continuation of _The Little Prince_ post

we are so lucky to be able to love...

even when we have brief moments with another person ... we are "tamed" for ever so brief a moment,... we "tame" another for ever so brief a moment,... we are so lucky still to have loved and to have been loved. We really hurt when we are bbetrayed and we really hurt when we lose a loved one... but we are so lucky to have loved and held this precious thing in our hands.. I was really so happy to see this underlying statement in Le Petit Prince regarding what life is.. it is as if le prince is an angel or a prophet come to share his wisdom... and all too interestingly, one doesn't read this tiny children's book as if it were a revelation of some madman, but rather we coo over how adorable a story it is.. such subtlety is precious. We find in our minds hat we absorb pieces of what Antoine wished to teach us regarding his own outlook on life and on what is important.. and how he wishes for peope not to forget the idealist within... the person a little naive, a little innocent, so very precious who loves... with all his or her heart. This person who knows that what really matters is the person within and not the stupidity of the surface...

I thought that what he showed us about how death is a travel to another place was an interesting idea, introduced so cleverly into the mind, without much ado. The idea that love endures past death was also so interesting, becuase I recal reading how CSLewis also dealt with this thought... interestingly, the Problem of Pain was written at about the same time as The Little Prince. One has to wonder if CSLewis ever read/saw the book. More notably, though is that the themes overlap a bit better with those in _A Grief Observed_ and that AGO was written after TLP. Obviously, WWII and the tremendous expereinces people had with love and loss around that period of time brought out many of these ideas.. the climate was just so.

I'm reminded of Jack's comment at the end of _Shadowlands_ ... which goes something like..."why are we given the ability to love...? ... I was given the chance twice in my life... I chose one way early on, to close myself off in books and thought, never to be hurt again, and the second time I chose the other way..."

more accurately from three quotes we might see better:
Harry: Christopher can scoff, Jack, but I know how hard you've been praying; and now God is answering your prayers.
C. S. Lewis: That's not why I pray, Harry. I pray because I can't help myself. I pray because I'm helpless. I pray because the need flows out of me all the time, waking and sleeping. It doesn't change God, it changes me. "

"Joy Gresham: We can't have the happiness of yesterday without the pain of today. That's the deal. "

"C. S. Lewis: Pain is God's megaphone to rouse a deaf world. " "the pain now is part of the happiness then."

and one which makes no difference to this particular debate, but which amuses e nonetheless: C.S. Lewis: "He comes; he sleeps; he goes. So the plot thickens."

Indeed, as one particular yahrtzeit comes up soon, I find that I am at peace with the fact that we endure our pain now as part of the package deal for havinng loved then. I find, too, that I pray, because the prayer changes me. I find that I trust now that all love extends past this physical shell of humman frailty and that it is connected to eternity. I find, lastly, that what is most important about life, is that which is invisible to the eye. It is not one's career or accmplishments in the grown up serious world which matter most, but the connections we made and the taming that was done, by far... it is the love we learn to show here and now.