A month for Caryll.

I have been trying to sit down and write a review of Caryll Houselander's The Little Way of the Infant Jesus. It is simply beautiful. But October faded, and November is well underway, and I have still not been able to garner 30 minutes of idleness for her. So, I will simply start posting excerpts here for the rest of the month.

Usually, November is Dead Poets Month, and she is truly a poet. November 2010, then, will be simply Dead Poet Month. I will be silent--like the world waiting for snow--and she will speak for me.

Without further ado:

~from the Introduction~

"Some truths need to be told over and over again. Our Lord repeated certain truths about Himself and used certain images of Himself over and over again, like the rhyme in a song. Repetition not only instills an idea into our minds, but it also has the same power that rhythm has to make the idea part of us and dear to us, even when it is hard in itself -- and this gently and easily, just as a tune heard many times, sometimes quite unconsciously, becomes part of us and dear to us.

"But there is a difference between Christ's repetition and ours. He speaks creative words because He is God, and because, as a man, He is a poet whom not other poet has ever come near to: His words echo and re-echo through the human heart. We, on the other had, tend to become tedious in repetition, even when the thing that we are saying concerns God and is beautiful in itself.

"Yet everyone who writes about the Christ-life knows that unless certain things are repeated in every book he writes, much, or all of it, will be almost meaningless to many who read it."