I'm terrible. Ask me to describe my wife of 40 years when she's not present, and I freeze. Uh.... Malcolm Muggeridge could find just the words to put your imagination on spin cycle.
Recent Entries
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Self-sufficient humanism. Paul saw it coming – “lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God.”
Imago Dei
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So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.
Why Can't I Pray?
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The bible gives us several reasons, but according to Jeremy Taylor, a deceitful heart is at the root of prayerlessness.
It's Not Rocket Science
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To keep in step with the Spirit should be our daily quest. And if we are successful at that, all of life falls into place.
Theological Steak
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These words by P. T. Forsythe on the magnificence of Christ's work are to theology what Ruth's Chris is to a good steak.
Describing the Indescribable
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What we have in Christ will take all eternity to describe. But for one segment of one sermon, a great preacher made a mighty attempt.
Making Sense Of It All
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Where are things headed? Is there rhyme and reason to the endless cycle of summer, fall, winter and spring? Is there a plan in place, or is randomness the explanation?
A Way With Words And Then Some
December 31, 2010
I am standing in the wings of a theatre waiting for my cue to go on stage. As I stand there I can hear the play proceeding, and suddenly it dawns on me that the lines I have learned are not in this play at all, but belong to quite a different one.
Panic seizes me; I wonder frenziedly what I should do. Then I get my cue. Stumbling, falling over the unfamiliar scenery, I make my way on to the stage, and there look for guidance to the prompter, whose head I can just see rising out of the floor-boards.
Alas, he only signals helplessly to me, and I realize that of course his script is different from mine. I begin to speak my lines, but they are incomprehensible to the other actors and abhorrent to the audience, who begin to hiss and shout: "Get off the stage!" "Let the play go on!" You're interrupting!"
I am paralyzed and can think of nothing to do but to go on standing there and speaking my lines that don't fit. The only lines I know.
Now that you have a taste of his writing from volume one of his two volume set titled CHRONICLES OF WASTED TIME, you can get your fill by searching used books online for anything the man wrote. Trust me, it will not be a waste of time!
Perhaps Muggeridge's way with words is most masterfully seen in his descriptions of the people he encounted. Take G. K. Chesterton of ORTHODOXY fame:
As a schoolboy my father took me to a dinner at a Soho restaurant at which G. K. Chesterton was being entertained.....as far as I was concerned, it was an occasion of inconceivable glory.
I observed with fascination the enormous bulk of the guest of honor...
One blogger lists Chesterton at 6’4" and weighing "about 300 pounds, usually with a cigar in his mouth, walking around wearing a cape and a crumpled hat, tiny glasses pinched to the end of his nose, swordstick in hand, laughter blowing through his moustache." You get the idea. Muggeridge continues....
...his great stomach and plump hands; how his pince-nez on a black ribbon were almost lost in the vast expanse of his face, and how when he delivered himself of what he considered to be a good remark he had a way of blowing into his moustache with a sound like and expiring balloon.
His speech, if he made one, was lost on me, but I vividly recall how I persuaded my father to wait outside the restaurant while we watched the great man make his way down in the street in a billowing black cloak and old-style bohemian hat with a large brim.
I only saw him once again. That was years later, shortly before he died, when on a windy afternoon he was sitting outside the Ship Hotel at Brighton, and clutching to himself a thriller in a yellow jacket. It, too, like the pince-nez, seemed minute by comparison with his immensity. By that time, the glory of the earlier occasion had departed.
Hilarious and "ouch" at the same time. Regardless of Muggeridge's seeming dismissal of the man, one can hardly deny the skill and deft of language with which Chesterton is dispatched.
