Sunday

And now, what does it all matter? It matters more than anything else in the world.

The whole dance, or drama, or pattern of this three-Personal life

is to be played out in each one of us: or (putting it the other way round)

each one of us has got to enter that pattern, take his place in that dance.

There is no other way to the happiness for which we were made.

Good things as well as bad, you know, are caught by a kind of infection.

If you want to get warm you must stand near the fire:

if you want to be wet you must get into the water.

If you want joy, power, peace, eternal life,

you must get close to, or even into, the thing that has them.

They are not a sort of prize which God could, if He chose, just hand out to anyone.

They are a great fountain of energy and beauty

spurting up at the very centre of reality.

If you are close to it, the spray will wet you;

if you are not, you will remain dry.

Once a man is united to God, how could he not live forever?

Once a man is separated from God, what can he do but wither and die?

~C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, as quoted in A Year with C. S. Lewis