“ ‘Such is this mountain’s fashion,’ he replied,
‘it’s always heavy going at the start.
As you go farther up it’s not so hard.
So when it seems to you the mountainside
is sloped so easily that going up
feels like a ship that slips down with the tide,
Then you’ll have reached the finish of this path.’ ”
Two experiences of Lent (or other difficulties or disciplines) conflict in my head here. Virgil says that being made holy is really hard at first but gets easier as you go. However, Lewis offers a different model in The Horse and His Boy: “He had not yet learned that if you do one good deed your reward usually is to be set to do another and harder and better one.” Shasta’s journey does not get easier, but harder. I am guessing that both models are true in different ways or at different times, and to some extent I can identify with both, but I’m curious about other people’s experiences of this sort (Lenten or otherwise). What do you suppose causes the seeming contradiction? Why is the first week of Lent sometimes deceptively easy and fun, and sometimes grey and dull and endless?
I don’t know, maybe dwelling on the experience of it is a bad idea... but Dante at least notices it in passing, so perhaps we can too. :-)
Perhaps the way becomes steeper, even as we learn how to fly.
ReplyDelete(And maybe this paradox is shaped somewhat like the celestial rose... I can almost see it but not quite.)