he has sort of been taken by Melodyl to a place where he could see what was happening to his queen.
01:45:57
Speaker
and
01:46:03
Speaker
it's It's at the end of chapter 16, I think. And before I read it, I want to clear up, ah I guess... I think where we had a little misunderstanding was when I was talking about religious thought and mythological thought and and stuff like that.
01:46:22
Speaker
um
01:46:28
Speaker
I was talking about the interpretations of events. Okay. And... What I want to make clear is that there is no getting around the historical fact of Jesus's life and death.
01:46:47
Speaker
um And that part of what is great to me about Perlaundra and this trilogy is the way that
01:47:05
Speaker
C.S. Lewis helps me to imagine Jesus as a real person because I think it's really important that, you know, and this is pertaining to my personal faith, not to let Jesus become just another story, you know,
01:47:27
Speaker
Jesus is the story that is true. He's the only one that is true. You know, there is a huge difference between Jesus and um Zeus, you know, like there are sources outside of the Bible that you know, confirm Jesus's existence and that he was crucified. And um so we can more verifiably historical perspective, conclude that a real person named jes Jesus lived in, you know, around in the beginning of the the first century and was crucified
01:48:11
Speaker
yeah We can confirm that with more sources, like even non-biblical sources, than we can confirm who the emperor of Rome at that same time was. Yeah.
01:48:27
Speaker
yeah We're going to have to go on some stuff and in our episode on... another episode. About a different book.
01:48:38
Speaker
But... um
01:48:42
Speaker
So when he talks about this, he he says, you know, how shall i I, who have not seen him, tell you what he was like? It was hard even for Ransom to tell me of the king's face, but we dare not withhold the truth.
01:48:59
Speaker
It was that face which no man can say he does not know. You might ask how it was possible to look upon it and not to commit idolatry, not to mistake it for that of which it was the likeness, for the resemblance was in its own fashion infinite, so that almost you could wonder at finding no sorrows in his brow and no wounds in his hands and feet.
01:49:25
Speaker
Yet there was no danger of mistaking, not one moment of confusion, no least sally of the will towards forbidden reverence." Where likeness was greatest, mistake was least possible.
01:49:39
Speaker
Perhaps this is always so. Always so. A clever waxwork can be made so like a man that for a moment it deceives us. But the great portrait, which is far more deeply like him, does not.
01:49:58
Speaker
plaster images of the Holy One, may before now have drawn to themselves the adoration they were meant to arouse for the reality. But here, where his live image, like him within and without, made by his own bare hands out of the depth of divine artistry, his masterpiece of self-portraiture, coming forth from his workshop to delight all worlds, walked and spoke before Ransom's eyes.
01:50:25
Speaker
It could be never taken for more than an image. Nay, the very beauty of it lay in the certainty that it was a copy, like and not the same, an echo, a rhyme, an exquisite reverberation of the uncreated music prolonged in a created medium.
01:50:55
Speaker
And it's hard for me not to read those words and not get emotional and think about,
01:51:07
Speaker
think about seeing the savior's face. a
01:51:14
Speaker
Yes.
01:51:17
Speaker
Cause I think, try and keep it in this context, para longger but you know,
01:51:26
Speaker
we write We write stories. We talked about the last one, that the worlds that we create for ourselves. this I think it really reveals to us our longing for the divine. Whether you believe in God or not, I think you have to recognize that there's a longing for something more, that we're unsatisfied.
01:51:52
Speaker
And I think in the context of Perilondre, it's C.S. Lewis is using his gifts to paint a picture for us of of of what,
01:52:12
Speaker
you know, of what being in the presence of God would actually be like.
Contemplating Heaven & Divine Image
01:52:22
Speaker
Trying to imagine heaven not just as another one of these worlds that we've made for ourselves, but the actual heaven, what would it actually be like to meet the creator of the universe?
01:52:34
Speaker
You know, it's, it's, how could you not fall on your face?
01:52:43
Speaker
If he is who he says he is. Well, even, and even this, this statement is a statement of one who is made in the image of God. perfectly without sin but is not God right
01:53:17
Speaker
us home have two quotes to end our time together
01:53:24
Speaker
First is another blessed be
Individual Salvation & Christ's Sacrifice
01:53:27
Speaker
he. This is just a line from the middle of it. When he died in the wounded world, he died not for men, but for each man.
01:53:40
Speaker
If each man had been the only man made, would have done no less.
01:53:48
Speaker
He is his own begotten, and what proceeds from him is himself.
01:53:55
Speaker
Blessed be you.
Farewell & Benediction
01:53:56
Speaker
Let me close out our time with the final farewell that was shared between the king and the queen
01:54:09
Speaker
Ransom. And I think it would work for a final farewell from this episode from Hunter and myself to you. Farewell till we three pass out of the dimensions of time.
01:54:27
Speaker
Speak of us always, Timalaldio, as we speak always of you. The splendor, the love, and the strength be upon you.
01:54:42
Speaker
May that be our benediction.