Praised be God for all sides of life, for friends, lovers, art, literature, knowledge, humour, politics, and for the little red cloud away there in the west—
For, if he was to be grateful, to whom did he owe gratitude? Here is the chief question he asked and answered at this time. At school he was looking for God, but at the age of 16 he was, he tells us in Orthodoxy, an Agnostic in the sense of one who is not sure one way or the other. Largely it was this need for gratitude for what seemed personal gifts that brought him to belief in a personal God. Life was personal, it was not a mere drift; it had will in it, it was more like a story.
A story is the highest mark
For the world is a story and every part of it
And there is nothing that can touch the world or any part of it
That is not a story.
And again, with the heading, "A Social Situation."
We must certainly be in a novel; What I like about this novelist is that he takes such trouble about his minor characters.
The story shapes from man's birth and it is as he meets the other characters that he finds he is in the right story.
A MAN BORN ON THE EARTH
Perhaps there has been some mistake
How does he know he has come to the right place?
But when he finds friends
He knows he has come to the right place.
You say it is a love affair
Hush: it is a new Garden of Eden
And a new progeny will people a new earth
God is always making these experiments.
Life is a story: who tells it? Life is a problem: who sets it?