It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses,
to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to
may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now,
you would be strongly tempted to worship,
or else a horror and a corruption
such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare.
All day long we are, in some degree,
helping each other to one or other of these destinations.
It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities,
it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them,
that we should conduct all our dealings with one another,
all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics.
There are no ordinary people.
You have never talked to a mere mortal.
Nations, cultures, arts, civilization these are mortal,
and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat.
But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry,
snub, and exploit -- immortal horrors or everlasting splendours.
This does not mean that we are to be perpetually solemn.
We must play.
But our merriment must be of that kind
(and it is, in fact, the merriest kind)
which exists between people who have, from the outset,
taken each other seriously
no flippancy, no superiority, no presumption.
And our charity must be a real and costly love,
with deep feeling for the sins in spite of which we love the sinner --
no mere tolerance or indulgence
which parodies love as flippancy parodies merriment.
C. S. Lewis, 1942 sermon, The Weight of Glory
