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Easter
Night had smothered the city, and the city gave up its protest in uncountable millions of bubbles and gasps of light. Below was glittering Manhattan. The east was black. The opaque hilly horizon of the west was razor-edged against a last gleam of cold white light. Destroyers rode the unbridged Hudson; ferries and small craft flecked her with light. The East River lay her dark secretive self…a cool, lamp-spotted, many-bridged stream between the sprawling white conflagrations of Brooklyn and Manhattan. It was terrifyingly beautiful up on the roof, four hundred feet above the gaudy streets, four hundred feet up in the cool dark silences, four hundred feet up nearer the stars….
Mr. Blue put his hands into his trouser pockets and leaned backward, his face toward the heavens, now filling with stars.
“I think,” he whispered half to himself, “my heart would break with all this immensity if I did not know that God Himself once stood beneath it, a young man, as small as I.”
Then, he turned to me slowly.
“Did it ever occur to you that it was Christ Who humanized infinitude, so to speak? When God became man He made you and me and the rest of us pretty important people. He not only redeemed us. He saved us from the terrible burden of infinity.”
Blue rather caught me off my guard. I might have admitted in him a light turn for philosophy. I did not expect any such high-sounding speculation as this. But he was passionately serious. He eyes were glowing in the dark. He threw his hands up toward the stars: “My hands, my feet, my poor little brain, my eyes, my ears, all matter more than the whole sweep of these constellations!” he burst out. “God Himself, the God to Whom this whole universe-specked display is as nothing, God Himself had hands like mine and feet like mine, and eyes, and brain, and ears!….” He looked at me intently. “Without Christ we would be little more than bacteria breeding on a pebble in space, or glints of ideas in a whirling void of abstractions. Because of Him, I can stand here out under this cold immensity and know that my infinitesimal pulse-beats and acts and thoughts are of more importance than this whole show of a universe.”
–Myles Connolly, Mr. Blue, published in 1928
Published in General
Wow. That’s really something. Just wow.
Quite an interesting quote, Peter.
Happy Easter Peter.
Happy Easter to you all, too–and it really is something, Flagg, isn’t it? It still just knocks me off my feet, for the beauty and the power and the truth of it.
Consider it! Because of Him, because of that self-emptying love, we learn that there really is a center of the universe-us! What Glory. What responsibility. How can we even begin to understand? The infinite God regards his fallen people and raises us up to Himself. You have to believe it–because it is impossible. Here the philosopher’s tongue is all tied up.
Wonderful, Peter. I bought that novel after the last time you quoted it, but have yet to read it.
Happy Easter.
Thanks, Peter. Happy Easter to you and to all the good people of Ricochet!
He is Risen!
You win Claire’s Best Easter Literature contest! A joyous Easter to you, Peter.
Yes, and amen. Thank you, Peter.
Happy Easter Peter, and thanks for the post!
Everyone should check out that post, if for nothing else than the pictures of the art.
Do you think highly of this novel as a whole?
Remarkable. I’ve been working so much lately, it seems it’s been months since I’ve visited this sanctuary. I’m here 15 minutes, read this, and my heart is full. Thank you, Peter, and thank you, Ricochet. This really is the best place on the internet and all of you make it so.
I went to Sunday service with my son this morning. His church, not mine. I heard a remark from the sermon this morning that I am still pondering: because of redemtion in Christ, right here, right now, is the closest that you will ever come to Hell. I’m giving this thought.
To be honest, I’m not sure it works as a novel–the plot isn’t entirely gripping, really. It’s more a book of moments and insights, but none the less worth reading for that.
Carey McWilliams wrote that–a great political thinker and teacher who passed away a decade ago. Read more here.
My pastor said something amazing yesterday in his Easter sermon, describing Jesus hanging on the cross. “He isn’t running from Death. He is chasing Death down.”
For you and for me, the Eternal One chased down Death. He dragged Death kicking and screaming into the grave with Him. And then He rose, walked out of that grave, and left Death behind.
Hallelujah and Happy Easter.