Archive for the 'C.S. Lewis' Category

47 years ago today Lewis, Kennedy, and Huxley all died

Published on November 23, 2010 in C.S. Lewis. 0 Comments

Justin Taylor points out:

C. S. Lewis—one week shy of his 65th birthday—collapsed and died at 5:30 PM (GMT) at his residence at The Kilns, outside Oxford, England.

Two hours later, U.S. President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, TX, pronounced dead at 1:21 PM (CST). He was only 46 years old.

Exactly six hours later, Aldous Huxley, the English writer and author of Brave New World, died at 5:21 PM (PST) in Los Angeles. He was 69.

The philosophical theologian Peter Kreeft wrote a book that imagines a dialogue between these three men in which they each represent their distinct worldviews shortly after their deaths.  It’s been years since I read it – - and Kreeft is very intellectual – - but, I remember that it was highly interesting.

Alan Jacobs: pockets and watches

Published on September 7, 2010 in C.S. Lewis and Recommended Reading. 1 Comment

Alan Jacobs explains why he prefers 5 pocket jeans and in the process shares memories to which many can relate.

I try to wear jeans or jeans-like trousers whenever possible — “five-pocket style,” it’s sometimes called, the fifth being the watch-pocket that’s tucked just above the right front one. Of course, such a pocket is in one sense as atavistic as an appendix, since no one carries pocket watches anymore, but in most of my jeans it serves as a nearly ideal receptacle for an iPhone. It was utterly ideal when I carried a smaller phone, but the iPhone sticks out a little too much, usually, and I am hoping that future trouser designers will take us smartphone users into account and (a) keep the fifth pocket where it is while (b) making it a little deeper.

The rest here.
I continue to recommend Jacobs’ writings including his excellent book on C.S.The Narnian: The Life and Imagination of C. S. Lewis

C.S. Lewis tips on writing

Published on July 13, 2010 in C.S. Lewis. 1 Comment

A post on Lewis on writing:

In 1959 an American schoolgirl wrote to C. S. Lewis asking him for advice on the craft of writing. He sent her a list of eight rules, and I add my own editorial comments to each of them.

1. Turn off the radio.

Today, writers also need to turn off the TV, the iPod or the music streaming over the Internet. I know that some writers claim that background  sounds enhances their creativity, but I don’t believe it for a minute, and apparently Lewis didn’t either. Writing is a solitary activity, where words are formed in a special space of the brain, and anything that competes for that space will result in a decrease in writing quality. Good writers are able to be alone with their thoughts and don’t need filler or distractions.

2. Read good books and avoid most magazines.

If you’re interested in writing good books then you need to read good books. Feed your mind with quality material and you will be more likely to be able to reproduce it. It is very difficult to find good Christian writing today; top selling books like The Shack are inferior in literary quality, so writers end up being torn between producing something good or something that sells well. Ideally, you will want to write something of literary quality that will be popular, and a path to that goal is reading quality books.  Style is important and it is best absorbed though books that have stood the test of time. The writings of C.S. Lewis are a good place to begin reading.

3. Write with the ear, not the eye. Make every sentence sound good.

This is Lewis’ most important rule in my view. There is a cadence to good writing and it is important that you discover it for yourself. This, of course, is another good reason for shutting off the radio, TV or music as you write. Experienced writers know that all sentences do not sound good in the beginning. It is best to get thoughts on paper first and then come back to the draft and tune each sentence.

4. Write only about things that interest you. If you have no interests, you won’t ever be a writer. . .

The rest here.

HT: Challies

Your longings for something more, indicate there’s something more

Published on February 18, 2010 in Apologetics and C.S. Lewis. 1 Comment

In his recent talk on C.S. Lewis, John Piper shared that both Tolkien and Lewis believed that the chord stories strike with the depths of our being is evidence that there is a true story.

Notice especially the bold.

One decisive influence was J. R. R. Tolkein, author of The Lord of the Rings. He argued like this, as Lewis did for the rest of his life: When this Joy—this stab of inconsolable longing—is awakened by certain powerful “myths” or “stories,” it is evidence that behind these myths there is a true Myth, a true Story that really exists, and that the reason the Joy is desirable and inconsolable is that it’s not the real thing. The True Myth, the Real Joy is the original shout, so to speak, and the stories and myths of human making are only echoes.

Tolkein pressed the analogous truth for Christianity. And Lewis did the same years later: “A man’s physical hunger does not prove that that man will get any bread: he may die of starvation on a raft in the Atlantic. But surely a man’s hunger does prove that he comes of a race which repairs its body by eating, and inhabits a world where eatable substances exist.” In other words, “If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probably explanation is that I was made for another world.”

Read the rest of Piper’s talk here.

See also, Without A Dark Introduction, There Are No Fairy Tales, C.S. Lewis posts

Sensucht for your Saturday

Published on January 16, 2010 in C.S. Lewis and Great Movie Scenes. 0 Comments

Doesn’t this scene capture a certain sensucht – a longing of the soul . . . what Lewis called “joy” in a technical sense . . . ?

Feeling a little down as the Season comes to an end?

Published on January 1, 2010 in C.S. Lewis, Chris Brauns Radio Spots, Depression and Disappointment. 2 Comments

I think the reason many are depressed over the holidays is because they do not know how to interpret the yearnings of their soul.

I don’t suppose that there is anyone who has not experienced yearnings or longings of the soul – Augustine said that he experienced them when he read Plato – -  he felt as though he was looking at a peaceful valley from a wooded ridge – -  a nostalgic feeling — that there was a beautiful place that he couldn’t quite access.

Lewis wrote a great deal about these longings and and called them “joy’ – -but, he didn’t mean simple happiness, but rather a yearning.

“The experience is one of intense longing. It is distinguished from other longings by two things. In the first place, though the sense of want is acute and even painful, yet the mere wanting is felt to be somehow a delight.” See Pilgrim’s Regress, page 7.

The Germans call this longing Sehnsucht (ZANE-zoocht): yearnings and searchings of the soul (Plantinga, Engaging God’s World, 4).

I haven’t heard Bono talk about it recently, but at least in the 80’s U2, “Still hadn’t found what they were looking for.”  That was a song about “sehnsucht.”

Plantinga (page 3) gave this example of sehnsucht, “certain people feel a kind of delicious sadness on what seems to be the last day of summer.”

The Stones called it “satisfaction” and from the sounds of things were very angry they couldn’t get it.

Most feel it at Christmas time, and my point here is that the reason so many are inconsolably depressed is because they don’t know what to do with Sehnsucht: the longings of the soul. 

Borrowing from Lewis, if you don’t know what I am talking about here – – move on to a different blog – – because this one isn’t going to make any sense.

But, if you do know what I mean by these intense longings – – then you will probably agree that more than any other season, at Christmas time we have a yearning for something wonderful that seems just beyond our reach – -

And, it is imperative that these yearnings be properly interpreted.   We must realize that these longings of our soul are a longing for God and they will be ultimately fulfilled only on the New Earth.

So many get in trouble at this time of the year, because they convince themselves that these can be fulfilled now – – and when the yearnings of their soul are not satisfied, then they find themselves mired in depression.

You want to see someone depressed (or sometimes mad)?  Find someone who thought that the longings of their soul would be satisfied by having Christmas done in a particular way – – then when they couldn’t get “any satisfaction,” they looked for someone or some circumstance to blame.

Here is what we must do.  Recognize the longings of the soul for what they are. . . they are not needs that can be met in Christmas 2007 by circumstances or relationships within Creation – – rather, they are signs pointing us to Christ – – as Yancey said, they are “Rumors of Another World.”

Lewis’ testimony is all about how he finally figured out sensucht. . . not that he ever got over it.

“I believe (if the thing were at all worth recording) that the stab, the old bittersweet, has come to me as often and as sharply since my conversion as at any time of my life whatever. But I now know that the experience, considered as a state of my own mind, had never had the kind of importance I once gave it. It was valuable only as a pointer to something other and outer. While that other was in doubt, the pointer naturally loomed large in my thoughts. When we are lost in the woods the sight of a signpost is a great matter. He who first sees it cries, “look!” The whole party gathers round and stares. But when we have found the road and are passing signposts every few miles, we shall not stop and stare. They will encourage us and we shall be grateful to the authority that sets them up. But we shall not stop and stare, or not much; not on this road, though their pillars are of silver and their lettering of gold. ‘We should be at Jerusalem.’ Not, of course, that I don’t catch myself stopping to stare at roadside objects of less importance.” C.S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy.

Know this at Christmas: Your soul will only find rest in Christ (Psalm 62); what you are longing for is God.  Savor him now – – and be excited on that morning when we will open the present of a New Creation and eternity in his presence (Revelation 21:3-5).

Reposted.

C.S. Lewis on “Shadow-Lands” and the beginning of the great holiday

Published on December 11, 2009 in C.S. Lewis and eschatology. 0 Comments

C.S. Lewis:

When Aslan said you could never go back to Narnia, he meant the Narnia you were thinking of.  But that was not the real Narnia.  That had a beginning and an end.  It was only a shadow or a copy of the real Narnia: just as our own world, England and all, is only a shadow or copy of something in Aslan’s real world.  You need not mourn over Narnia, Lucy.  All of the old Narnia that mattered, all the dear creatures, have been drawn into the real Narnia through the Door.  And of course it is different; as different as a real thing is from a shadow or as waking life is from a dream ….Your father and mother and all of you are – - as you used to call it in the Shadow-Lands – - dead.  The term is over: the holidays have begun.  The dream is ended: this is the morning (The Last Battle, 170).

I’m looking forward to it!  Revelation 21:3-5, Revelation 22:1-5.

It’s Saturday! Why not read something? Literature Enlarges Our Being

Published on September 19, 2009 in C.S. Lewis and Quotes. 1 Comment

C.S. Lewis:

“Literature enlarges our being by admitting us to experiences not our own. They may be beautiful, terrible, awe-inspiring, exhilarating, pathetic, comic, or merely piquant. Literature gives the entree to them all. Those of us who have been true readers all our life seldom realize the enormous extension of our being that we owe to authors. We realize it best when we talk with an unliterary friend. He may be full of goodness and good sense, but he inhabits a tiny word. In it, we should be suffocated. My own eyes are not enough for me. Even the eyes of all humanity are not enough. Very gladly would I learn what face things present to a mouse or bee.”

“In reading great literature I become a thousand men and yet remain myself. Like the night sky in a Greek poem, I see with a thousand eyes, but it is still I who see. Here, as in worship, in love, in moral action, and in knowing, I transcend myself; and am never more myself than when I do.”

“In the first place, the majority never read anything twice. The sure mark of an unliterary man is that he considers, ‘I’ve read already’ to a conclusive argument against reading a work. We have all known women who remembered a novel so dimly that they had to stand for half an hour in the library skimming through it before they were certain they once read it. But the moment they became certain, they rejected it immediately, like a burn out match, an old railway ticket, or yesterday’s paper; they already used. Those who read great works, on the other hand, will read the same work, ten, twenty or thirty times during the course of their life.”

The Paradox of Repentance

Published on August 2, 2009 in C.S. Lewis, Forgiveness and Quotes. 0 Comments

Cornelius Plantinga:

It’s hard to repent.  And while it’s hard enough to repent before a perfect God, it’s even harder to repent before an imperfect human being.  To admit that you have injured or neglected another person, then to go the person and say, “I’m sorry.  I’m ashamed.  Will you forgive me?”—to do this is mortifying.  It kills us to do it.  You need to be a big person to give it a serious try. That’s the paradox of repentance, says, C.S. Lewis.  Only a bad person needs to repent.  Only a good person can do it.  (Beyond Doubt: Faith-Building Devotions on Questions Christians Ask, 242).

Is God Shouting to You in This Way?

Published on March 20, 2009 in C.S. Lewis, Quotes and suffering. 1 Comment

C.S. Lewis wrote in The Problem of Pain,

God whispers to us in our pleasure, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains; it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.”

If God is shouting to you through pain, be sure to listen.