Wordy Wednesday: Distinguishing the Accidental from the Essential

Two realizations by characters from Perelandra, and a summing up.

First, Ransom realizes that the patterns are there even when we can’t see them.

All in a moment of time he perceived that what
was, to human philologists, a mere accidental resemblance of two sounds,
was in truth no accident. The whole distinction between things
accidental and things designed, like the distinction between fact and
myth, was purely terrestrial. The pattern is so large that within the
little frame of earthly experience there appear pieces of it between
which we can see no connection, and other pieces between which we can.
Hence we rightly, for our use, distinguish the accidental from the
essential. But step outside that frame and the distinction drops down
into the void, fluttering useless wings.

Then, Queen Tinidril, realizes that the reasons for the boundaries set by God:

The reason for not yet living on the Fixed Land
is now so plain. How could I wish to live there except because it was
Fixed? And why should I desire the Fixed except to make sure—to be able
on one day to command where I should be the next and what should happen
to me? It was to reject the wave—to draw my hands out of Maleldil’s, to
say to Him, ‘Not thus, but thus’ to put in our own power what times
should roll towards us . . . as if you gathered fruits together today
for tomorrow’s eating instead of taking what came. That would have been
cold love and feeble trust. And out of it how could we ever have climbed
back into love and trust again?

 And, finally, we understand how they all work together to bring Glory to God himself. 

 “All things are by Him and for Him. He utters
Himself also for His own delight and sees that He is good. He is His own
begotten and what proceeds from Him is Himself. Blessed be He!”

Blessed be He!

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