Time out for something different, and more important, than some of the other issues I typically discuss.
I am watching, again, the 1982 version of Brideshead Revisted. I mention again not to highlight my erudition but to note that my thick head requires multiple exposures to great works in order to understand basic truths. Waugh is my favorite author, and I have read all his novels many times. Waugh's work is based (it appears to me) on his Catholicism, and his gradual conversion, and this comes through in his characters. The older I become, and the more than Grace illuminates my life, the more I see what Waugh and his characters represent.
Sebastian Flyte and the devils he fights, throughout the novel, are at the heart of what life is for many of us. Inner demons and torments, temptations and unpleasant thoughts, are never far from the surface. Sebastian is a great literary representation of this, and I believe he ends up as happy as is possible for him to be in this life. In a way, I find his story uplifting in what he represents. These are issues modernity does not understand and tries to gloss over; some poor souls are meant to struggle in this life and yet are not damned or miserable. Christianity understands this, modernity does not. I am grateful that I am beginning to see this as I advance in years.
