Enjoying the World

It is his delight in 'common things' that makes Traherne a truly incarnational writer, a link between the patristic theologians and the scientific world view of the Royal Society.

Quoted on June 3, 2014

True 'enjoyment of the world' is thus based on a proper measure of self-worth. If that is lost and I am conscious of being only 'a worm and no man' whose righteousness, as the Puritans have never tired of reminding us, is 'no more than filthy rags,' then I am not likely to give any greater value to the world and my fellow creatures. If, on the other hand, I see myself as 'heir to the world', another Adam/Eve set here to be its guardian and steward, it will be as valuable to me as my whole life, with which it is inextricably intertwined.

Quoted on June 3, 2014

quoting Vaughan, in 'The Night'

There is in God (some say)
A deep, but dazzling darkness; As men here
See not all clear;
O for that night! where I in him
Might live invisible and dim.

Quoted on June 3, 2014

from 'Thanksgivings'
Give me wide and publick Affections;
So strong to each as if I loved him alone.

Quoted on June 3, 2014

Within the Judeo-Christian tradition today, considerable criticism is levelled at our preoccupation with human sin, redemption and sanctification and our consequent neglect of the cosmic dimensions of the Christian story. The universal, cosmic Christ has been overshadowed by the personal, domesticated Savior. The magnificent, sweeping vision of St. Paul, with the whole creation groaning 'as if in the pangs of childbirth': his concept of one through whom 'God chose to reconcile the whole universe to himself...

Quoted on June 3, 2014

...we need to listen to him not merely for the majesty of his language and the delight of those orotund purple passages, but for the necessary corrective he brings to our sense of alienation from the ugly philistinism of modern society and to the pessimism induced by contemporary prophets of ecological disaster.

Quoted on June 3, 2014