A Conversation with Malcolm Guite
C.S. Lewis, the Gods and the Nuance of Animism
Hello friends wherever you are surfacing - this weekend I am out in the Dartmoorian bush recording audio in scraggy copses and by rivers for (hopefully) the benefit of the parish and attendant conversations. Whilst I do my field work, I wanted to leave you with this gem of a conversation.
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“They err who say ‘the world is turning pagan again’. Would that it were! The truth is we are falling into a much worse state.”
C.S. Lewis, The Latin Letters of C.S. Lewis
The poet Malcolm Guite turned up at my door at the scrag end of a storm with a bottle of Jura. There was no power in the cottage so we sheltered by the fire and lit candles. The conversation spilled into the night and then the next day and night. This recording is a moment as we sat on the porch enjoying the songbirds and some strong coffee. Erudite and generous, the poet and priest opened up many doors. There aren’t many like him AT ALL and we are lucky to be around his work and ideas. He is cooking up some splendid Arthurian re-imaginings that you can find on You Tube.
(He also reminds me that the conversation between Tolkien and Lewis would have taken place around 1930, not the '39 mentioned here.)
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Find Malcolm here:
It is predawn here, and I am finished with the wine glasses from last night's party. It is so rich, all of this, unfolding, here and there, here at my mother's, there in a cottage with flickering candles and a rich, so rich, conversation. Ah, the reenchantment of this lovely, ever-enchanting world, at such a time of dismal human destruction.......
Do we really take it seriously, when the sun shows up again, and the patterned beings of this lovely dance skimmer around as if permanently present some place always?
It is a newish dance step that is presently being unveiled with our latest precision instruments.
"We are all hard-wired for God," says Lisa Miller, as she explains from her kayak how the geese are actually speaking to her.... not in the mythopoetic way of 'ah, announcing our place in the world', but more "hey, sister, ya, I am talkin' to you".
It is at this inver river of confluence that the magical thing happens.... there is this glorious ribbon where we live.... a ribbon where the organizing dance of everything has spawned us!
It is such a trick of magic, this conjuring, we wonder who notices it anymore. The trick is too big for us to notice it at some points.... but I love to think also, that we are 'hard-wired' for this noticing....
Was it CS or whoever said.... 'the natural depth of each one of us is the whole of creation'.... My mother would repeat that often, writing it down and taping it above the sink. Pay attention, she seemed to hint, Something miraculous is afoot. "The Phenomenon of Man" ..... old Teilhard with his Man language.... she did not mind, she could see through that bend in the patriarchal world. She had always had a direct experience of the Lord. No one could ever take that away from her.
A direct experience of the Lord. Like the weird little opossum that wandered through the yard last week. The Lord like that. Take it serious, drink it in, like Alexandra leaving, and the impossibility of the whole carnival in the first place.
Oh, I must put grouchy old Van on for a while, 'the one great magician who turns water into wine'..... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P5vkZPOdKOI
thanks for sharing this delightful conversation.
Thank you, though I lack the erudition and education of many here , I’m able to get a sense that the window might not be opaque but of stained glass and that I might still find comfort on the pews of my childhood.