The sun rises every morning. I do not rise every morning, but the variation is due not to my activity, but to my inaction. Now, to put the matter in a popular phrase, it might be true that the sun rises regularly because he never gets tired of rising. His routine might be due, not to a lifelessness, but to a rush of life.
The thing I mean can be seen, for instance, in children, when they find some game or joke that they specially enjoy. A child kicks his legs rhythmically through excess, not absence, of life. Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, “Do it again”; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, “Do it again” to the sun, and every evening, “Do it again” to the moon.
It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we. (paragraph breaks added)
Source: Orthodoxy, GK Chesterton
Isabel
Have a wonderful trip west. I fly to Manitoba a week from tomorrow.
Tom
Tom – Many thanks. Enjoy your Christmas trip, and Manitoba.
Sharon sometimes said that the skies in Edmonton made up for all the rest.
Jim T
Jim T – LOL – There’s lots of beauty in/on the prairies, but the skies *are* fantastic.
Wherever land is flat or meets the relatively flat, great bodies of water, the sky can dominate the scene. I know sunrise and sunset here in hilly, wooded land can be spectacular, but apparently more rarely because there is so much to distract from or to cover the heavenly display. I wonder if the feeling of extroverted freedom I get under the great bowl of the sky is a universal experience or just a personal reaction to the release from claustrophobic landscapes?
Laurna – I don’t think much about the sky here in Ottawa. Although we get some nice sunrise/sunset displays, their scope is limited. I don’t quite feel claustrophobic here, but there are some places between mountain chains in BC where mountains loom in every direction. Not sure I could live there.
Isabel – when I was stationed at CFB Suffield I often had to return to Ottawa on business.
Each time that I returned to Ottawa I was shocked at how tall the buildings seemed to have gotten in my absence.
John – LOL – the flip side of going back to see things we saw as children and finding them so small! A family member who went Way Up North for a summer of work came back to find Calgary ridiculously green.
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