I'm not sure it makes sense to talk of tradition where a blog is concerned, but I know I mentioned Charles Williams' All Hallows' Eve here last All Hallows' Eve, and perhaps another year as well, and I think I'll make it a tradition. This is one of my favorite books. I don't know of anything else which makes the spiritual quite so real.
In this passage, a woman named Lester (yes, that's right) encounters her husband, Richard. She is dead. He is living. They are working together on something which I can't explain without a long synopsis, so I'm editing out the parts that wouldn't make sense without that.
Lester saw him. She felt, as he came, all her old self lifting in her; bodiless, she seemed to recall her body in the joy they exchanged. She said—and he only heard, and he rather knew than heard, but some sound of speech rang in the room…—she said, "I'll wait for you a million years." She felt a stir within her, as if life quickened….If Richard or she went now, it would not much matter; their fulfillment was irrevocably promised them, in what manner so-ever they knew or were to know it.
I'm not absolutely sure what that last clause ("in what manner…") means. I think it indicates that their fulfillment would be, in fact, fulfillment; it would not be subject to any deficiency whatever.
(Here is the post from last Halloween.)
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