沒多久以前，在我的私下禱告裡，我引用了教會在五旬節後第四個主日的禱告辭；我發現我說溜了嘴：
我本來想說：「...使我能不顧世俗的牽掛，而不致於失掉永恆的事物...」結果發現我是這麼禱告的：「...使我能不顧永恆的牽掛，而不致於失掉世俗的事物...」
當然，我不認為說溜了嘴是個罪過；而且，我不認為我夠資格稱得上是個佛洛伊德的粉絲，會相信這種說溜了嘴，統統有很深遠的意義。不過我認為，有些還是有它的意義，這個就屬於其中之一。我認為，在不經意中，我說出了一些很接近我真正的願望。
當然，很接近並不叫做準確；嚴格地說，我從未這麼愚蠢到會認為永恆可以“不顧”。為了要能不傷及我的世俗事物而不顧的，就是在做那些自以為接觸到了永恆的那些時刻。
Not
long ago when I was using the collect for the fourth Sunday after
Trinity in my private prayers I found that I had made a slip of the
tongue. I had meant to pray that I might so pass through things
temporal that I finally lost not the things eternal; I found I
had prayed so to pass through things eternal that I finally lost
not the things temporal. Of course, I don't think that a slip of
the tongue is a sin. I am not sure that I am even a strict enough
Freudian to believe that all such slips, without exception, are
deeply significant. But I think some of them are significant, and I
thought this was one of that sort. I thought that what I had
inadvertently said very nearly expressed something I had really
wished.
Very
nearly; not, of course, precisely. I had never been quite stupid
enough to think that the eternal could, strictly, be “passed
through.” What I had wanted to pass through without prejudice to my
things temporal was those hours or moments in which I attended to the
eternal, in which I exposed myself to it.
I
mean this sort of things. I say my prayers, I read a book of
devotion, I prepare for, or receive, the Sacrament. But while I do
these things, there is, so to speak, a voice inside me that urges
caution. It tells me to
be careful, to keep my head, not to go too far, not to burn my boats.
I come into the presence
of God with a great fear lest anything should happen to me within
that presence which will prove too intolerably inconvenient when I
have come out again into my “ordinary” life. I don’t want to be
carried away into any resolution which I shall afterwards regret. For
I know I shall be feeling quite different after breakfast; I don’t
want anything to happen to me at the altar which will run up too big
a bill to pay then. It would be very disagreeable, for instance, to
take the duty of charity (while I am at the altar) so seriously that
after breakfast I had to tear up the really stunning reply I had
written to an impudent correspondent yesterday and mean to post
today. It would be very tiresome to commit myself to a programme of
temperance which will cut off my after-breakfast cigarette (or, at
best, make it cruelly alternative to a cigarette latter in the
morning). Even repentance of past acts will have to be paid for. By
repenting, one acknowledges them as sins
– therefore not to be repeated. Better leave that issue undecided.
The
root principle of all these precautions is the same: to guard the
things temporal.
This
is my endlessly recurrent temptation: to go down to that Sea (I think
St. John of the Cross called God a sea) and there neither dive nor
swim nor float, but only dabble and splash, careful not to get out of
my depth and holding on to the lifeline which connects me with my
things temporal.
It
is different from the temptations that met us at the beginning of the
Christian life. Then we fought against admitting the claims of the
eternal at all. And when we had fought, and been beaten, and
surrendered, we supposed that all would be fairly plain sailing. This
temptation comes later. It is addressed to those who have already
admitted the claim in principle and are even making some sort of
effort to meet it. Our temptation is too look eagerly for the minimum
that will be accepted. We are in fact very like honest but reluctant
taxpayers. We approve of an income tax in principle. We make our
returns truthfully. But we dread a rise in the tax. We are very
careful to pay no more than is necessary. And we hope– we very
ardently hope – that after we have paid it there will still be
enough left to live on.
The
lie consists in the suggestion that our best protection is a prudent
regard for the safety of our pocket, our habitual indulgences, and
our ambitions. But that is quite false. Our real protection is to be
sought elsewhere: in common Christian usage, in moral theology, in
steady rational thinking, in the advice of good friends and good
books. Swimming lessons are better than a lifeline to the shore. For
of course that lifeline is really a death line. There is no parallel
to paying taxes and living on the remainder.
For
it is not so much of our time and so much of our attention that God
demands; it is not even all our time and all our attention; it is
ourselves. For each of us the Baptist’s words are true: “He must
increase and I decrease.” He will be infinitely merciful to our
repeated failures; I know no promise that He will accept a deliberate
compromise. For He has, in the last resort, nothing to give us but
Himself; and He can give that only insofar as our self-affirming will
retires and makes room for Him in our souls. Let us make up our minds
to it; there will be nothing “of our own” left over to live on,
no “ordinary” life. I do not mean that each of us will
necessarily be called to be a martyr or even an ascetic. That’s as
may be. For some the Christian life will include much leisure, many
occupations we naturally like. But these will be received from God’s
hands. In a perfect Christian they would be as much part of his
“religion,” his “service,” as his hardest duties, and his
feasts would be as Christian as his fasts. What cannot be
admitted–what must exist only as an undefeated but daily resisted
enemy–is
the idea of something that is “our own,” some
area in which we are to be “out of school,” on which God has no
claim.
For
He claims all, because He is love and must bless. He cannot bless us
unless He has us. When we try to keep within us an area that is our
own, we try to keep an area of death. Therefore, in love, He claims
all. There’s no bargaining with Him.
That
is, I take it, the meaning of all those sayings that alarm me most.
Thomas More said, “If ye make indentures with God how much ye will
serve Him, ye shall find ye have signed both of them yourself.”
Law, in his terrible, cool voice, said, “Many will be rejected at
the last day, not because they have taken time and pains about their
salvation, but because they have not taken time and pains enough”;
and later, in his richer, Behmenite period, “If you have not chosen
the Kingdom of God, it will make in the end no difference what you
have chosen instead.” Those are hard words to take. Will it really
make no difference whether it was women or patriotism, cocaine or
art, whisky or a seat in the Cabinet, money or science? Well, surely
no difference that matters. We shall have missed the end for which we
are formed and rejected the only thing that satisfies. Does it matter
to a man dying in a desert by which choice of route he missed the
only well?
It
is a remarkable fact that on this subject Heaven and Hell speak with
one voice. The tempter tells me, “Take care. Think how much this
good resolve, the acceptance of this Grace, is going to cost.” But
Our Lord equally tells us to count the cost.” But our Lord equally
tells us to count the cost. Even in human affairs great importance
is attached to agreement of those whose testimony hardly ever agrees.
Here, more. Between them it would seem to be pretty clear that
paddling [near the shore] is of little consequence. What matters,
what Heaven desires and Hell fears, is precisely that further step,
out of our depth, out of our own control. And yet, I am not in
despair…
I
do not think any efforts of my own will can end once and for all this
craving for limited liabilities, this fatal reservation. Only God
can. I have good faith and hope He will. Of course, I don’t mean
that I can therefore, as they say, “sit back.” What God does for
us. He does in us. The process of doing it will appear to me to be
the daily and hourly repeated exercises of my own will in renouncing
this attitude, especially each morning, for it grows all over me like
a new shell each night. Failures will be forgiven; it is acquiescence
that is fatal, the permitted, regularized presence of an area in
ourselves which we still claim for our own. We may never, this side
of death, drive the invader out of our territory, but we must not be
in the Resistance, not in the Vichy government. And this, so far as I
can yet see, must be begun again every day. Our morning prayer should
be that in the Imitation:
Da
hodie perfecte incipere–
grant
me to make an unflawed beginning today,
for I have done nothing yet.
