Friday, August 04, 2006

The way


'You thought, as a boy, that a mage is one who can do anything. So I thought once. So did we all. And the truth is that that as a man’s real power grows and his knowledge widens, ever the way he can follow grows narrower until at last he chooses nothing, but does only and wholly what he must do.'

- Master Summoner, in A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula Le Guin.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Yep

Anonymous said...

Y?

Anonymous said...

I guess you were short of time, and maybe feeling the pinch, since that quote anchored you previously.
Grace to you, being poured out on campaign in Worcester, and grace afterwards as well when pips squeak, yours or others. Sometimes we have to gulp what we can of grace and soldier on; other (God-given) times, we can refuel properly. I think the soldiers campaigning times toughen up the soul to hold spiritual water and stil love even when ragged. Very character forming.
Love and grace.
Piers

Anonymous said...

darren - you've got too much time on your hands...!

Anonymous said...

genuine question .. when reading fantsay / sci fi there is often a lot of stuff that applies to christian walk - such as this quote. Partly that's cos christians are humans (!) and it applies across the board; but more I think cos sci -fi / fantasy writers are spiritual and searching. However lots of it is actually dark stuff / off centre as far as christians go in its overall drive ... can we get into trouble transplanting their stuff into our living / thinking or does it just require the ability to keep our hearts / minds in reality and go with the 'to the pure all things are pure'. Not sure I've expressed this too well but hopefully someone out there will cotton on to my thinking and have a go at answering

s0upy said...

I'm more of a 'to the pure all things are pure' man myself. I sometimes imagine that I'm a Jedi-celibate, for instance. We can get in trouble by transplanting the world into our realm as a source of inspiration, but only if we overdo it. But it's probably true that the balance lies at different points for different people (and, perhaps, at different points for different churches depending on their particular stance on worldliness) which is why it's difficult to have a clearly defined line on this.