Lift Up Your Hearts!

As I neared the end of my C. S. Lewis retrospective—reading (mostly re-reading) all the books we own by or about the prolific author—I was challenged by my friend, The Occasional CEO, to relate a few of the most significant things I have learned from Lewis. I began with the idea of trying to distill a Top Five from his many areas of influence in my life.

It soon became clear that of everything I have learned from Lewis—from faith to literature to history to the changing meaning of words to the critical importance of one's model of the universe—two stood out, orders of magnitude greater than the rest. 

All is gift. I am Oyarsa not by His gift alone but by our foster mother’s, not by hers alone but by yours, not by yours alone but my wife’s—nay, in some sort, by gift of the very beasts and birds. Through many hands, enriched with many different kinds of love and labor, the gift comes to me. It is the Law. The best fruits are plucked for each by some hand that is not his own.” (Perelandra)

The first gift I received from C. S. Lewis was his Narnia stories. I was introduced to them in mid-elementary school: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe was a gift from my mother, who brought it to me in a stack of books from the library when I was sick in bed. The remainder of the series came about two years later, a gift from a neighbor, who owned all seven and shared them around our group of friends. I was delighted, enthralled. However, my attempt to find similar delight in his other fiction was at the time unsuccessful. I tried the first of his Space Trilogy, but I was a hard-core science fiction fan—Asimov, Heinlein, Clarke—and Out of the Silent Planet was not sufficiently science-based for me. One of Lewis's earliest books, it lacks the beauty and enchantment of the Narnia stories, and was intended for an adult audience. I have since come to enjoy it, but I wasn't ready then.

I rediscovered Narnia in college, thanks to the University of Rochester's Education Library, which was well-stocked with children's books. There I also first encountered Mere Christianity: the gift of my roommate, and my introduction to Lewis's nonfiction. To my shock, there I discovered that all the delight—the goodness, truth, and beauty—that I had encountered in Narnia was for Lewis an expression of reality, a reality far greater than he could depict, even in fantasy. I came later to respect the background in Christianity I had received in my childhood, but it was through Lewis and Narnia that the reality of God began to make sense to me.

This is the first and great gift, and the second is like unto it.

I went on to read more of Lewis's non-fiction, and to gain from it, but his next pivotal gift came many years later, through a friend—all is gift—who shared with me Lewis's George MacDonald: An Anthology.

If Narnia had shown me a God who made sense of the world, MacDonald showed me a God I could love.

George MacDonald is another author I had met before—as a child through his Curdie books and At the Back of the North Wind—but I'd never followed through to find what else he might have written. To be fair to myself, his other books weren't easy to find back then.

Of MacDonald, Lewis wrote,

In making these extracts I have been concerned with MacDonald not as a writer but as a Christian teacher. If I were to deal with him as a writer, a man of letters, I should be faced with a difficult critical problem. If we define Literature as an art whose medium is words, then certainly MacDonald has no place in its first rank—perhaps not even in its second. There are indeed passages, many of them in this collection, where the wisdom and (I would dare to call it) the holiness that are in him triumph over and even burn away the baser elements in his style: the expression becomes precise, weighty, economic; acquires a cutting edge. But he does not maintain this level for long. The texture of his writing as a whole is undistinguished, at times fumbling. Bad pulpit traditions cling to it; there is sometimes a nonconformist verbosity, sometimes an old Scotch weakness for florid ornament (it runs right through them from Dunbar to the Waverly Novels), sometimes an oversweetness picked up from Novalis. But this does not quite dispose of him even for the literary critic. What he does best is fantasy—fantasy that hovers between the allegorical and the mythopoeic. And this, in my opinion, he does better than any man. (Unless otherwise noted, all quotations are from Lewis's preface to George MacDonald, An Anthology.)

MacDonald's works can be divided roughly into three parts, though they overlap: the fantasy that so impressed Lewis; books of sermons; and his many adult novels—the craft of which left Lewis so unimpressed—which served both to feed his family of thirteen and as vehicles for reaching a wider audience with his preaching. The last sounds dreary, but in reality the preaching is what makes his novels shine. (Those who know my lack of appreciation for most sermons will recognize the peculiarity of such a statement coming from me.)

Having been reawakened to MacDonald by Lewis's Anthology, I looked around for more, and the best I could find were modern re-workings of his novels, some by Michael R. Phillips and some by Dan Hamilton. I give credit to both authors for their obvious respect for MacDonald, and their faithfulness to his ideas, even though in their efforts they exaggerated the parts I like least from the originals (the Romantic elements) and reduced the best (the preaching). The library had most of them, and I wolfed them down.

Most of my extracts are taken from the three volumes of Unspoken Sermons. My own debt to this book is almost as great as one man can owe to another.

The next contributor to my journey was a church secretary who had obtained photocopies of all three Unspoken Sermons books, which she graciously shared. I wonder if the generations who grew up with easy access to a universe of electronic resources can even imagine how valuable bound photocopies could be. Or what an incredible gift it was to the world when, in the 1990's, Johannesen began republishing all of MacDonald's works, in beautifully-crafted sets. All of these treasures were given to me, over several years of birthdays and Christmases, by my father. He himself had no particular appreciation of MacDonald—I doubt he read any of the books—but a great deal of love for his children and grandchildren, for whom I consider the collection a legacy. Now, Kindle versions of almost all of MacDonald's works are available at no cost.

I have never concealed the fact that I regarded him as my master; indeed I fancy I have never written a book in which I did not quote from him. 

Lewis is not exaggerating the frequency of MacDonald's influence on his own works. Having tackled my MacDonald retrospective first, I easily recognized his ideas and often his words when I encountered them in Lewis.

I know nothing that gives me such a feeling of spiritual healing, of being washed, as to read George MacDonald. (from a letter of Lewis to Arthur Greeves)

I dare not say that he is never in error; but to speak plainly I know hardly any other writer who seems to be closer, or more continually close, to the Spirit of Christ Himself.

What greater endorsement could there be?

Lewis was puzzled as to how people could idolize him and ignore MacDonald. I have some ideas. MacDonald's books were old, even then—he had died before Lewis turned seven—and our society's "chronological snobbery" was well established. Although full of gold, many of his books are difficult to read, even those not laden with Scottish dialect. I can now say that it's well worth the effort, and the reading and understanding get much easier with practice. But I can't forget that I had actually encountered MacDonald's novels years before, deep in the stacks of our main college library. But apparently this, too, had to wait to be a gift rather than my own choice: to my everlasting embarrassment, I turned aside from those unattractive, ancient, brown, and dusty tomes. Perhaps it was the library's revenge that I later became a genealogist, whose blood now quickens at the mere scent of such books.

Then, too, from the beginning MacDonald was plagued by charges of heresy and branded "Universalist" for his belief that, in the end, God's love would triumph. Lewis did not see him that way, but it led (and still leads) some to dismiss MacDonald out of hand.

Reaction against early [strict Scottish Calvinist] teachings might ... have very easily driven him into a shallow liberalism. But it does not. He hopes, indeed, that all men will be saved; but that is because he hopes that all will repent.

Nowhere else outside the New Testament have I found terror and comfort so intertwined.

Inexorability—but never the inexorability of anything less than love—runs through [MacDonald's thought] like a refrain; "escape is hopeless"—"agree quickly with your adversary"—"compulsion waits behind"—"the uttermost farthing will be exacted." Yet this urgency never becomes shrill. All the sermons are suffused with a spirit of love and wonder which prevents it from doing so. MacDonald shows God threatening, but (as Jeremy Taylor says) "He threatens terrible things if we will not be happy."

The effect of C. S. Lewis's writings on my thinking is incalculable, and not just from his most popular books. Who would have guessed, for example, that I would give a five-star rating to Studies in Words—a book on philology, addressed to scholars, of which I understood less than half? But I was fascinated, and my eyes were opened to the pernicious habit (especially common among both literary critics and high school English teachers) of simply seeking meaning in what we read, instead of seeking what the author meant by his words and what his contemporary audience understood him to be saying.

There's no doubt that Lewis was quirky, humble, and absolutely brilliant—all the more brilliant that so many of his writings were written to be accessible to the ordinary British public, yet there's no hint of condescension. I could start my Lewis retrospective over again from the beginning and learn a lot more.

But for all that, Lewis's greatest influence on my life came less through my mind than through my spirit. Lewis said that reading MacDonald's Phantastes "baptized his imagination." The Narnia books first, and then George MacDonald directly, did the same for me.

This surprising realization came nearly sixty years after my first encounter with The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, and was itself a gift—thanks to my friend's challenge.

I think maybe this confinement is getting to me. It's not that I particularly miss going out, though I do really miss the good times we had getting together with other people. I love being home and have more work to do here than I could complete in a hundred pandemics. But I really miss church activities, and two opportunities have already slid by in which we would normally have gotten together with far-away family. At least two more are threatened. We have missed one wedding and are hanging onto hope for another. Our grandchildren have grown and changed so much since we saw them last! The year of 2020 will be the first year since 2005 I have not travelled out of the country to be with family.

I know, I know. Before anyone says it, I know we're still blessed beyond measure and I honestly expect much good to come out of this pandemic. Much already has.

And yet it's invading my dreams.

I love to be outside very early in the morning. Every day I go out to our back porch swing, and listen. I listen to the insects and the frogs, and to the armadillo as he waddles back to his den after his nocturnal adventures. I listen to the barred owls, and to the songbirds when they awaken. Though I don't listen for them, I can't help hearing the traffic noises, pool pumps, and air conditioner compressors. I listen to my own thoughts, and then struggle to still them and listen for the whispering voice of God. Sometimes, in my listening, I fall back to sleep, as I did today. And today I dreamed.

In my dream, I was also dozing. Not on the porch, but in our family room; I must have been doing some work using my computer and my phone, for they were both there with me. In my dream I awoke, and all was changed. Every window had been boarded up, as we sometimes do when a hurricane is approaching. (Clearly Isaias had  also found its way into my dreaming.) But instead of plywood, this was cement board—and unbreakable. And it was not just the windows that were boarded up, but all the doors.

We were completely shut in. There was no way out. There was no view out. Between one moment and the next, we had been cut off from the world outside.

What caused me the most distress was the back door. I couldn't stop looking at the cement board blocking what should have been a green, leafy view. Then somehow—the details are vague—a small view opened up so that I could see into the back yard. Gone were the trees, the plants, the insects, the frogs and the birds. In place of the porch, pool, and yard was a vast expanse of concrete with a single exercise trampoline off to one side, and a bulldozer off to the other.

Still half-asleep, I struggled to think. My computer and my phone were no more responsive than my thoughts. Finally, a little girl's voice asked, "Are we just going to watch the paint dry?"

Still fighting to come to full consciousness in my dream, I awoke to a like struggle to come out of what must have been a very deep sleep. But there I was on my swing, on our porch, with the blue of the pool and the green of the foliage in front of me. Dawn had come, and the birds were singing.

No doubt the Swiss National Day activities are somewhat muted this year, but when you are a venerable 729 years old, it's certainly reason to celebrate.

In honor of my favorite country-in-law, here are some Sporcle quizzes for your education and amusement.

Name the Swiss cantons by location

Name the Swiss cantons by date (but you can enter them in any order)

Basic facts about Switzerland

Official Swiss languages

Swiss geography

Swiss borders

Enjoy!

The Alto Wore Tweed (Liturgical Mysteries #1) by Mark Schweizer (St. James Music Press, 2002)

This book is just for fun. If there is something of redeeming social value about it, I didn't notice, but I laughed longer and harder than I have over a book in a long time. Our choir director introduced me to the series—we get some of our anthems from St. James Press—and it was also recommended by other choir members.

The protagonist is an Episcopal church music director who is also a detective and a writer of "hard-boiled" detective fiction. I'm not a fan of that school of detective stories, but I know enough about it to get some of the jokes. And as a member of an Episcopal church choir, I can tell you that the author hits just close enough to the truth to be really funny. What someone without this background would think, I don't know.

I was warned that I'd have to not mind the "religious irreverence," but it's not irreverent toward God, and a bit of irreverence toward choir and church foibles is probably not a bad thing. Some of the situations and humor are "adult" (though I hate to use that term) but not graphic. I have a very low tolerance for such things and still enjoyed the book a lot, so I doubt anyone else would have a problem; I mention it merely as a grandchild warning to parents. More to the point, I don't think any of our grandchildren have enough experience as yet to appreciate the satire.

In October 2018 I began another adventure in reading—as close to consecutively as was reasonable—all the works we own by or about a particular author.  Previous authors have included the highbrow, the lowbrow, and the in-between: William Shakespeare (plays only, read or viewed), George MacDonald, J. R. R. Tolkien, Miss Read (Dora Jesse Saint), and all the Rick Brant Science-Adventure series of John Blaine (Harold L. Goodwin).  This time I tackled C. S. Lewis, the number of whose books on our shelves is exceeded only by George MacDonald's.  I concluded the project 21 months later, in July 2020.  Needless to say there were a lot of non-Lewis books interspersed with these.  Even C. S. Lewis is none the worse for a break.

Here's the whole list, in the order in which I completed them.  The links are to my own posts about the books.

Ratings Guide: 0 to 5 ★s reflects how much I liked it (worst to best); 0 to 3 ☢s represents a content advisory (mildest to strongest).  I make no claim to consistency, as I couldn't keep the ratings from being affected by both my mood at the time of reading and what I had read before.

1. C. S. Lewis: Images of His World, by James Riordan and Pauline Baynes  ★★★
2. C. S. Lewis: A Biography  ★★★
3. Spirits in Bondage  ★★
4. The Pilgrim's Regress  ★★★
5. Space Trilogy 1: Out of the Silent Planet  ★★★★★
6. The Problem of Pain  ★★★★★
7. The Dark Tower and Other Stories, edited by Walter Hooper  ★★ ☢
8. Planet Narnia: The Seven Heavens in the Imagination of C. S. Lewis, by Michael Ward  ★★★★★
9. Poems  ★★★★
10. Preface to Paradise Lost  ★★★
11. The Screwtape Letters  ★★★★★
12. Space Trilogy 2: Perelandra  ★★★★★
13. The Abolition of Man  ★★★★★
14. The Weight of Glory  ★★★★★
15. Space Trilogy 3: That Hideous Strength  ★★★★
16. The Great Divorce  ★★★★★
17. Miracles  ★★★★★
18. Mere Christianity  ★★★★★
19. On Stories: And Other Essays on Literature  ★★★★★
20. Past Watchful Dragons, by Walter Hooper  ★★★
21. C. S. Lewis on Scripture, by Michael J. Christensen  ★★★
22. A Book of Narnians: The Lion, the Witch, and the Others, by James Riordan and Pauline Baynes  ★★★
23. The Chronicles of Narnia 1: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe  ★★★★★
24. The Chronicles of Narnia 2: Prince Caspian  ★★★★★
25. The Chronicles of Narnia 3: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader  ★★★★★
26. The Chronicles of Narnia 4: The Silver Chair  ★★★★★
27. The Chronicles of Narnia 5: The Horse and His Boy  ★★★★★
28. The Chronicles of Narnia 6: The Magician's Nephew  ★★★★★
29. The Chronicles of Narnia 7: The Last Battle  ★★★★★
30. Smoke on the Mountain, by Joy Davidman (not by or about Lewis, but it seemed appropriate, as she was his wife)  ★★★
31. Surprised by Joy  ★★★★
32. Till We Have Faces  ★★★★
33. The Business of Heaven, edited by Walter Hooper  ★★★
34. Reflections on the Psalms  ★★★★★
35. Studies in Words  ★★★★★
36. The Four Loves  ★★★★
37. The World's Last Night  ★★★★★
38. A Grief Observed  ★★★★
39. An Experiment in Criticism  ★★★
40. Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer  ★★★★
41. Letters to Children  ★★★★
42. C. S. Lewis: A Companion & Guide, by Walter Hooper  ★★★★
43. The Discarded Image: An Introduction to Medieval and Renaissance Literature (by Lewis, edited by Walter Hooper)  ★★★★
44. Christian Reflections  ★★★★
45. Letters to an American Lady  ★★★
46. Of Other Worlds: Essays and Stories  ★★★
47. God in the Dock  ★★★★★
48. Surprised By Laughter: The Comic World of C. S. Lewis, by Terry Lindvall  ★★
49. G. K. Chesterton and C. S. Lewis: The Riddle of Joy, edited by Michael H. Macdonald and Andrew A. Tadie  ★★★
50. The Quotable Lewis, edited by Wayne Martindale and Jerry Root  ★★★★

Was this adventure worthwhile? Absolutely. Once again I found it interesting to follow an author's development over time. My reading left me with a strong desire to see what he would have written about our own times—if he could have survived the shock of seeing the fruit, 60+ years later, of the negative social trends that disturbed him in their beginnings.

A few of Lewis's writings are hindered by some of the examples he uses, which were aimed at a British audience of a long time ago, but that happens surprisingly rarely.  Timeless truths about the human condition never get out of date.

The Quotable Lewis edited by Wayne Martindale and Jerry Root (Tyndale House, 1989)

As I discovered when doing my George MacDonald retrospective, reading a collection of quotations from an author's works can be delightful, but it's less so when you've been immersing yourself in the works themselves and have read the passages in context.  The difference here is that my MacDonald collection could be considered complete, and my Lewis collection cannot.  The net of this 651-page book has caught, among its 1565 excerpts, several that were new to me, especially from Lewis's letters.

The editors have given each quotation a number, so in my own selections below I give that instead of the usual page number.  Many of the quotations are quite long, which in the main is great, but no so much when one is typing them out.  So in some cases I have excerpted the excerpts. There are a lot of quotes here, but it is a large book!  All bold emphasis is my own.

[From a letter written in 1930, when Lewis was 31 years old] From the age of sixteen onwards I had one single ambition, [to succeed as a writer], from which I never wavered, in the prosecution of which I spent every ounce I could, on which I really and deliberately staked my whole contentment: and I recognize myself as having unmistakably failed in it. (42)

It may well be that the author who claims to write neither for patron nor public but for himself has done our art incalculable harm and bred up infinite charlatans by teaching us to emphasize the public's duty of "recognition" instead of the artist's duty to teach and delight. (68)

There is great good in bearing sorrow patiently: I don't know that there is any virtue in sorrow just as such.  It is a Christian duty, as you know, for everyone to be as happy as he can. (95)

It is Christ Himself, not the Bible, who is the true word of God.  The Bible, read in the right spirit and with the guidance of good teachers, will bring us to Him. (105)

I can't imagine a man really enjoying a book and reading it only once. (123)

Clearly one must read every good book at least once every ten years. (124)

Consider how many bores whose history you know well after a short acquaintance ... because they had nothing to say and would not be silent. (131)

Disputations do more to aggravate schism than to heal it: united action, prayer, fortitude and (should God so will) united deaths for Christ—these will make us one. (207)

I think almost all the crimes which Christians have perpetrated against each other arise from this, that religion is confused with politics.  For, above all other spheres of human life, the Devil claims politics for his own, as almost the citadel of his power.  Let us, however, with mutual prayers pray with all our power for that charity which "covers a multitude of sins." (209)

Once the layman was anxious to hide the fact that he believed so much less than the Vicar: he now tends to hide the fact that he believes so much more.  Missionary to the priests of one's own church is an embarrassing role. (218)

We must get rid of our arrogant assumption that it is the masses who can be led by the nose.  As far as I can make out, the shoe is on the other foot.  The only people who are really the dupes of their favourite newspapers are the intelligentsia.  It is they who read leading articles: the poor read the sporting news, which is mostly true. (228)

Have you tried Chesterton's The Everlasting Man? the best popular apologetic I know. (231)

Mankind is so fallen that no man can be trusted with unchecked power over his fellows.  Aristotle said that some people were only fit to be slaves.  I do not contradict him.  But I reject slavery because I see no men fit to be masters. (326)

The only people who achieve much are those who want knowledge so badly that they seek it while the conditions are still unfavourable.  Favourable conditions never come. (385)

All schools, both here [England] and in America, ought to teach far fewer subjects and teach them far better. (394)

The next best thing to being wise oneself is to live in a circle of those who are. (524)

Mere change is not growth.  Growth is the synthesis of change and continuity, and where there is no continuity there is no growth. (649)

I take it for certain that the physical satisfaction of homosexual desires is sin. This leaves the homosexual no worse off than any normal person who is, for whatever reason, prevented from marrying. Second, our speculations on the cause of the abnormality are not what matters and we must be content with ignorance. The disciples were not told why (in terms of efficient cause) the man was born blind (John 9:1-3): only the final cause, that the works of God should be made manifest in him. This suggests that in homosexuality, as in every other tribulation, those works can be made manifest: i.e. that every disability conceals a vocation, if only we can find it, which will ‘turn the necessity to glorious gain.’ Of course, the first step must be to accept any privations which, if so disabled, we can’t lawfully get. The homosexual has to accept sexual abstinence just as the poor man has to forego otherwise lawful pleasures because he would be unjust to his wife and children if he took them. That is merely a negative condition. What should the positive life of the homosexual be? I wish I had a letter which a pious male homosexual, now dead, once wrote to me—but of course it was the sort of letter one takes care to destroy. He believed that his necessity could be turned to spiritual gain: that there were certain kinds of sympathy and understanding, a certain social role which mere men and mere women could not give. (729)

The great thing, if one can, is to stop regarding all the unpleasant things as interruptions of one's "own,"or "real" life.  The truth is of course that what one calls the interruptions are precisely one's real life—the life God is sending one day by day; what one calls one's "real life" is a phantom of one's own imagination.  This at least is what I see at moments of insight: but it's hard to remember it all the time. (820)

We must think of the Son always, so to speak, streaming forth from the Father, like light from a lamp, or heat from a fire, or thoughts from a mind.  He is the self-expression of the Father—what the Father has to say.  And there never was a time when He was not saying it. (831)

As for my own work, I would not wish to deceive you with vain hope.  I am now in my fiftieth year.  I feel my zeal for writing, and whatever talent I originally possessed, to be decreasing; nor (I believe) do I please my readers as I used to.  I labour under many difficulties.  My house is unquiet and devastated by women's quarrels. ... My aged mother [his "adopted" mother Mrs. Janie Moore], worn out by long infirmity, is my daily care.  Pray for me, Father, that I ever bear in mind that profoundly true maxim:  "if thou wish to bring others peace, keep thyself in peace."  These things I write not as complaints but lest you should believe I am writing books.  If it should pleas God that I write more books, blessed be He.  If it shall please Him not, again, blessed be He. (919)

That was from a letter written in 1949.  The first of the Narnia books was published in 1950.  The rest of the series and a great many other books followed until his death.

My own work has suffered very much from the incurable intellectualism of my approach.  The simple, emotional appeal ("Come to Jesus") is still often successful.  But those who, like myself, lack the gift for making it, had better not attempt it. (918)

The trouble about writing satire is that the real world always anticipates you, and what were meant for exaggerations turn out to be nothing of the sort.  (937)

I had much rather know what I should feel like if I adopted the beliefs of Lucretius than how Lucretius would have felt if he had never entertained them.  The possible Lucretius in myself interests me more than the possible C. S. Lewis in Lucretius. ... You must, so far as in you lies, become an Achaean chief while reading Homer, a medieval knight while reading Malory, and an eighteenth century Londoner while reading Johnson.  Only thus will you be able to judge the work "in the same spirit that its author writ." (955)

Would that our modern writers felt the same way!  Especially in television series and books for young people, there's a deplorable tendency to set a story in past times but give the characters—or at least the good, wise, and appealing characters—21st century beliefs and attitudes.

One of the great uses of literary history is to keep on reminding us that while man is constantly acquiring new powers he is also constantly losing old ones. (969)

The true aim of literary studies is to lift the student out of his provincialism by making him "the spectator," if not of all, yet of much, "time and existence." The student, or even the schoolboy, who has been brought by good (and therefore mutually disagreeing) teachers to meet the past where alone the past still lives, is taken out of the narrowness of his own age and class into a more public world. ... "History" alone will not do, for it studies the past mainly in secondary authorities.  It is possible to "do History" for years without knowing at the end what it felt like to be an Anglo-Saxon eorl, a cavalier, and eighteenth-century country gentleman.  The gold behind the paper currency is to be found, almost exclusively, in literature. (971)

I know nothing that gives me such a feeling of spiritual healing, of being washed, as to read George MacDonald. (1033)

This is a point I would press on anyone dealing with the Middle Ages, that the first essential is to read the relevant classics over and over: the key to everything—allegory, courtly love, etc.—is there.  After that the two things to know really well are the Divine Comedy and the Romance of the Rose. The student who has really digested these (I don't claim to be such a person myself!) with good commentaries, and who also knows the Classics and the Bible (including the apocryphal New Testament) has the game in his hands and can defeat over and over again those who have simply burrowed in obscure parts of the actual middle ages. (1065)

Sure.  Way to make Medieval Studies more intimidating than graduate-level mathematics.

To abstain from reading—and ... from buying—a paper which you have once caught telling lies seems a very moderate form of asceticism.  Yet how few practice it. (1134)

What do people mean when they say "I am not afraid of God because I know He is good?" Have they never even been to a dentist? (1162)

A sick society must think much about politics, as a sick man must think much about his digestion. (1195)

Keep clear of psychiatrists unless you know that they are also Christians.  Otherwise they start with the assumption that your religion is an illusion and try to "cure" it: and this assumption they make not as professional psychologists but as amateur philosophers. (1257)

The idea that a Puritan was a repressed and repressive person would have astonished Sir Thomas More and Luther about equally. ... Puritan theology, so far from being grim and gloomy, seemed to More to err in the direction of fantastic optimism. (1260)

If we must find out what bad men are writing, and must therefore buy their papers, and therefore enable their papers to exist, who does not see that this supposed necessity of observing the evil is just what maintains the evil?  It may in general be dangerous to ignore an evil, but not if the evil is one that perishes by being ignored. (1271)

There are two ways of enjoying the past, as there are two ways of enjoying a foreign country. One man carries his Englishry abroad with him and brings it home unchanged. Wherever he goes he consorts with the other English tourists. By a good hotel he means one that is like an English hotel. He complains of the bad tea where he might have had excellent coffee....

But there is another sort of travelling and another sort of reading. You can eat the local food and drink the local wines, you can share the foreign life, you can begin to see the foreign country as it looks, not to the tourist, but to its inhabitants. You can come home modified, thinking and feeling as you did not think and feel before. So with the old literature. You can go beyond the first impression that a poem makes on your modern sensibility. By study of things outside the poem, by comparing it with other poems, by steeping yourself in the vanished period, you can then re-enter the poem with eyes more like those of the natives; now perhaps seeing that the associations you gave to the old words were false, that the real implications were different than you supposed. (1273)

If all men stood talking of their rights before they went up a mast or down a sewer or stoked a furnace or joined an army, we should all perish; nor while they talked of their rights would they learn to do these things.... The man preoccupied with his own rights is not only a disastrous, but a very unlovely object; indeed, one of the worst mischiefs we do by treating a man unjustly is that we force him to be thus preoccupied. (1302)

I believe that the men of this age ... think too much about the state of nations and the situation of the world. ... We are not kings, we are not senators.  Let us beware lest, while we torture ourselves in vain about the fate of Europe, we neglect either Verona [where Lewis's correspondent lived] or Oxford.  In the poor man who knocks at my door, in my ailing mother, in the young man who seeks my advice, the Lord Himself is present:  therefore let us wash His feet. (1344)

The convention was well understood, and very useful.  In such [poetical] works the gods are God incognito and everyone is in on the secret.  Paganism is the religion of poetry through which the author can express, at any moment, just so much or so little of his real religion as his art requires. (1368)

You write much about your own sins.  Beware lest humility should pass over into anxiety or sadness.  It is bidden us to "rejoice and always rejoice." Jesus has cancelled the handwriting which was against us.  Lift up our hearts! (1372)

Smoking is much harder [than drinking] to justify.  I'd like to give it up but I'd find this very hard, i.e. I can abstain, but I can't concentrate on anything else while abstaining—not smoking is a whole time job. (1403)

It is part of our spiritual law never to put survival first: not even the survival of our species.  We must resolutely train ourselves to feel that the survival of Man on this Earth, much more of our own nation or culture or class, is not worth having unless it can be had by honourable and merciful means.

The sacrifice is not so great as it seems.  Nothing is more likely to destroy a species or a nation than a determination to survive at all costs.  Those who care for something else more than civilization are the only people by whom civilization is at all likely to be preserved.  Those who want Heaven most have served Earth best.  Those who love Man less than God do most for Man. (1443)

Christians naturally think more often of what the world has inflicted on the saints, but the saints also inflict much on the world.  Mixed with the cry of martyrs, the cry of nature wounded by Grace also ascends—and presumably to heaven.  That cry has indeed been legitimized for all believers by the words of the Virgin Mother herself—"Son, why hast thou thus dealt with us?  Behold, thy father and I have sought thee sorrowing." (1440)

[Jonathan] Swift is hard ... to classify.  There is, to be sure, no doubt of his churchmanship, only of his Christianity, and this, of itself, is significant.

Some parts of Gulliver seem inconsistent with any religion—except perhaps Buddhism. ... And yet there is much to set on the other side.  His priestly duties were discharged with a fidelity rare in that age.  The ferocity of the later Gulliver all works up to that devastating attack on Pride which is more specifically Christian than any other piece of ethical writing in the century, if we except William Law. (1446 and 1447)

Two kinds of symbol must surely be distinguished.  The algebraical symbol comes naked into the world of mathematics and is clothed with value by its masters.  A poetic symbol—like the Rose, for Love, in Guillaume de Lorris—comes trailing clouds of glory from the real world, clouds whose shape and colour largely determine and explain its poetic use.  In an equation, x and y will do as well as a and b; but the Romance of the Rose could not, without loss, be re-written as the Romance of the Onion, and if a man did not see why, we could only send him back to the real world to study roses, onions, and love, all of them still untouched by poetry, still raw. (1448)

[The birth of the machines] is on a level with the change from stone to bronze, or from a pastoral to an agricultural economy.  It alters Man's place in nature. ... What concerns us ... is its psychological effect.  How has it come about that we use the highly emotive word "stagnation," with all its malodorous and malarial overtones, for what other ages would have called "permanence"? (1453)

I do however strongly object to the tyrannic and unscriptural insolence of anything that calls itself a Church and makes teetotalism a condition of membership.  Apart from the more serious objection (that Our Lord Himself turned water into wine and made wine the medium of the only rite He imposed on all His followers), it is so provincial. ... Don't they realize that Christianity arose in the Mediterranean world where, then as now, wine was as much part of the normal diet as bread?  It was the 17th Century Puritans who first made the universal into a rich man's luxury. (1455)

Theology teaches us what ends are desirable and what means are lawful, while Politics teaches what means are effective. (1460)

All the theology of the liberal type involves at some point—and often involves throughout—the claim that the real behaviour and purpose and teaching of Christ came very rapidly to be misunderstood and misrepresented by His followers, and has been recovered or exhumed only by modern scholars. ... The idea that any man or writer should be opaque to those who lived in the same culture, spoke the same language, shared the same habitual imagery and unconscious assumptions, and yet be transparent to those who have none of these advantages, is in my opinion preposterous. (1463)

Well, let's go on disagreeing but don't let us judge. What doesn't suit us may suit possible converts of a different type.  My model here is the behaviour of the congregation at a "Russian Orthodox" service, where some sit, some lie on their faces, some stand, some kneel, some walk about, and no one takes the slightest notice of what anyone else is doing. That is good sense, good manners, and good Christianity.  "Mind one's own business" is a good rule in religion as in other things. (1470)

Truth is always about something, but reality is that about which truth is. (1482)

A woman means by Unselfishness chiefly taking trouble for others; a man means not giving trouble to others. ... Thus while the woman thinks of doing good offices and the man of respecting other people's rights, each sex, without any obvious unreason, can and does regard the other as radically selfish. (1494)

C. S. Lewis's world, where women are concerned, was far from mine, or he wouldn't have made such a generalization.  I'm much more with the men on this one.

The child, both before and after birth, lives on its mother, just as the parasite lives on its host, the one being a horror, the other being the source of almost every natural goodness in the world.  It all depends upon what you do with this principle [of vicariousness]. (1497)

Once the old Christian idea of a total difference in kind between man and beast has been abandoned, then no argument for experiments on animals can be found which is not also an argument for experiments on inferior men.  If we cut up beasts simply because they cannot prevent us and because we are backing our own side in the struggle for existence, it is only logical to cut up imbeciles, criminals, enemies, or capitalists for the same reasons. (1505)

If war is ever lawful, then peace is sometimes sinful. (1509)

All killing is not murder any more than all sexual intercourse is adultery. (1514)

Nature gives most of her evidence in answer to the questions we ask her.  Here, as in the courts, the character of the evidence depends on the shape of the examination, and a good cross-examiner can do wonders.  He will not indeed elicit falsehoods from an honest witness.  But, in relation to the total truth in the witness's mind, the structure of the examination is like a stencil.  It determines how much of that total truth will appear and what pattern it will suggest.  (1551)

The following four quotations are from letters Lewis wrote to his friend Arthur Greeves, the first three when Lewis was 17 years old, the last when he was 31.

Whenever you are fed up with life, start writing: ink is the great cure for all human ills, as I have found out long ago. (1552)

What you want is practice, practice, practice.  It doesn't matter what we write (at least this is my view) at our age, so long as we write continually as well as we can.  I feel that every time I write a page of prose or of verse, with real effort, even if it's thrown into the fire next minute, I am so much further on. (1554)

It is impossible to write one's best if nobody else ever has a look at the result. (1555)

I am sure that some are born to write as trees are born to bear leaves; for these, writing is a necessary mode of their own development.  If the impulse to write survives the hope of success, then one is among these.  If not, then the impulse was at best only pardonable vanity, and it will certainly disappear when the hope is withdrawn." (1556)

Returning to work on an interrupted story is not like returning to work on a scholarly article.  Facts, however long the scholar has left them untouched in his notebook, will still prove the same conclusions; he has only to start the engine running again.  But the story is an organism: it goes on surreptitiously growing or decaying while your back is turned.  If it decays, the resumption of work is like trying to coax back to life an almost extinguished fire, or to recapture the confidence of a shy animal which you had only partially tamed at your last visit. (1564)

G. K. Chesterton and C. S. Lewis: The Riddle of Joy edited by Michael H. Macdonald and Andrew A. Tadie (Eerdmans, 1989)

This is an eclectic set of papers from the 1987 Conference to Celebrate the Achievement of G. K. Chesterton and C. S. Lewis in Seattle. As such, its effect ranged from fascinating me with new information—not easy, since I've nearly finished my 50-book C. S. Lewis retrospective—to reminding me why in college I stayed as far away as possible from the humanities and social sciences, especially philosophy and psychology.

Here are the paper titles and authors, with a few quotations when appropriate.

Some Personal Angles on Chesterton and Lewis (Christopher Derrick)

My heart sings within me whenever my jet leaves Heathrow for Kennedy (or Seattle/Tacoma), and one of the factors that cause it to sing is the prospect of far better and livelier conversation than I can easily find in foggy old England, even when other things are equal. That's the good news. The bad news—if I may say so, and even if I may not—is that the American mind does so frequently offer the response of a mere partisan ("Which side are you on?") when the response of a philosopher might have been more interesting. (p. 10)

[Lewis] was often invited to this country but never came: he once told me that he looked upon every such possibility with horror. The fact is that he knew practically nothing about the United States. His idea of this country came partly from Hollywood and partly from stories of the American wilderness, and as he very seldom went to the movies, even Hollywood's version of America was very imperfectly familiar to him. For the rest, it's symptomatic that when declining one invitation to the United States, he said: "Oh what a pity. To think that I might as your guest have seen bears, beavers, Indians, mountains." (pp. 10-11)

[Chesterton] had a remarkable talent for being simultaneously wrong about all the detailed particulars and resoundingly right about the question centrally at issue. That doesn't bother his confirmed admirers: they make allowances for it instinctively. But in general, it's unwise for a controversial writer to give an impression that he doesn't know what he's talking about, even in small matters. (p. 12)

That doesn't surprise me a bit: Chesterton was a journalist. I've seen plenty of newspaper articles and other media stories about situations I know personally, and in my experience all journalists get the detailed particulars wrong even when they are right in the overall impression.

If some present-day writer becomes hampered by this terrible worldwide shortage of semicolons, it's because Chesterton used them all up. (p. 12)

Not to worry. No one but me seems to like semicolons these days.

Lewis [is] amazingly deep and wide in his understanding of the human mind and of human behavior, and—to an astonishing degree in one who married so late and so strangely—of the female mind and female behavior in particular. (p. 14)

WHAT? WHAT? If there's one thing I've gathered from my extensive reading of and about Lewis, it's the impression that he knew nothing, nothing at all, about the female mind. Not unless women were almost a different species back in the mid-20th century England. The fact that someone writing in 1987 can commend Lewis for his understanding of women I find rather scary.

It's one thing to restate the old faith so as to make it more easily understood; it's quite another thing to modify the faith so as to make it more easily acceptable. There's a great deal of that going on.

Chesterton, the Wards, the Sheeds, and the Catholic Revival (Richard L. Purtill)

The decline [of the Catholic revival] began, I believe, when Catholics joined the fight against racial injustice and began deferring, for the very best of motives, to the black leaders in the movement, letting them set tone and strategy. It was certainly a dilemma; to insist on their Catholic motivations and foundations for objecting to racial injustice might have seemed to others in the movement to be separatist or patronizing: "I will help you in your struggle, but on my own terms, not yours." To avoid this predicament seemed to be an obvious good, but it set a dangerous precedent. When Catholics began getting involved in other movements, such as the peace movement, they fell victim to a pattern which I will call the "more revolutionary than thou" syndrome, by which in any revolutionary movement the extremists tend to take over on the pretense that anyone who is not as extreme as they are is a traitor to the movement. (p. 28)

This is a crucial warning to the Church today. I know someone who had an important message, well-researched and thought through, on the relations between men and women in the Church. If she had stopped there, I'm convinced she would have made a great difference among a group of Christians who really needed to hear what she had to say. However, her increasing radicalization, not only on this but on other issues, cut her off from them. She even lost me, and I have deep personal reasons for wanting that message to succeed.

C. S. Lewis and C. S. Lewises (Walter Hooper)

Lewis never said that A Grief Observed was autobiography, and he told me that it was not. ... It has been only in the last few years that people have been saying that [it] should be read as straight autobiography. ... C. S. Lewis the Doubter is the product of those who, over the last few years, have been trotting out the doubting passages of A Grief Observed and insisting that they are autobiographical. It is an attempt to persuade readers that Joy's death destroyed Lewis's certainty about the Christian faith. ... That is humbug. ... William Nicholson, who wrote the script of the film Shadowlands ... found it convenient for Lewis to fall to pieces when Joy died. ... When that film was first shown on the BBC, he wrote a piece making it clear that not a word of the dialogue he gave his characters was historical. ... Such close friends of Lewis's as his brother, Austin Farrer, Owen Barfield, and his parish priest, Gather R. E. Head, did not find Lewis behaving in the manner described. (pp. 47-48)

There was a similar problem with Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer.  Despite Lewis's insistence that it was fiction, a vehicle for raising and discussing questions about prayer, it was hard to scotch the idea that these were real letters sent to a real person.

The Legendary Chesterton (Ian Boyd)

[Chesterton] was one of the liberals whom Orthodox Catholics feared, but he was also one of the Catholic Christians whom the liberals persecuted. In his own person he seemed to include a genial friendliness to apparently irreconcilably hostile points of view, and yet he also vigorously opposed any attempt to tone down or to compromise strongly held views. (p. 61)

The Prayer Life of C. S. Lewis (James M. Houston)

Never would [Lewis] recommend saying one's prayers last thing at night. "No one in his senses, if he has any power of ordering his own day, would reserve his chief prayers for bed-time—obviously the worst possible hour for any action which needs concentration."

[Quoting one of Lewis's letters] Oddly enough, the week-end journeys (to and from Cambridge) are no trouble at all. I find myself perfectly content in a slow train that crawls through green fields stopping at every station. Just because the service is slow and therefore in most people's eyes bad, these trains are almost empty—I get through a lot of reading and sometimes say my prayers. A solitary train journey I find quite excellent for this purpose. (p. 73)

Looking Backward: C. S. Lewis's Literary Achievement at Forty Years' Perspective (Thomas T. Howard)

Heaven knows, if I were running the world of graduate English studies, almost everything that is required reading nowadays would be destroyed in an immense book burning, and Lewis would be made required reading. (p. 91)

G. K. Chesterton and Max Beerbohm (William Blissett)

The Centrality of Perelandra to Lewis's Theology (Evan K. Gibson)

G. K. Chesterton, the Disreputable Victorian (Alzina Stone Dale)

Chesterton came to disbelieve in progress because "real development is not leaving things behind, as on a road, but drawing life from them, as from a root." (p. 146)

G. K. Chesterton and C. S. Lewis: The Men and Their Times (John David Burton)

[Quoting Lewis] I believe man is happier ... if he has a freeborn mind.... I doubt whether he can have this without economic independence, which the new society is abolishing. Economic independence allows an education not controlled by government, and in adult life it is the man who needs, and asks, nothing of Government who can criticise its acts and snap his fingers at its idealogy. (p. 167)

The Chesterbelloc and Modern Sociopolitical Criticism (Jay P. Corrin)

Regardless of how well planned and intelligently administered, Chesterton and Belloc were convinced that massive reforming schemes imposed from above via the engines of the state could never achieve lasting success. They insisted that lasting reform would need popular support, commitment to change among ordinary people being necessary from a moral and practical standpoint. Reform from above was wrong because it would stifle creativity and remove the common people from positions of responsibility for their own affairs. Initiating and carrying out reform from outside the community also would have an enervating effect on democracy itself, since the state would be taking the initiative in areas of local concern. Furthermore, collectivism contributed to the construction of big, bureaucratic government which could potentially exercise totalitarian control over its citizens. (p. 177)

For Chesterton, the state was no more than a human contrivance to protect the family as the most fundamental of social mechanisms, and, in his opinion, the integrity of this important vehicle of primary socialization could best be protected by the state's guarantee of private property, which Chesterton recognized as the mainspring of liberty and the source of creativity. (p. 178)

The major objectives of the Distributist movement were the restoration of self-sufficient agriculture based on small holdings, the revival of small businesses, and the transfer of management and ownership of industry to workers.

Long before 1945, Parliament had ceased to be the supreme governing body in Britain. It subordinated itself to the managerial powers of the state's bureaucratic apparatus. (p. 185)

The dilemma for Distributists was that they worked to maximize the individual's liberty, but the majority of people have persistently preferred the security of a fixed income, a guaranteed job, and health care to the risks associated with self-employment. (pp. 189-190)

Chesterton in Debate with Blatchford: The Development of a Controversialist (David J. Dooley)

C. S. Lewis: Some Keys to His Effectiveness (Lyle W. Dorsett)

The Sweet Grace of Reason: The Apologetics of G. K. Chesterton (Kent R. Hill)

[Quoting Chesterton] Thomas Aquinas understands what so many defenders of orthodoxy will not understand. It is no good to tell an atheist that he is an atheist; or to charge a denier of immortality with the infamy of denying it; or to imagine that one can force an opponent to admit he is wrong, by proving that he is wrong on somebody else's principles, but not on his own. ... We must either not argue with a man at all, or we must argue on his grounds and not ours. (p. 235)

[Quoting Chesterton] Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about. All democrats object to men being disqualified by the accident of birth. Democracy tells us not to neglect a good man's opinion, even if he is our groom; tradition asks us not to neglect a good man's opinion, even if he is our father. (p. 238)

C. S. Lewis's Argument from Desire (Peter J. Kreeft)

God can be avoided. All we need do is embrace "vanity of vanities" instead. It is a fool's bargain, of course: Everything is exchanged for Nothing—a trade even the Boston Red Sox are not fool enough to make. (p. 255)

Of course I had to look it up:  Yes, Peter Kreeft lives in Boston.

Derrida Meets Father Brown: Chestertonian "Deconstruction" and that Harlequin "Joy" (Janet Blumberg Knedlik)

I just have to say that this is the most bizarre of all the papers. The author is an English professor, which surprised me. I thought only philosophers were that detached from reality.

The Psychology of Conversion in Chesterton's and Lewis's Autobiographies (David Leigh)

This one isn't much better, but at least it's relatively short. The truth is, I found the last three papers difficult to get through.  Much of the book is worthwhile, however.

Surprised by Laughter: The Comic World of C. S. Lewis by Terry Lindvall (Thomas Nelson, 1996)

C. S. Lewis was right: it is almost always better to read what an author has written, rather than what someone else has written about an author. I'm not sure what I was expecting when I purchased Surprised by Laughter back in 1998, but I think I was disappointed early on: judging by an old bookmark, I think I never finished reading it.

This time I did, but it was rather a slog at times. I can tell that Dr. Lindvall knows a lot about Lewis and his works. But Surprised by Laughter reads like something an English professor might have written, and I never did like what English teachers had to say about books. Lindvall's writing is fine, though his style is not really to my liking, and there are far too many errors that should have been caught somewhere in the editing/proofreading process. But I think my greatest problem with the book is that there is too much Lindvall, and not enough Lewis.

Here are some examples that illustrate what I don't like about the author's way with words. I wish I knew enough about language and writing to express what it is that annoys me; I only know that it does.

The hoarse, dreadful laughter of those who see life as a fraud—who taste it and find it bitter—is a hollow, hopeless laughter. There were those who laughed at Jesus with scorn when He said that the girl was not dead, she was only sleeping, and would wake again. For them, the laughter of hope and joy is a mere illusion that evaporates like steam from a hot spring. Death is the futile end and the grave its grin, and grave laughter is silent, deadly silent. (p. 19)

The moment became a savoring of what the Germans call Das Erhabene, the instant of being moved and feeling pain in a positive way, of allowing the laughter and the tear to cohabit the tomb of the eye. (p. 62)

Aslan sings Narnia into existence, and throughout the Chronicles dancing erupts continually, like hiccups. (p. 83)

And here are a couple of proofreading errors that stood out:

[Lewis] once began in an address to theological students: "The proper study of shepherds is sheep, not (save accidentally) other shepherds. And woe to you if you evangelize." (p. 44)

I knew that could not have been right. And sure enough, thanks to Lindvall's habit of careful sourcing, I was able to look up the quote in Christian Reflections and confirm that, indeed, Lewis had said "woe to you if you do not evangelize." (emphasis mine)

[Quoting Lewis in Mere Christianity] It may be hard for an egg to turn into a bird: it would be a jolly sight harder for it to learn to fly while remaining in the egg. (p. 69)

This, too, grated like fingernails on a blackboard. The original—unless we are working from different editions of the book—is, "It may be hard for an egg to turn into a bird: it would be a jolly sight harder for it to learn to fly while remaining an egg. (emphasis mine). 

True, both these examples are minor, but they change the meaning of what Lewis said, in one case to its exact opposite.

Overall, I'd say, if you are at all like me, there's little point in reading Surprised by Laughter.  But if you are one of those who enjoys thinking like a teacher of English Lit, go for it.

Lewis also likens his division of comedy to his categories of religions and soups: the thick and the clear. The thick includes all humor that deals with the animal side of human nature—that which grows out of the earth and blood and sex of men and women. The clear, on the other hand, encompasses wit, the philosophical and the intellectual, the rational realm of human nature. True comedy, ideally, brings together both—the child and man, savage and citizen, head and belly. (pp 9-10)

Based not only on Lindvall's analysis, but on what I have learned through my reading of and about Lewis, I can tell one thing: Lewis and I do not share the same sense of humor. (Maybe that's because he had a sense of humour?) I'm all for what he calls the "clear," but rarely appreciate what I consider adolescent humor: slapstick, insult, mockery, and bawdy jokes. I'm sure I didn't even much like it when I was an adolescent.

[Quoting Lewis, from Letters of C. S. Lewis] The greatest pleasure that money can give us is to make it unnecessary to think about money. (p. 103)

Finding gems like this, from a Lewis book that I don't own and have not read, helps make reading Lindvall's book worthwhile.

In Lewis's school days, "the organised and compulsory games had ... banished the element of play from school life almost entirely. There was no time to play (in the proper sense of the word)." ... When games become professional, they become serious and cease really to be games at all. ...

After that experience, Lewis was able to detect this same warped "professionalism" in the use, for instance, of the word hiking and "its abuse for something so simple as going for a walk." To Lewis, this tendency to formalize the language of play was indicative of the professional's "passion for making specialized and self-conscious stunts out of activities which have hitherto been as ordinary as shaving or playing with the kitten." (pp. 153-154)

Certainly it was when sports became organized and structured in my own life that I was transformed from an always-active child—in constant motion during recess, and nearly every night till dark outside playing sports-like games of our own invention through the streets of our neighborhood—into one who loathes sports. Lewis doesn't mention music, but that, too, has become almost entirely professionalized. So many people walk around with someone else's music blasting in their ears, and so few people sing.

Lewis decried the fact that the BBC now paid professionals to play for an audience "the same games we used to play for ourselves as children." Fun, when mass-produced, is stripped of its vitality. Who knows? Soon there even may be a television channel devoted solely to playing games for us. (p 154)

I'm not sure what Lindvall is getting at here, since his "soon" had been around a long time when he wrote Surprised by Laughter—ESPN, for example, had been founded nearly 20 years earlier. But if he meant games as opposed to sports games, then The Poker Channel was a decade away. And now our TV shows even play video games for us.

In "The Perfect Game," [G. K.] Chesterton described a contest of croquet with a man named Parkinson who took the game too seriously:

"Oh, Parkinson, Parkinson! ... how far you really are from the pure love of the sport—you who can play. It is only we who play badly who love the Game itself. You love glory; you love applause; you love the earthquake voice of victory; you do not love croquet. You do not love croquet until you love being beaten at croquet." (p. 154, emphasis mine)

When Lewis was approached about going to study with a special tutor, he was asked, "Would he be happy with no companions of his age?" He responded in ecstatic relief:

"The mere thought 'Never, never, never, shall I have to play games again!' was enough to transport me. ... My heart laughed. Happy without other boys? Happy without toothache, without chilblains, happy without pebbles in my shoes. ... If you want to know how I felt, imagine your own feelings on waking one morning to find that income tax or unrequited love had vanished from the world." (p. 156)

Christianity frees us to have fun with the rest of life once our first duties are done. In fact, Lewis acknowledged, "there may seem to be an almost comic discrepancy" between the ultimate issues of our lives and the immediate tasks God gives us.... "Happy work is best done by the man who takes his long-term plans somewhat lightly and works from moment to moment 'as to the Lord.'" Placing our life under the infinite and inexorable claim of God's rule does not "exclude any of the ordinary human activities. St. Paul tells us to get on with our jobs. He even assumes that Christians may go to dinner parties, and what is more, dinner parties given by pagans. Our Lord attends a wedding, and provides miraculous wine." (p. 156)

Lewis argued that wit and humor can cloak what is right. They can fog or camouflage the moral thing to do. This doesn't mean, however, that the joke is not funny. The fact that it is funny diverts our attention away from the fact of its being wrong. Chesterton emphasized the same point in writing about a boy, who as a prank, painted a statue of a foreign general a vivid red.

"When some trick of this sort is played, the newspapers opposed to it always describe it as a 'senseless joke.' What is the good of saying that? Every joke is a senseless joke. A joke is by its nature a protest against sense. It is no good attacking nonsense for being successfully nonsensical. Of course it is nonsensical to paint a celebrated Italian General a bright red; it is as nonsensical as Alice in Wonderland. It is also, in my opinion, very nearly as funny. But the real answer to the affair is not to say that it is not funny, but to point out that it is wrong to spoil statues which belong to other people." (pp. 268-269, emphasis mine)

If one is to awaken audiences from the slumber of cold vulgarity, obscenity, and cruelty, one must awaken them into a sunshine of splendid hilarity. The right defense against mean humor and false sentiments is to inculcate good comedy and just sentiments. If one demon is chased out, and no good, holy, and happy spirit settles into that heart, seven more diabolical laughters will repossess. (p. 276)

Letters to an American Lady by C. S. Lewis, edited by Clyde S. Kilby (Eerdmans, 1967)

Whoever this American lady was—she is known, but preferred to remain anonymous—she was more prescient than most of us, having had the sense to save much if not all of her voluminous correspondence with C. S. Lewis between the years of 1950 and 1963. Lewis apparently did not return the favor, so the conversation is one-sided, though his responses give enough clues to make sense of them all. She also had the sense to donate the letters to the Wheaton College library, which made them available for this compilation.

There is nothing here than contradicts anything about the character of Lewis as revealed in his own published works, but the nature of the medium provides a different perspective, hence the large number of sticky notes bristling from this small (128 pages) publication.

I believe that, in the present divided state of Christendom, those who are at the heart of each division are all closer to one another than those who are at the fringes. I would even carry this beyond the borders of Christianity: how much more one has in common with a real Jew or Muslim than with a wretched, liberalising, occidentalised specimen of the same categories. (pp. 11-12)

Why does our [college office] find full time work for a crowd of people in doing what the President of the College, 100 years ago, did in his spare time without a secretary and without a typewriter? (p. 16)

Did the reviewers mean "writes like a woman" to be dispraise? Are the poems of Sappho or, if it comes to that, the Magnificat, to be belittled on the same ground?

How little people know who think that holiness is dull. When one meets the real thing ... it is irresistible. If even 10% of the world's population had it, would not the whole world be converted and happy before a year's end?

I too think there is lots to be said for being no longer young; and I do most heartily agree that it is just as well to be past the age when one expects or desires to attract the other sex. It's natural enough in our species, as in others, that the young birds should show off their plumage—in the mating season. But the trouble in the modern world is that there's a tendency to rush all the birds on to that age as soon as possible and then keep them there as late as possible, thus losing all the real value of the other parts of life in a senseless, pitiful attempt to prolong what, after all, is neither its wisest, its happiest, nor most innocent period. I suspect merely commercial motives are behind it all: for it is at the showing-off age that birds of both sexes have least sales-resistance! (pp. 19-20, emphasis mine)

Even those tribulations which fall upon us by necessity, if embraced for Christ's sake, become as meritorious as voluntary sufferings and every missed meal can be converted into a fast if taken in the right way. (p. 20)

I'm a panic-y person about money myself (which is a most shameful confession and a thing dead against Our Lord's words) and poverty frightens me more than anything else except large spiders and the tops of cliffs. (p. 21)

The above is especially interesting in light of the fact that Lewis was as hopeless with finances as he was brilliant in his own fields, and it appears that only the merciful intervention of his friends (and his willingness to let them take over the books) kept poverty from coming upon him "like a robber, and want like an armed man." It's also worth noting that though his income was no doubt substantial, he gave away about two-thirds of it.

Anxiety is not only a pain which we must ask God to assuage but also a weakness we must ask Him to pardon. (p. 23)

Fear is horrid, but there's no reason to be ashamed of it. Our Lord was afraid (dreadfully so) in Gethsemane. I always cling to that as a very comforting fact. (p. 41)

The following quotation is out of order. It was actually marked by the last of my sticky notes. But it's not a happy way to end a post, and it seems to fit well here. I know full well what he means: When some terrible thing has happened, and sleep has given you a most blessed forgetfulness, and at first wakening you are still briefly in that blissful state, but then the tsunami of memory and reality strike and you drown all over again.

The dreadful thing, as you know, is the waking each morning—the moment at which it all flows back on one. (p. 88)

The only reason I'm not sick of all the stuff about [some unnamed issue that was in the news] is that I don't read it. I never read the papers. Why does anyone? They're nearly all lies, and one has to wade through such reams of verbiage and "write up" to find out even what they're saying. (p. 47, emphasis mine)

I can only imagine what he would say bout television and Internet news.

It's now 11:25. Not a stroke of my own work done and all the cream of the day gone. (p. 48)

Someone who understands my feelings about the morning hours!

The only thing one can usually change in one's situation is oneself. And yet one can't change that either—only ask Our Lord to do so, keeping on meanwhile with one's sacraments, prayers, and ordinary rule of life. One mustn't fuss too much about one's state. (p. 48)

The review is of course a tissue of muddles and direct falsehoods—I don't say "lies" because the people who write such things are not really capable of lying. I mean, to lie = to say what you know to be untrue. But to know this, and to have the very ideas of truth and falsehood in your head, presupposes a clarity of mind which they haven't got. To call them liars would be as undeserved a compliment as to say that a dog was bad at arithmetic. (p. 51)

The complexity—the close texture—of all the great events in the Christian year impresses me more and more. Each is a window opening on the total mystery. (p. 54)

Christian Reflections by C. S. Lewis, edited by Walter Hooper (Eerdmans, 1967)

This is another excellent collection of C. S. Lewis essays, none of which, I'm pretty sure, have I encountered in the other collections I've read.

I ran out of energy for quotations after the chapter on the Psalms, but it's all worth reading. Even "On Church Music," which reveals that Lewis's experience with music in church must have been as bizarre (from my point of view) as his experience with women. It is a tribute to both his humilty and his sense of justice that he manages to write intelligently and fairly about both subjects!

Table of Contents

Christianity and Literature
Christianity and Culture
Religion: Reality or Substitute?
On Ethics
De Futilitate
The Poison of Subjectivism
The Funeral of a Great Myth
On Church Music
Historicism
The Psalms
The Language of Religion
Petitionary Prayer: A Problem without an Answer
Modern Theology and Biblical Criticism
The Seeing Eye

From "Christianity and Culture"

The same process of attrition which empties good language of its virtue does, after all, empty bad language of much of its vice. ... "Bad language" in the popular sense, obscenity or profanity ... has its origin in sin, but to the individual speaker it may be mere meaningless noise. (p. 33)

Sigh. I try to remember that. It is difficult.

From "Religion: Reality or Substitute?"

When I was a boy, gramophone records were not nearly so good as they are now. In the old recording of an orchestral piece you could hardly hear the separate instruments at all, but only a single undifferentiated sound. That was the sort of music I grew up on. And when, at a somewhat later age, I began to hear real orchestras, I was actually disappointed with them, just because you didn't get that single sound. What one got in a concert room seemed to me to lack the unity I had grown to expect, to be not an orchestra but merely a number of individual musicians on the same platform. In fact, I felt it "wasn't the Real Thing." ... Owing to my musical miseducation the reality appeared to be a substitute and the substitute a reality. (p. 39)

From "De Futilitate"

No explanation of the problem of unjust suffering is given [in the Book of Job]: that it not the point of the poem. The point is that the man who accepts our ordinary standard of good and by it hotly criticizes divine justice receives the divine approval; the orthodox, pious people who palter with that standard in the attempt to justify God are condemned. Apparently the way to advance from our imperfect apprehension of justice to the absolute justice is not to throw our imperfect apprehensions aside but boldly to go on applying them. (p. 70, emphasis mine)

Having grasped the truth that our very condemnation of reality carries in its heart an unconscious act of allegiance to that same reality as the source of our moral standards, we then of course have to ask how this ultimate morality in the universe can be reconciled with the actual course of events. It is really the same sort of problem that meets us in science. The pell-mell of phenomena, as we first observe them, seems to be full of anomalies and irregularities; but being assured that reality is logical we go on framing and trying out hypotheses to show that the apparent irregularities are not really irregular at all. The history of science is the history of that process. The corresponding process whereby, having admitted that reality in the last resort must be moral, we attempt to explain evil, is the history of theology. (pp. 70-71, emphasis mine)

From "The Poison of Subjectivism"

A theology which goes about to represent our practical reason as radically unsound is heading for disaster.  If we once admit that what God means by "goodness" is sheerly different from what we judge to be good, there is no difference left between pure religion and devil worship. (p. 79, emphasis mine)

We must remind ourselves that Christian theology does not believe God to be a person. It believes Him to be such that in Him a trinity of persons is consistent with a unity of Deity. In that sense it believes Him to be something very different from a person, just as a cube, in which six squares are consistent with unity of the body, is different from a square.  (Flatlanders, attempting to imagine a cube, would either imagine the six squares coinciding, and thus destroy their distinctness, or else imagine them set out side by side, and thus destroy the unity. Our difficulties about the Trinity are of much the same kind.) (pp. 79-80)

From "The Funeral of a Great Myth"

If the cases of degeneration [in evolution] were kept in mind it would be impossible not to see that any given change in society is at least as likely to destroy the liberties and amenities we already have as to add new ones; that the danger of slipping back is at least as great as the chance of getting on; that a prudent society must spend at least as much energy on conserving what it has as on improvement. A clear knowledge of these truisms would be fatal both to the political Left and to the political Right of modern times. (pp. 92-93)

From "On Church Music"

The first thing I noted in this essay was that music seems to be about as foreign a landscape to Lewis as mathematics. The second was that I don't agree with him on everything. :) Nonetheless, his attitude of humility enables him to speak with wisdom. Some of it is applicable to our time. Sometimes the difference between our congregations and those of Lewis's time is stark.

What I, like many other laymen, chiefly desire in church are fewer, better, and shorter hymns; especially fewer. (p.96)

Well, he got his wish, sort of. Hymns are an endangered species, and so are choirs. But I doubt he'd be any happier with the modern pop music and "worship bands" that have taken their place.

The case for abolishing all Church Music whatever ... seems to me far stronger than the case for abolishing the difficult work of the trained choir and retaining the lusty roar of the congregation. Whatever doubts I feel about the spiritual value of the first I feel at least equally about the spiritual value of the second. (p. 96)

This, however, I believe he would still say:

The first and most solid conclusion which (for me) emerges is that both musical parties, the High Brows and the Low, assume far too easily the spiritual value of the music they want. Neither the greatest excellence of a trained performance from the choir, nor the heartiest and most enthusiastic bellowing from the pews, must be taken to signify that any specifically religious activity is going on. It may be so, or it may not. Yet the main sense of Christendom, reformed and unreformed, would be against us if we tried to banish music from the Church. (p. 96)

And this also:

There are two musical situations on which I think we can be confident that a blessing rests. One is where a priest or an organist, himself a man of trained and delicate taste, humbly and charitably sacrifices his (aesthetically right) desires and gives the people humbler and coarser fare than he would wish, in a belief (even, as it may be, the erroneous belief) that he can thus bring them to God. The other is where the stupid and unmusical layman humbly and patiently, and above all silently, listens to music which he cannot, or cannot fully, appreciate, in the belief that it somehow glorifies God, and that if it does not edify him this must be his own defect. Neither such a High Brow nor such a Low Brow can be far out of the way. To both, Church Music will have been a means of grace; not the music they have liked, but the music they have disliked. (pp. 96-97)

I do not think it can be the business of the Church greatly to cooperate with the modern State in appeasing inferiority complexes and encouraging the natural man's instinctive hatred of excellence. Democracy is all very well as a political device. It must not intrude into the spiritual, or even the aesthetic, world. (pp. 97-98)

An excellently performed piece of music, as a natural operation which reveals in a very high degree the peculiar powers given to man, will ... always glorify God whatever the intention of the performers may be. But that is a kind of glorifying which we share with "the dragons and great deeps," with the "frosts and snows." What is looked for in us, as men, is another kind of glorifying, which depends on intention. How easy or how hard it may be for a whole choir to preserve that intention through all the discussions and decisions, all the corrections and disappointments, all the temptations to pride, rivalry and ambition, which preceded the performance of a great work, I (naturally) do not know. But it is on the intention that all depends. When it succeeds, I think the performers are the most enviable of men: privileged while mortals to honour God like angels and, for a few golden moments, to see spirit and flesh, delight and labour, skill and worship, the natural and the supernatural, all fused into that unity they would have had before the Fall. But I must insist that no degree of excellence in the music, simply as music, can assure us that this paradisal state has been achieved. (p. 98)

From "Historicism"

I give the name Historicism to the belief that men can, by the use of their natural powers, discover an inner meaning in the historical process. ... The mark of the Historicist [as opposed to a historian] is that he tries to get from historical premises conclusions which are more than historical: conclusions metaphysical or theological or (to coin a word) atheo-logical. (p. 100)

Historicism exists on many levels. The lowest form of it is ... the doctrine that our calamities (or more often our neighbours' calamities) are "judgements"; which here means divine condemnations or punishments. This sort of Historicism sometimes endeavours to support itself by the authority of the Old Testament. Some people even talk as if it were the peculiar mark of the Hebrew prophets to interpret history in this way. To that I have two replies. Firstly, the Scriptures come before me as a book claiming divine inspirtaion. I am not prepared to argue with the prophets. But if any man thinks that because God was pleased to reveal certain calamities as "judgements" to certain chosen persons, he is therefore entitled to generalize and read all calamities in the same way, I submit that this is a non sequitur. ... Secondly, we must insist that such an interpretation of history was not the characteristic of ancient Hebrew religion, not the thing which sets it apart and makes it uniquely valuable. On the contrary, this is precisely what it shares with popular Paganism. To attribute calamity to the offended gods and therefore to seek out and punish the offender, is the most natural thing in the world and therefore the world-wide method. ... The distinctive thing, the precious peculiarity, of Scripture is the series of divine rebuffs which this naïve and spontaneous type of Historicism there receives: in the whole course of Jewish history, in the Book of Job, in Isaiah's suffering servant (liii), in Our Lord's answers about the disaster at Siloam (Luke xxiii, 4) and the man born blind (John ix, 13). If this sort of Historicism survives, it survives in spite of Christianity. ... We must guard against the emotional overtones of a phrase like "the judgement of history." It might lure us into the vulgarest of all vulgar errors, that of idolizing as the goddess History what manlier ages belaboured as the strumpet Fortune. That would sink us below the Christian, or even the best Pagan, level. The very Vikings and Stoics knew better. (pp. 101-102)

Each of us finds that in his own life every moment of time is completely filled. He is bombarded every second by sensations, emotions, thoughts, which he cannot attend to for multitude, and nine-tenths of which he must simply ignore. A single second of lived time contains more than can be recorded. And every second of past time has been like that for every man that ever lived. (p. 107)

Finally, someone has expressed what life is like in my brain. I'm told that, contrary to what Lewis believes, this is not the case for everyone. I can't imagine it.

From "The Psalms"

We ought to read the psalms that curse the oppressor; read them with fear. Who knows what imprecations of the same sort have been uttered against ourselves? What prayers have Red men, and Black, and Brown and Yellow, sent up against us to their gods or sometimes to God Himself? All over the earth the White Man's offence "smells to heaven": massacres, broken treaties, theft, kidnappings, enslavement, deportation, floggings, lynchings, beatings-up, rape, insult, mockery, and odious hypocrisy make up that smell. But the thing comes nearer than that. Those of us who have little authority, who have few people at our mercy, may be thankful. But how if one is an officer in the army (or perhaps, worse, an N.C.O.) a hospital matron? a magistrate? a prison-warden? a school prefect? a trade-union official? a Boss of any sort? in a word, anyone who cannot be "answered back"? It is hard enough, even with the best will in the world, to be just. It is hard, under the pressure of haste, uneasiness, ill-temper, self-complacency, and conceit, even to continue intending justice. Power corrupts: the "insolence of office" will creep in. We see it so clearly in our superiors; it is unlikely that our inferiors see it in us? How many of those who have been over us did not sometimes (perhaps often) need our forgiveness? Be sure that we likewise need the forgiveness of those that are under us. (pp. 119-120)

It is from this point of view that the Magnificat is terrifying. If there are two things in the Bible which should make our blood run cold, it is one; the other is that phrase in Revelation, "The wrath of the lamb." If there is not mildness in the Virgin Mother, if even the lamb, the helpless thing that bleats and has its throat cut, is not the symbol of the harmless, where shall we turn? The resemblance between the magnificat and traditional Hebrew poetry ... is no mere literary curiosity. There is, of course, a difference. There are no cursings here, no hatred, no self-righteousness. Instead, there is mere statement. He has scattered the proud, cast down the mighty, sent the rich empty away. ... Once more we have the treble voice, a girl's voice, announcing without sin that the sinful prayers of her ancestors do not remain entirely unheard; and doing this, not indeed with fierce exultation, yet—who can mistake the tone?—in a calm and terrible gladness. (pp. 120-121)

Christians are unhappily divided about the kind of honour in which the Mother of the Lord should be held, but there is one truth about which no doubt seems admissible. If we believe in the Virgin Birth and if we believe in Our Lord's human nature, psychological as well as physical ... we must also believe in a human heredity for that human nature. There is only one source for it (though in that source all the true Israel is summed up). If there is an iron element in Jesus may we not without irreverence guess whence, humanly speaking, it came? Did neighbours say, in His boyhood, "He's His Mother's Son"? (p. 121)

After reading the Occasional CEO's post on Moxie (My favorite line? "Moxie is the durian of carbonated drinks."), I was inspired to write about my favorite New England carbonated drink, Undina Birch Beer from Higganum, Connecticut. I'm not generally a fan of carbonated drinks, nor of alcohol for that matter, but this white birch beer, with its 1% alcohol content, was exceptional. And nothing like the darker birch beers I had tasted in other parts of the country.

This Haddam Historical Society webpage has a small section, "Granite Rock Springs/Undina Soda," on the Undina Beverage Company and their white birch beer. 

In the 1870’s Otto Carlson started making commercial root beer and birch beer in Swede Hill (upper part of Christian Hill Road) in Higganum. Carlson had a nostalgic longing for a drink remembered from his boyhood in Sweden, ‘bjord drick’ made from sap tapped from Sweden’s prolific birch trees. Not having enough birch trees around Higganum for commercial scale tapping, Otto developed a formula using cut up birch trees and steaming out their oils and juices. This became the commonly used commercial method of producing the popular birch beer.

Who knew white birch beer was Swedish? With all the Swedes on Porter's side of the family, it's no wonder the drink was a favorite. Sure seems a shame to cut up a tree to get it, though. Maybe we can have commerical birch groves for tapping like maple trees.

Needing a large quantity of water for his company, Carlson discovered a large bubbling spring in a cleft of granite rocks on the western slope of Ladder Pole Mountain in Higganum. This was “pure spring water,” above and beyond any possible contamination. Granite Rock Springs was 450 feet above sea level, up hill from Otto’s shop and overlooking the present Route 81. Otto Carlson named his beverage company UNDINA, meaning the Goddess of Water.

A write up on the spring notes that the “no part of its watershed is exposed to the seepage of cultivated fields or the impurities of inhabited areas. Its home is in the wild heart of nature and it gushes forth, a living, crystal clear stream of pure, soft water, a stream so large as to form the source of a mountain brook that is never dry but continually leaps and dances down the mountain-side until its waters finally join those of the Connecticut.

This delightful spring was used to make their white birch beer until 1980, when production outstripped its capacity. I could tell you that I noticed the difference, but that's probably stretching memory too far.

In the early 1900’s Undina was a popular brand of soda pop, with white birch beer its most popular flavor. Undina was distributed throughout Middlesex County and other parts of Connecticut and upstate New York. ... In 1945 Undina Beverage Company was purchased by Carl Anderson of Higganum and Eric Johnson, both of whom also remembered the cool refreshing ‘bjord drick’ in Sweden and took pride in maintaining production of the white clear drink.

Still Swedish!

By the 1950’s Undina Bottling Works was thriving and producing 500 cases of soda per day. It remained at the same site as Carlson’s original shop, although the extraction was no longer done there. In 1960 the company was purchased by Middletown residents Trean Neag and Fred Norton.

No longer Swedish except in origin. (Neag was Romanian; Norton I couldn't trace back far enough to find out.) The American Melting Pot in action!

The article doesn't mention when Undina closed. It was after our children were old enough to fall in love with their white birch beer, but much too long ago to pass that on to their own children. It sure was a sad day when they closed. I've heard that it lasted till Fred Norton retired; I'm sure the economics of running a small, local business in the days of soda behemoths contributed to its demise.

Perhaps now that microbreweries have become so popular and successful, someone will attempt to revive Undina. I hope so. You can still buy white birch beer if you try hard enough, and I'm grateful for that. But of course it's not the same.

We are now well into summer and the 4th of July was yesterday. The country turns 244 years old. We are half-way through a troubling year. Now is the time to look back on the history of this country of ours. It is substantially shorter than some and has been a beacon of liberty to the world for as long as it has existed. It has not always been perfect, but it is always there, shining among nations. This era has proven no different. We are still the freest nation in the world. There are issues, but it is a year for issues. The whole world is awash with issues. America’s garner attention, because the world is watching, seeing if they can emulate what we do. We also are slightly biased, being Americans ourselves. What we must remember is that we have many blessings, even in these days.

It is amazing how time bends. The horrible George Floyd killing happened on May 25th, 40 days ago. It feels like a lot longer than that, doesn’t it? Things finally seem to be winding down. I haven’t heard of any major riots for a week. A bad cultural trend has worked out in our favor in this event. People have shorter attention spans than ever before, and so this has run out of steam. The rioters’ attention spans have run out. A bad trend, but good results in this one incident. The bigger problem now is the resurgence of coronavirus, the natural result of having rioters loot and burn cities for three weeks.

The numbers for coronavirus have been astonishing, as it appears that we move in on new heights. Let’s look at the statistics. Florida is a good example. I think that most Floridians, based on statistics, would think that a time around April 10th was the worst time of the first big outbreak. On April 10th, 1141 new cases were recorded, along with 198 hospitalizations. Current statistics often disagree with each other, but we can get the general idea. Anywhere from around 7,000 to 10,000 people tested positive for coronavirus. It looks like the number of hospitalizations is in the mid 500s. Thus in April 17% of people who had coronavirus were in the hospital. Now, roughly 6% of people who get coronavirus are going to the hospital. I think this stems from the fact that a lot of the cases that are now coming up are young people, who should recover quicker and go to the hospital less often.  Coronavirus also has multiple strains. This is a reason why it takes so many different forms, some weaker, some stronger.  If there is a higher case to hospitalization ratio, it may be because it is less severe. I think that the rate of hospitalization is a clear statistic with reporting that is not going to change from the past. People will go to the hospital today at the same severity they went in April.  I think that is the best statistic to follow.

Remember that this is not the worst 4th of July America has faced.  In 1814, the British were moving on Washington, D.C. to burn it. In 1917, the U.S. was sending its young men to die for a European war. In 1942, we were at war again, against a more formidable foe, both in the Pacific and in Europe. Think of the Bicentennial, in 1976. An unelected president was in power after the Watergate scandal. We were in the throes of oil shortages. Times weren’t much better than they are now. And, of course, we must remember 1776, when the British were landing at Staten Island, preparing to take New York. We’ve been in worse spots than this. 

God in the Dock: Essays on Theology and Ethics by C. S. Lewis, edited by Walter Hooper (Eerdmans, 1970)

I found this to be one of the best collections of short Lewis essays I've read. It's a relatively long book (346 pages) but the individual essays are short and easily readable. It helps a lot that the editor has thoughtfully translated the many times Lewis—who seems to prefer to quote his sources in their original language—lapses into tongues.

(It occurs to me that I would have a lot more time to read if I didn't insist on writing about the books. On the bright side, however, writing up the quotations not only gives readers the flavor of a book—or at least the book as seen through my eyes—but also serves as a useful reference and memory aid for me.)

From "Dogma and the Universe"

Change is not progress unless the core remains unchanged. A small oak grows into a big oak: if it becomes a beech, that would not be growth, but mere change. (p. 45)

In the twinkling of an eye, in a time too small to be measured, and in any place, all that seems to divide us from God can flee away, vanish leaving us naked before Him ... as if nothing but He and I existed. And since that contact cannot be avoided for long, and since it means either bliss or horror, the business of life is to learn to like it. That is the first and great commandment. (p. 47)

From "Answers to Questions on Christianity"

If there is anything in the teaching of the New Testament which is in the nature of a command, it is that you are obliged to take the Sacrament, and you can't do it without going to Church. (p. 61)

From "Myth Became Fact"

God is more than a god, not less; Christ is more than Balder, not less. We must not be ashamed of the mythical radiance resting on our theology. We must not be nervous about "parallels" and "Pagan Christs": they ought to be there—it would be a stumbling block if they weren't. (p. 67)

From "Horrid Red Things"

All language, except about objects of sense, is metaphorical through and through. To call God a "Force" (that is, something like a wind or a dynamo) is as metaphorical as to call Him a Father or a King. On such matters we can make our language more polysyllabic and duller: we cannot make it more literal. (p. 71)

From "Christian Apologetics"

[Speaking to a group of Anglican priests and youth leaders} It seems to the layman that in the Church of England we often hear from our priests doctrine which is not Anglican Christianity. ... It is not, of course, for me to define to you what Anglican Christianity is. ... But I insist that wherever you draw the lines, bounding lines must exist, beyond which your doctrine will cease either to be Anglican or to be Christian: and I suggest also that the lines come a great deal sooner than many modern priests think. I think it is your duty to fix the lines clearly in your own minds: and if you wish to go beyond them you must change your profession. This is your duty not specially as Christians or as priests but as honest men. ... We never doubted that the unorthodox opinions were honestly held: what we complain of is your continuing your ministry after you have come to hold them. (pp. 89-90)

If one has to choose between reading the new books and reading the old, one must choose the old: not because they are necessarily better but because they contain precisely those truths of which our own age is neglectful. (p. 92)

What we want is not more little books about Christianity, but more little books by Christians on other subjects—with their Christianity latent. ... It is not the books written in direct defense of Materialism that make the modern man a materialist; it is the materialistic assumptions in all the other books. In the same way, it is not books on Christianity that will really trouble him. But he would be troubled if, whenever he wanted a cheap popular introduction to some science, the best work on the market was always by a Christian. (p. 93)

I find that the uneducated Englishman is an almost total sceptic about History. I had expected he would disbelieve the Gospels because they contain miracles: but he really disbelieves them because they deal with things that happened 2000 years ago. He would disbelieve equally in the battle of Actium if he heard of it. To those who have had our kind of education, his state of mind is very difficult to realize. To us the Present has always appeared as one section in a huge continuous process. In his mind the Present occupies almost the whole field of vision. Beyond it, isolated from it, and quite unimportant, is something called "The Old Days"—a small, comic jungle in which highwaymen, Queen Elizabeth, knights-in-armour etc. wander about. Then (strangest of all) beyond The Old Days comes a picture of "Primitive Man." He is "Science," not "History," and is therefore felt to be much more real than The Old Days. In other words, the Pre-historic is much more believed in than the Historic. (pp. 94-95)

It is useless to direct attention (1) To sins your audience do not commit, or (b) To things they do, but do not regard as sins. They are usually not drunkards. They are mostly fornicators, but then they do not feel fornication to be wrong. It is, therefore, useless to dwell on either of these subjects. (Now that contraceptives have removed the obviously uncharitable element in fornication I do not myself think we can expect people to recognize it as sin until they have accepted Christianity as a whole.) (p. 96)

We must learn the language of our audience. And let me say at the outset that it is no use at all laying down a priori what the "plain man" does or does not understand. You have to find out by experience. (p. 96)

Lewis does include a few examples of words, common to the society of his own peers, which have meanings quite different for the "average Joe." I think class language differences were much greater in England, and in Lewis's time, than they are in America now that television has largely homogenized our speech, but I have observed the problem even here and now. It is of no use—even worse than useless—for example, to use the word "capitalism" without a careful effort to make sure we and the people we are communicating with are working from even remotely similar definitions of the word. Very often we are not.

From "Work and Prayer"

Prayers are not always—in the crude, factual sense of the word—"granted." This is not because prayer is a weaker kind of causality, but because it is a stronger kind. When it "works" at all it works unlimited by space and time. That is why God has retained a discretionary power of granting or refusing it: except on that condition prayer would destroy us. (p. 107)

From "On the Transmission of Christianity"

I took so many quotations from this chapter that it has its own post.

From "The Founding of the Oxford Socratic Club"

In any fairly large and talkative community such as a university there is always the danger that those who think alike should gravitate together into coteries where they will henceforth encounter opposition only in the emasculated form of rumour that the outsiders say thus and thus. The absent are easily refuted, complacent dogmatism thrives, and differences of opinion are embittered by group hostility. Each group hears not the best, but the worst, that the other group can say. (p. 127)

From "The Trouble with "X"

It's not a question of God "sending" us to Hell. In each of us there is something growing up which will of itself be Hell unless it is nipped in the bud. (p. 155)

From "Dangers of National Repentance"

The first and fatal charm of national repentance is ... the encouragement it gives us to turn from the bitter task of repenting for our own sins to the congenial one of bewailing—but, first, of denouncing—the conduct of others. (p. 190)

The hard sayings of our Lord are wholesome to those only who find them hard. (p. 191)

From "On the Reading of Old Books"

There is a strange idea abroad that in every subject the ancient books should be read only by the professionals, and that the amateur should content himself with the modern books. Thus I have found as a tutor in English Literature that if the average student wants to find out something about Platonism, the very last thing he thinks of doing is to take a translation of Plato off the library shelf and read the Symposium. He would rather read some dreary modern book ten times as long, all about "isms"and influences and only once in twelve pages telling him what Plato actually said. ... It has always therefore been one of my main endeavours as a teacher to persuade the young that first-hand knowledge is not only more worth acquiring than second-hand knowledge, but is usually much easier and more delightful to acquire. (p. 200)

Naturally, since I myself am a writer, I do not wish the ordinary reader to read no modern books. But if he must read only the new or only the old, I would advise him to read the old. And I would give him this advice precisely because he is an amateur and therefore much less protected than the expert against the dangers of an exclusive contemporary diet. A new book is still on its trial and the amateur is not in a position to judge it. (p. 201)

Every age has its own outlook. It is specially good at seeing certain truths and specially liable to make certain mistakes. We all, therefore, need the books that will correct the characteristic mistakes of our own period. And that means the old books. ... We may be sure that the characteristic blindness of the twentieth century—the blindness about which posterity will ask, "But how could they have thought that?"—lies where we have never suspected it. ... None of us can fully escape this blindness, but we shall certainly increase it, and weaken our guard against it, if we read only modern books. Where they are true they will give us truths which we half knew already. Where they are false they will aggravate the error with which we are already dangerously ill. The only palliative is to keep the clean sea breeze of the centuries blowing through our minds, and this can be done only by reading old books. ... Two heads are better than one, not because either is infallible, but because they are unlikely to go wrong in the same direction. To be sure, the books of the future would be just as good a corrective as the books of the past, but unfortunately we cannot get at them. (p. 202)

We are all rightly distressed, and ashamed also, at the divisions of Christendom. But those who have always lived within the Christian fold may be too easily dispirited by them. They are bad, but such people do not know what it looks like from without. Seen from there, what is left intact, despite all the divisions, still appears (as it truly is) an immensely formidable unity. ... That unity any of us can find by going out of his own age. It is not enough, but it is more than you had thought till then. Once you are well soaked in it, if you then venture to speak, you will have an amusing experience. You will be thought Papist when you are actually reproducing Bunyan, a Pantheist when you are quoting Aquinas, and so forth. (p. 204)

From "The Decline of Religion"

The "decline of religion" [is] a very ambiguous phenomenon. One way of putting the truth would be that the religion which has declined was not Christianity. It was a vague Theism with a strong and virile ethical code, which, far from standing over against the "World," was absorbed into the whole fabric of English institutions and sentiment and therefore demanded church-going as (at best) a part of loyalty and good manners [or] (at worst) a proof of respectability. Hence a social pressure, like the withdrawal of the compulsion, does not create a new situation. The new freedom first allows accurate observations to be made. When no man goes to church except because he seeks Christ the number of actual believers can at last be discovered. It should be added that the new freedom was partly caused by the very conditions which it revealed. If the various anti-clerical and anti-theistic forces at work in the nineteenth century had had to attack a solid phalanx of radical Christians the story might have been different. But mere "religion"—"morality tinged with emotion," "what a man does with his solitude," "the religion of all good men"—has little power of resistance. It is not good at saying No. (pp 219-220)

We have not yet had (at least in junior Oxford) any really bitter opposition. But if we have many more successes, this will certainly appear. The enemy has not yet thought it worthwhile to fling his whole weight against us. But he soon will. This happens in the history of every Christian movement, beginning with the Ministry of Christ Himself. At first it is welcome to all who have no special reason for opposing it: at this stage he who is not against it is for it. What men notice is its difference from those aspects of the World which they already dislike. But later on, as the real meaning of the Christian claim becomes apparent, its demand for total surrender, the sheer chasm between Nature and Supernature, men are increasingly "offended." Dislike, terror, and finally hatred succeed; none who will not give it what it asks (and it asks all) can endure it; all who are not with it are against it. That is why we must cherish no picture of the present intellectual movement simply growing and spreading and finally reclaiming millions by sweet reasonableness. Long before it became as important as that the real opposition would have begun, and to be on the Christian side would be costing a man (at the least) his career. But remember, in England the opposition will quite likely be called Christianity (or Christo-democracy, or British Christianity, or something of that kind). I think—but how would I know?—that all is going reasonably well. But it is early days. Neither our armour nor our enemies' is yet engaged. Combatants always tend to imagine that the war is further on than it really is. (pp. 222-223)

From "God in the Dock"

The first thing I learned from addressing the R.A.F [Royal Air Force] was that I had been mistaken in thinking materialism to be our only considerable adversary. Among the English "Intelligentsia of the Proletariat," materialism is only one among many non-Christian creeds. ... Even where Christianity was professed, it was often much tainted with Pantheistic elements. Strict and well-informed Christian statements, when they occurred at all, usually came from Roman Catholics or from members of extreme Protestant sects (e.g. Baptists). My student audiences shared, in a less degree, the theological vagueness I found in the R.A.F., but among them the strict and well-informed statements came from Anglo-Catholics and Roman Catholics; seldom, if ever, from Dissenters. (pp. 240-241)

I wonder what my Baptist friends—such normal and reasonable people—think about being considered an "extreme Protestant sect"?

From "Cross-Examination"

Writing is like a "lust," or like "scratching when you itch." Writing comes as a result of a very strong impulse, and when it does come, I for one must get it out. (p. 258)

Yep.

The way for a person to develop a style is (a) to know exactly what he wants to say, and (b) to be sure he is saying exactly that. The reader, we must remember, does not start by knowing what we mean. If our words are ambiguous, our meaning will escape him. I sometimes think that writing is like driving sheep down a road. If there is any gate open to the left or the right the readers will most certainly go into it. (p. 263)

The world might stop in ten minutes; meanwhile, we are to go on doing our duty. The great thing is to be found at one's post as a child of God, living each day as though it were our last, but planning as though our world might last a hundred years.  (p. 266)

From "First and Second Things"

A foreign policy dominated by desire for peace is one of the many roads that lead to war. (p. 281)

From "The Sermon and the Lunch"

Must we not teach that if the home is to be a means of grace it must be a place of rules? There cannot be a common life without a regula. The alternative to rule is not freedom but the unconstitutional (and often unconscious) tyranny of the most selfish member. (p. 286)

From "The Humanitarian Theory of Punishment"

Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated, but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. (p. 292)

The practical problem of Christian politics is not that of drawing up schemes for a Christian society, but that of living as innocently as we can with unbelieving fellow-subjects under unbelieving rulers who will never be perfectly wise and good and who will sometimes be very wicked and very foolish. (p. 292)

From "Delinquents in the Snow"

According to the classical political theory of this country we surrendered our right of self-protection to the State on condition that the State would protect us. Roughly, you promised not to stab your daughter's murderer on the understanding that the State would catch him and hang him. Of course this was never true as a historical account of the genesis of the State. The power of the group over the individual is by nature unlimited and the individual submits because he has to. The State, under favourable conditions (they have ceased), by defining that power, limits it and gives the individual a little freedom.

But the classical theory morally grounds our obligation to civil obedience; explains why it is right (as well as unavoidable) to pay taxes, why it is wrong (as well as dangerous) to stab your daughter's murderer. At present the very uncomfortable position is this: the State protects us less because it is unwilling to protect us against criminals at home and manifestly grows less able to protect us against foreign enemies. At the same time it demands from us more and more. We seldom had fewer rights and liberties nor more burdens; and we get less security in return. While our obligations increase their moral ground is taken away.

And the question that torments me is how long flesh and blood will continue to endure it. There was even, not so long ago, a question whether they ought to. (p. 308)

What I fear ... is not, or not chiefly, sporadic outbreaks of individual vengeance. I am more afraid, our conditions being so like that of the South after the American Civil War, that some sort of Ku Klux Klan may appear and that this might eventually develop into something like a Right or Central revolution. For those who suffer are chiefly the provident, the resolute, the men who want to work, who have built up, in the face of implacable discouragement, some sort of life worth preserving and wish to preserve it. That most (by no means all) of them are "middle class" is not very relevant. They do not get their qualities from a class: they belong to that class because they have those qualities. For in a society like ours no stock which has diligence, forethought or talent, and is prepared to practise self-denial, is likely to remain proletarian for more than a generation. They are, in fact, the bearers of what little moral, intellectual, or economic vitality remains. They are not nonentities. There is a point at which their patience will snap. ...

Revolutions seldom cure the evil against which they are directed; they always beget a hundred others. Often they perpetuate the old evil under a new name. ... A Right or Central revolution would be as hypocritical, filthy and ferocious as any other. My fear is lest we should be making it more probable. (p. 309)

From "Is Progress Possible?"

As a Christian I take it for granted that human history will some day end; and I am offering Omniscience no advice as to the best date for that consummation. I am more concerned by what the [Atomic] Bomb is doing already.

One meets young people who make the threat of it a reason for poisoning every pleasure and evading every duty in the present. Didn't they know that, Bomb or no Bomb, all men die (many in horrible ways)? There's no good moping and sulking about it. (p. 312)

As a means to the ends I care for, [science] is neutral. We shall grow able to cure, and to produce, more diseases—bacterial war, not bombs, might ring down the curtain—to alleviate, and to inflict, more pains, to husband, or to waste, the resources of the planet more extensively. We can become either more beneficent or more mischievous. My guess is we shall do both: mending one thing and marring another, removing old miseries and producing new ones, safeguarding ourselves here and endangering ourselves there. (p. 312)

Two wars necessitated vast curtailments of liberty, and we have grown, though grumblingly, accustomed to our chains. The increasing complexity and precariousness of our economic life have forced Government to take over many spheres of activity once left to choice or chance. ... Classical political theory, with its Stoical, Christian, and juristic key-conceptions (natural law, the value of the individual, the rights of man), has died. The modern State exists not to protect our rights but to do us good or make us good—anyway, to do something to us or to make us something. Hence the new name "leaders" for those who were once "rulers. We are less their subjects than their wards, pupils, or domestic animals. There is nothing left of which we can say to them, "Mind your own business." Our whole lives are their business. (pp. 313-314)

I dread government in the name of science. That is how tyrannies come in. In every age the men who want us under their thumb, if they have any sense, will put forward the particular pretension which the hopes and fears of that age render most potent. They "cash in." It has been magic, it has been Christianity. Now it will certainly be science. Perhaps the real scientists may not think much of the tyrants' "science"—they didn't think much of Hitler's racial theories or Stalin's biology. But they can be muzzled. (p. 315)

The question about progress has become the question whether we can discover any way of submitting to the world-wide paternalism of a technocracy without losing all personal privacy and independence. Is there any possibility of getting the super Welfare State's honey and avoiding the sting?

Let us make no mistake about the sting. The Swedish sadness is only a foretaste. To live his life in his own way, to call his house his castle, to enjoy the fruits of his own labour, to educate his children as his conscience directs, to save for their prosperity after his death—these are wishes deeply ingrained in ... civilized man. Their realization is almost as necessary to our virtues as to our happiness. From their total frustration disastrous results both moral and psychological might follow. (p. 316, emphasis mine)

From "We Have No 'Right to Happiness'"

I believe—whatever one school of moralists may say—that we depend for a very great deal of our happiness or misery on circumstances outside all human control. A right to happiness doesn't, for me, make much more sense than a right to be six feet tall, or to have a millionaire for your father, or to get good weather whenever you want to have a picnic. (p. 318)

When I was a youngster, all the progressive people were saying, "Why all this prudery? Let us treat sex just as we treat all our other impulses." I was simple-minded enough to believe they meant what they said. I have since discovered that they meant exactly the opposite. They meant that sex was to be treated as no other impulse in our nature has ever been treated by civilized people. All the others, we admit, have to be bridled. Absolute obedience to your instinct for self-preservation is what we call cowardice; to your acquisitive impulse, avarice. Even sleep must be resisted if you're a sentry. But every unkindness and breach of faith seems to be condoned provided that the object aimed at is "four bare legs in a bed." (p. 320)

C. S. Lewis wrote the Preface to a book by B. G. Sandhurst entitled How Heathen is Britain? This essay has been republished as the thirteenth chapter of Lewis's book, God in the Dock, which I recently finished re-reading. I deemed the excerpts below too extensive for my review of that book, so here they are in their own post.

The essay, written in the mid-1940's, deals largely with the effect of state education on students' beliefs and attitudes about the Christian faith. A few quotes can't do justice to the logic of the argument, but should suffice to give the flavor. All bold emphasis is my own.

The content of, and the case for, Christianity, are not put before most schoolboys under the present system; ... when they are so put a majority find them acceptable. ... [These two facts] blow away a whole fog of "reasons for the decline of religion" which are often advanced and often believed. If we had noticed that the young men of the present day found it harder and harder to get the right answers to sums, we should consider that this had been adequately explained the moment we discovered that schools had for some years ceased to teach arithmetic. (p. 115)

The sources of unbelief among young people today do not lie in those young people. The outlook which they have—until they are taught better—is a backwash from an earlier period. It is nothing intrinsic to themselves which holds them back from the Faith. This very obvious fact—that each generation is taught by an earlier generation—must be kept very firmly in mind. (p. 116)

No generation can bequeath to its successor what it has not got. You may frame the syllabus as you please. But when you have planned and reported ad nauseam, if we are skeptical we shall teach only skepticism to our pupils, if fools only folly, if vulgar only vulgarity, if saints sanctity, if heroes heroism. ... Nothing which was not in the teachers can flow from them into the pupils. (p. 116)

A society which is predominantly Christian will propagate Christianity through its schools: one which is not, will not. All the ministries of education in the world cannot alter this law. We have, in the long run, little either to hope or fear from government.

The State may take education more and more firmly under its wing. I do not doubt that by so doing it can foster conformity, perhaps even servility, up to a point; the power of the State to deliberalize a profession is undoubtedly very great. But all the teaching must still be done by concrete human individuals. The State has to use the men who exist. Nay, as long as we remain a democracy, it is men who give the State its powers. And over these men, until all freedom is extinguished, the free winds of opinion blow. Their minds are formed by influences which government cannot control. And as they come to be, so will they teach. ... Let the abstract scheme of education be what it will: its actual operation will be what the men make it. ... Your "reform" may incommode and overwork them, but it will not radically alter the total effect of their teaching. (pp. 116-117)

Where the tide flows towards increasing State control, Christianity, with its claims in one way personal and in the other way ecumenical and both ways antithetical to omnicompetent government, must always in fact (though not for a long time yet in words) be treated as an enemy. Like learning, like the family, like any ancient and liberal profession, like the common law, it gives the individual a standing ground against the State. Hence Rousseau, the father of the totalitarians, said wisely enough, from his own point of view, of Christianity, Je ne connais rien de plus contraire à l'esprit social ("I know nothing more opposed to the social spirit"). ... Even if we were permitted to force a Christian curriculum on the existing schools with the existing teachers we should only be making masters hypocrites and hardening thereby the pupils' hearts. (p. 118)

I am speaking, of course, of large schools on which a secular character is already stamped. If any man, in some little corner out of the reach of the omnicompetent, can make, or preserve a really Christian school, that is another matter. His duty is plain. (p. 119)

What a society has, that, be sure, and nothing else, it will hand on to its young. The work is urgent, for men perish around us. But there is no need to be uneasy about the ultimate event. As long as Christians have children and non-Christians do not, one need have no anxiety for the next century. (p. 119)

Clearly Lewis did not anticipate that Christians would embrace the radical move to very small families nearly as much as secular society did. I'm thankful for those who are now reversing that trend. The idea is mocked today ("evangelism by procreation"), but Lewis—though he had a difficult home life and no biological children of his own—clearly recognized the life- and faith-affirming value of begetting and bearing children in Christian families.

As for the rest of the quotations: it is still true that democratic governments have much less control over what children think and learn than they would like. But the same is now also true of teachers. Lewis was thinking of the influence of teachers when he wrote,

Planning has no magic whereby it can elicit figs from thistles or choke-pears from vines. The rich, sappy, fruit-laden tree will bear sweetness and strength and spiritual health; the dry, prickly, withered tree will teach hate, jealousy, suspicion, and inferiority ... [no matter what] you tell it to teach. (pp. 117-118)

This is even more true, now, of the movies, music, and other media that are the very air our young people breathe (and rarely think about), and of the peer-oriented society we have bequeathed them. As I wrote in my review of Gordon Neufeld and Gabor Maté's book Hold On to Your Kids (a book I strongly recommend to all parents, grandparents, teachers, pastors, and anyone else who cares about children),

It is essential to the survival of a civilization that its culture be passed on from one generation to another. Today's children are not receiving culture, they are inventing it as they go along. We are into the third generation of this problem, and appear to be reaching a tipping point. If the idea of peer culture being more important to children than their family culture doesn't seem strange and wrong to us, it's because that's how we grew up, too.

In January of 2015 I began a walking tour. Not a literal tour, though the walking was real enough. I've been keeping track of the steps I take each day, and used that information to take a virtual walk from home here in Central Florida to our family in New Hampshire. That took most of a year to accomplish: I "arrived" on December 16. 2015.

From there I took on a bigger challenge: letting my steps take me on to our family in Switzerland. I picked up the pace and reached that goal in a mere year and a half, on June 30, 2017.

Finally, I turned around and made the long journey home. That was a tough one, but nearly three years later, on May 31, 2020, my weary feet crossed the threshold. Home at last! (And now I find I must remain here for an indeterminate time!)

I began keeping track of my walking in mid-July 2014. Since then I have walked over 10,000 miles, a figure I find totally astonishing, even if most of them were accomplished walking around and around our backyard pool.