What is real?

What is real?

On Sundays I try to take some time for what I call deep thinking, some might have other terms for it. When my world closes in with the pressures of time and desired tasks, I find it helpful to slow down, (Easy does It) using the slow period, trying to determine what life is about.
Awhile back I read a passage by George Weigel that presented a window through which I can look for some answers. (The Truth of Catholicism p 55)

“A better prism through which to see what is at stake here comes from Evelyn Waugh’s Men at Arms, the first in a trilogy of novels about the Second World War. In one memorable scene the trilogy’s protagonist, Guy Crouchback, a Catholic, is attending his first formal dinner as an officer-in-training of the Royal Corps of Halberdiers. The champagne is flowing freely, and amid the post-dinner skits and games, Guy finds himself in conversation with the regiment’s Anglican chaplain. “Do you agree,” Guy asks, “that the Supernatural Order is not something added to the Natural Order, like music or painting, to make everyday life more tolerable? It is everyday life. The supernatural is real; what we call ‘real’ is a mere shadow, a passing fancy. Don’t you agree, Padre?” “Up to a point,” the obviously uncomfortable chaplain replies.
A theologian might quibble with Guy Crouchback’s description of the “real world” as “mere shadow,” but every influential Catholic thinker in history would have agreed with Guy’s basic proposition: that what we call the “supernatural” is, in truth, the most real of real things, and that the supernatural makes itself known to us through the materials of the “real world.” In the Catholic imagination, what we call the “real world” is not buttoned down and self-enclosed. The “real world” is a world with windows, doors, and skylights. Into it streams the light of what is really the real world, which is the world of the supernatural: the world of God.”

After reading this, I see much clearer through this prism, Things and situations previously confusing or nettlesome to me become clearer and I begin to understand that all I confront, be it good, bad or neither, are preparing me for my eternal future.

C.S. Lewis once wrote “There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal.
Nations, Cultures, Arts, civilizations ___ these are mortal and their life to ours is as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals we joke with, work with, marry, snub and exploit –immortal horrors or everlasting splendors.”

Wow! I will be keeping my eyes on you for supernatural clues.