Originality and Personality

From C.S. Lewis, Membership:

I have wanted to try to expel that quite un-christian worship of the human individual simply as such which is so rampant in modern thought side by side with our collectivism; for one error begets the opposite error and, far from neutralizing, they aggravate each other. I mean the pestilent notion (one sees it in literary criticism) that each of us starts with a treasure called 'personality' locked up inside him, and that to expand and express this, to guard it from interference, to be 'original', is the main end of life. This is Pelagian, or worse, and it defeats even itself. No man who values originality will ever be original. But try to tell the truth as you see it, try to do any bit of work as well as it can
be done for the work's sake, and what men call originality will come unsought. Even on that level, the submission of the individual to the function is already beginning to bring true personality to birth. 

Not Afraid

by CK

I am not afraid

of anything that breathes: 

of the spiders,

or the mountains

that tumble into the seas.

I have learned to lean

on He Who lives forever,

on the God of Abraham,

the God of grace and glory:

Who is the great I AM.

Looking in the rearview, looking straight ahead:

looking for a clear view

of the rhythm in my head.

The music rises slowly into a symphony;

I will dance and I will sing

with stars, and hills, and trees.

I am dancing into darkness, but dancing I will go --

for my Father holds my hand;

my Father holds my hand; 

Abba Father holds my hand. 

Now to the King Eternal, 

be glory through the ages,

and may He write his glory

across these tattered pages.

Goodness

by CK

I was once in a long slumber,

feebly hearing voices feeble,

and struggling to awake --

til tonight, mind alight, in a quaint coffee shop,

I tasted heaven in a slice of cake.

I walked outside, a man at last alive,

and trod down mainstreet

across brick and concrete

past tall buildings

and a rocky river

and peoples of all

sizes, shapes, beliefs.

And I saw the Giver,

and his hands underneath.

The concrete beneath my feet

was good.

And the river that meandered

was good.

And the people who passed

were very good.

On the supposition (credo

quia absurdum)

that men are responsible for their philosophies,

I defy Plato.

For, I saw goodness as sign,
and goodness by design a taste of heaven.

Goodness, at last!
Goodness, near, within my grasp:
goodness in a slice of cake,

goodness in a blade of grass,
goodness, 'pon all things cast.