Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Uncle Andrew Ketterley in Surprised by Joy?

May 23, 2012 by Brian

Still trying to find time to sit down an give that comparison of Surprised by Joy‘s description of “Chartres” and Lewis’s letters home I mentioned a post or two ago the attention it deserves.  In the meantime, I came across a passage in SBJ that seems to point to part of Lewis’s inspiration for that so unlovable uncle, Andrew Ketterley, in The Magician’s Nephew.  Jack is discussing “Miss C.” and her interest in the paranormal that she introduced to him while she was at Cherbourg:

…that started in me something with which, on and off, I have had plenty of trouble since–the desire for the preternatural, simply as such, the passion for the Occult. …  It is a spiritual lust; and like the lust of the body it has the fatal power of making everything else in the world seem uninteresting while it lasts.  It is probably this passion, more even than the desire for power, which makes magicians.

This does seem to compare well with Uncle Andrew’s discussion with Digory in his study after sending Polly to the Wood Between the Worlds.  There, Uncle Andrew is more interested in being known as a great sage, thinker, and wizard than he is in making anyone bow before him.  He seems to prefer mystical knowledge for its own sake, so much that he was willing to break his vows and even risk life and limb to acquire it.  Of course, once he had achieved greatness, no doubt he expected the whole bowing/homage bit would be sure to follow, but from the tone of the conversation, it seems that he thought it would come when people where awed by his presence, not because he forced them to against their will.  Here is one of the more recognizable bits of his talk:

“Rotten?” said Uncle Andrew with a puzzled look.  “Oh, I see you mean that little boys ought to keep their promises.  Very true:  most right and proper, I’m sure, and I’m very glad you have been taught to do it.  But of course you must understand that rules of that sort…can’t possibly be expected to apply to profound students and great thinkers and sages.  No Digory.  Men like me, who possess hidden wisdom, are freed from common rules just as we are cut off from common pleasures.  Ours, my boy, is a high and lonely destiny.”

Both books were published in 1955, though Lewis began writing The Magician’s Nephew back in 1949, not long after he had finished The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.  I don’t think it is much of a stretch to see him putting a bit of his own temptation to the dark side of the supernatural in what we see from Uncle Andrew.

Advertisement

Posted in C. S. Lewis, Cherbourg School, Occult, Surprised By Joy, The Magician's Nephew | Tagged , , , | Leave a Comment »

Meditations with C. S. Lewis: The Cosmic Grandfather

May 21, 2012 by Brian

C. S. Lewis, best known as the author of The Chronicles of Narnia, was also one of the most profound thinkers of twentieth century Christianity.  Along with J. R. R. Tolkien, he has inspired millions of people, include all of the authors at Lantern Hollow Press.  On Sundays we would like to take a moment to offer up a little Lewis for your consideration.

__________

We want not so much a Father but a grandfather in heaven, a God who said of anything we happened to like doing, ‘What does it matter so long as they are contented?’

–C. S. Lewis The Problem of Pain 

This is indeed symptomatic not only of modern Christianity, but of humanity in general.  From the very beginning of recorded history, we see that as a race we care first and foremost about getting what we want instead of doing what is right and best.  All too often, we project that demand directly back onto our expectations of God.

The examples are too many to examine in so short a space.  Consider only a sampling:

  • In the political realm, there is the battle between secular capitalism and socialism.  On the one hand, I demand the ability to work all things around me for my own good–even other people’s lives.  On the other, I demand that the government forcibly take from someone else to insure that I can have what I want.
  • In deism and atheism we see worldviews that demand people be absolute sovereign of their own destiny and morality.  Not only can I have what I want, but no one–least of all a non-existent or irrelevant God–has grounds to even express disapproval.  I am only held accountable to myself and a standard of natural law that rarely, if ever, enforces itself.
  • Moral relativism takes it even a step farther and declares that there is no standard by which what I want can be measured at all.  Since nothing is “right,” everything is.  It is, perhaps, the ultimate example of the grandfatherly indulgence that humanity has come to expect and demand.

The problem has only gotten worse since Lewis first wrote about it.  The idea of “grandfatherly Christianity” has spread like wildfire through western churches.  We long ago abandoned the idea of “meeting people in their need” (a good thing) to “giving people what they want” (a much more questionable proposition).  The end result is a castrated faith that, in many ways, bears a pale resemblance to what the world it imitates looked like five to ten years before.

And we wonder why people don’t respect the modern church?

__________

Interested in more about writing and reading from a Christian perspective?  Check out While We’re Paused–the official blog of Lantern Hollow Press.

Posted in Books, C. S. Lewis, Meditations, The Problem of Pain | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments »

Meditatons with C. S. Lewis: The Relief of Atheism

May 14, 2012 by Brian

And so, little by little, with fluctations which I cannot now trace, I became an apostate, dropping my faith with no sense of loss but with the greatest relief.

–C. S. Lewis Surprised By Joy

Lewis, as a former atheist himself, understood something about that particular belief system* that many life-long Christians completely fail to grasp:  for many people, atheism feels good.  Converting provides instant and complete relief from the massive weight of what it means to be a believer, not only in Christianity but in any of the major world religions.  All of them make claims on your life.  All of them require that you conform yourself, your beliefs, and your actions to a set of standards that you have no control over.  Atheism instantly releases you from all those obligations and, in fact, does so much more: It makes you the sovereign of your own little universe.  That can potentially provide an unparalleled sense of temporary security.  After all, who better to trust with your future than yourself?

This also helps explain why many atheists are so loudly sure of themselves to the point of epistemological absurdity–emotion often sits at the center of their position while their reason provides cover.  Lewis was one of these types.  He came to hate the forced prayers and unjustified legalism of what he had been taught about the Christian faith, and so when atheism presented itself, his emotions led him to grasp at it in intellectual desperation.

Lewis later rejected atheism–though he had to be dragged “kicking and screaming” back into belief.  For Lewis it was simply a issue of truth:  he still believed that there was an external world that he must conform to rather than vice versa.  Through his association with J. R. R. Tolkien and Owen Barfield, he was gradually led to accept proofs that Christianity was true, and therefore he changed his mind a result.

For me, there is another issue that speaks against atheism:  knowledge of myself.  While it sounds like a fine thing to be the sovereign of my own destiny, the more I understand about myself and how little I truly know, the less comfortable I am exercising the kinds of power atheism in theory would grant me over others.  I become even less pleased when I think about others having that kind of absolute authority over myself.  I would think that the Twentieth Century–and the bloodbath than certain atheists like Stalin and Mao made of it–bears out that concern.

That is one reason I am thankful that God created humanity able to both think and to believe.  Properly understood, the strength of each keeps the excess of the other in check.  In Lewis, we see a good example of both.

__________

*While atheism likes to style itself as a “lack of belief,” it is in fact its own separate religion. Modern atheism puts faith in what Lewis would later call the “Total System,” by which he meant the whole of the natural universe and the measurable phenomena which it produces. Since humanity is the ultimate expression of the intelligent side of the Total System, atheism usually (but not always) begins to treat the human race and its needs with an attitude that borders on mysticism.  This faith is often as blind as it is exclusive, and is also couched in a pseudo religious awe–remember, according to modern atheist thinkers “Forget Jesus.  Stars died so that you might live.”  In that sense, I see no particular difference between the basic fundamentals of atheistic belief and the “religions” they claim to critique.  Of course, this is too big a topic for a footnote!

Interested in more about writing and reading from a Christian perspective?  Check out While We’re Paused–the official blog of Lantern Hollow Press.

Posted in Atheism, C. S. Lewis, Meditations, Surprised By Joy | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment »

A Stark Contrast: Letters from Cherbourg School, 5 February 1911 to 5 May 1912

May 10, 2012 by Brian

I’ve decided that I will leave Spirits in Bondage aside for a while and try to get back into the basic process of working through Lewis’s letters.  I don’t think there will be a better (or more convenient) time for me to get back on the proverbial horse in the general process of reading through his letters.  Besides, if I use up all of my SIB content now what will I have to say later?  🙂

Picking back up from where I left off, Jack left Robert Capron’s Wynyard School and spent one term at Campbell College, not far from his home at Little Lea.  His father had moved Warnie to Malvern College and Jack to the nearby Cherbourg School.  At first glance in the letters it seems that Jack really doesn’t have much to say about his time at Cherbourg.  His is letters home from Cherbourg number, from start to finish, all of four (one letter per page).  In fact, on one page (Letters, vol. 1, 17), Hooper’s commentary (even in small print) takes up as much space as the letter itself.  From that, one might be tempted to think that Cherbourg didn’t matter that much.

An interior view of Chartres Cathedral. Impressive indeed.

And then we turn to Surprised By Joy.  There, Lewis calls Cherbourg “Chartres” after, as Hooper notes, “the most glorious cathedral in France” (Letters, vol. 1, 15).  In contrast to his few letters, he devotes two entire chapters (27 pages) to Cherbourg in SBJ.  That drastic of a discrepancy may indicate several possibilities, but I’ll mention two at the moment.  First and most obviously, it probably implies that he was simply too busy and excited with his self described “renaissance” to take the time to write.  Second and more seriously, it also likely marks a furtherance of the double life Jack  led.  He let his father see only one side of that life, while he lived the other with gusto.

This is a busy week, but I hope to reread these sections of SBJ and then take a fresh look at the Cherbourg letters.  I expect that some interesting comparisons will emerge.  I’ll have a new meditation post ready on Sunday and hope to post some more on this topic before next weekend.

Have a great week!

Posted in Albert Lewis, C. S. Lewis, Cherbourg School, Robert Capron, Surprised By Joy, Uncategorized, Warnie Lewis | Tagged , , , | Leave a Comment »

Meditations with C. S. Lewis: The Hard Truth of Eden

May 7, 2012 by Brian

We are all fallen creatures and all very hard to live with.

–C. S. Lewis Letters to an American Lady

Ouch.  Many times we forget to actually consider how theology actually impacts our lives.  That may be partially blamed on a modern church full of pastors who don’t really know much good theology let alone how to relate what it means to those of us sitting in the pews (or stackable padded chairs, if you prefer), but over all I think it is a problem of humanity in general.  We like to keep things compartmentalized, and we’re often quite good at it.  Lewis is referencing something that happened in Eden itself that has direct, uncomfortable consequences for understanding ourselves and the world around us.

The Bible teaches us that in the Garden of Eden, the first man, Adam, sinned and he took the first woman, Eve, with him.  As a direct result of that humanity has inherited a tendency towards choosing evil–called “the Fall” in theological terms.  Now, this idea has often fallen out of favor even among Christians these days (usually first among those who would prefer not to think it true of themselves), but I would argue that, whether or not you believe in Christianity, its reality is undeniable.  As I tell history classes, if you don’t understand this basic fact about humanity, you won’t be able to comprehend 90% of what has happened in world history.

Lewis’s quote brings this down to a very practical level.  As a fallen creature, I am hard to live with.  I have a tendency in my nature to choose things that can be called “selfish” with charity and “evil” in all honesty.  I would not like to live with myself–and yet I expect others to do so and be happy about it.

This, I think, reminds us of two very important things:  First, I see the need to understand myself and do everything I can, through Christ, to head off the tendencies I know for a fact are there.  I owe that as much to myself as I do others.  Second, when others offend and anger me, I am reminded, “there, but for the grace of God [and often even with it], go I.”  They are, in a very real way, mirrors of myself.  I should grant them as much reasonable leeway as I do myself.

And that should be a sobering thought.

__________

Interested in more about writing and reading from a Christian perspective?  Check out While We’re Paused–the official blog of Lantern Hollow Press.

Posted in C. S. Lewis, Meditations | Tagged , , | 1 Comment »

Meditations with C. S. Lewis: Narnia, rightly!

May 6, 2012 by Brian

C. S. Lewis, best known as the author of The Chronicles of Narnia, was also one of the most profound thinkers of twentieth century Christianity.  Along with J. R. R. Tolkien, he has inspired millions of people, include all of the authors at Lantern Hollow Press.  On Sundays we would like to take a moment to offer up a little Lewis for your consideration.

__________

There is a simmering debate into which every mere Lewisian descends at some point or other during the course of their life:  What is the “best” way to read the Chronicles of Narnia?  Should we read them in the order they were published or in chronological order according to the actual timeline of Narnia?  Lewis himself weighed in on that question in a letter to response to one of his young pen pals:

I think I agree with your order for reading the books [the chronological one] more than with your mother’s [who thought the published order was intentional].  The series was not planned beforehand as she thinks.  When I wrote The Lion I did not know I was going to write any more.  Then I wrote P. Caspian as a sequel and still didn’t think there would be any more, and when I had done The Voyage I felt quite sure it would be the last.  So perhaps it does not matter very much in which order anyone reads them.  I’m not even sure that all the others were written in the same order in which they were published.  I never keep notes on that sort of thing and never remember dates.

—Letters to Children

In the end, readers will likely glean something from either approach.  It is far easier to get a real sense of the growth and history of Narnia if we read chronologically, but also, perhaps, a unique insight into Lewis’s own mind and life to read them in the order they were published.

In either case, the journey is more than justified.  “Further up and further in!”

__________

Interested in more about writing and reading from a Christian perspective?  Check out While We’re Paused–the official blog of Lantern Hollow Press.

Posted in C. S. Lewis, Letters to Children, Meditations, The Chronicles of Narnia | Tagged , , , , , | 3 Comments »

“The green walls of that country far away”: Spirits in Bondage and the Magician’s Nephew

May 3, 2012 by Brian

Another interesting parallel between Spirits in Bondage  and Lewis’s more general biography actually tied into Narnia, particularly The Magician’s Nephew.  It is clear that Lewis did not consider his conversion grounds to discard the vividness of his earlier imagination.  In fact, he mined his own unChristian period for Truth much like he did other non-christian authors.

Consider his description of the “Land of the Lotus” from “XXV. Song of the Pilgrims”:

Land of the Lotus fallen from the sun,
Land of the Lake from whence all rivers run,
Land where the hope of all our dreams is won!

Shall we not somewhere see at close of day
The green walls of that country far away,
And hear the music of her fountains play?

[…]

But we shall wake again in gardens bright
Of green and gold for infinite delight,
Sleeping beneath the solemn mountains white,
While from the flowery copses still unseen
Sing out the crooning birds that ne’er have been
Touched by the hand of winter frore and lean;

This compares very favorably to what Polly, Digory, and Fledge encounter in the quest for the golden apple at the end of The Magician’s Nephew .  There, they find an isolated, magical garden set high on a huge green hill:

All round the top of the hill ran a high wall of green turf.  Inside the wall, trees were growing. Their branches hung out over the wall:  their leaves showed not only green but also blue and silver when the wind stirred them.  When the travelers reached the top they walked nearly all the way round it before they found the gates:  high gates of gold, fast shut, facing due east. […] [Digory] went in very solemnly, looking about him.  Everything was very quiet inside.  Even the fountain which rose near the middle of the garden made only the faintest sound.  The lovely smell was all around him:  it was a happy place but very serious.  (157-58)

Many of the same specific elements are the same–the green walls, the fountains, the colors green and gold, the brilliant rivers (referenced just a few pages earlier in The Magician’s Nephew).  Of course, the expression of the conception is separated by years, and so it isn’t an exact correspondence, but it is close enough to think that, perhaps, they are one and the same.

Perhaps what we’re seeing here is really Lewis’s fleshing out of the toy garden that his brother Warnie had brought into their nursery many years before.  In Surprised by Joy, he described the feeling evoked by that “biscuit tin filled with moss” as similar to “Milton’s ‘enormous bliss’ of Eden” (16).  That does seem to be what Lewis was attempted to capture in both his poem and his book.  Without more specific context, we’ll probably never know for sure.

Posted in Spirits in Bondage, Surprised By Joy, The Chronicles of Narnia, Warnie Lewis | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Meditations with C. S. Lewis: The Hand You’re Dealt

April 30, 2012 by Brian

You play the hand you’re dealt. I think the game’s worthwhile

–C. S. Lewis (allegedly) 

While this quote is widely attributed to Lewis on-line, I’ve yet to come across an actual reference that points to a place where I can verify that he really said it.*  Still, the advice is worthwhile, though we see it better modeled in what Lewis’s friend, J.R.R. Tolkien, wrote.

It is a simple fact that we all are gifted with varying levels of ability and circumstance.  There is no society–nor will there ever be in this fallen world–where everyone is born into complete and total equality in those terms (their ultimate value as a being is another matter–we are all already equal there).  Compared to some people (like Lewis himself intellectually or Bill Gates financially), I am not “gifted” in any meaningful sense of the term.  Compared to others, I am incredibly “gifted.” That isn’t intended to be humble or arrogant.  It is just a statement of fact.  The people above and below me in this pattern of ability in turn likely relate to others the way I relate to them.

Therefore, learning to take what we have been given by God in particular and life in general and make the most of it is often what separates people who are successes from those who are failures.  Unless I am greatly mistaken, I am not called to redefine generations of belief and literary genres as Lewis and Tolkien have.  I am called to do the most I can with what I have been given, to take it and use it to its uttermost in ways that I myself would not have dreamed possible before I undertook it.

We see this best in Frodo Baggins, of course.  Frodo was “just” a hobbit.  He was not tall or strong; no master of wizardry, warfare, or woodcraft.  He came from a people who had traditionally distinguished themselves for nothing in particular, beyond, perhaps, puttering away the days with pointless chatter about family trees and social relations.  Taking only what he had been given, Frodo brought the One Ring to Mordor, something even the Wise, Great, and Strong could not have done.  He did it himself, as himself.

Another problem comes when we judge ourselves by what someone else did with an entirely different hand of cards.  If I judge my success as an author by that of Lewis or Tolkien, then I am almost 100% guaranteed to come up a failure.  Thankfully, as Christ taught in the parable of the talent (Matt. 25:  14-30), if we are to live by the hand we are dealt, we will be judged by that hand as well.  In that sense, a poor man or woman who lives an honest life in poverty will be judged greater than a dishonest national leader.

I, for one, find that reassuring!

__________

*If so, it was out of character for him.  Lewis described himself as a terrible gambler in Surprised By Joy, and therefore he probably wouldn’t naturally revert to a card-paying metaphor.  The phrase is actually provably older than Lewis, though, and therefore perhaps he would have simply been repeating it.

Interested in more about writing and reading from a Christian perspective?  Check out While We’re Paused–the official blog of Lantern Hollow Press.

Posted in C. S. Lewis, Meditations | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment »

Dwarfs and “The Autumn Morning”

April 26, 2012 by Brian

Arthur Rackham Dwarfs

Arthur Rackham's "subliming" of dwarfs.

As I mentioned before, as I passed through Spirits in Bondage, I came across a number of very interesting parallels to points from Lewis’s biography–most of which I’ll share here as we move along.  I thought I might start with a poem that seems to be one of the better ones from the book:  “XXI. The Autumn Morning.”  There, Lewis is describing the magic of a stroll through the countryside in the late fall and the magical creatures one can encounter.  Interestingly, in Surprised by Joy, he references a very personal “encounter” with something similar.

First, the poem.  Pay particular attention to the last three stanzas:

See! the pale autumn dawn
Is faint, upon the lawn
That lies in powdered white
Of hoar-frost dight

And now from tree to tree
The ghostly mist we see
Hung like a silver pall
To hallow all.

It wreathes the burdened air
So strangely everywhere
That I could almost fear
This silence drear

Where no one song-bird sings
And dream that wizard things
Mighty for hate or love
Were close above.

White as the fog and fair
Drifting through the middle air
In magic dances dread
Over my head.

Yet these should know me too
Lover and bondman true,
One that has honoured well
The mystic spell

Of earth’s most solemn hours
Wherein the ancient powers
Of dryad, elf, or faun
Or leprechaun

Oft have their faces shown
To me that walked alone
Seashore or haunted fen
Or mountain glen

Wherefore I will not fear
To walk the woodlands sere
Into this autumn day
Far, far away.

There are two themes worthy of note for our current purposes:  First, the there is the idea of encountering some of the “ancient powers.”  The second is the fact that one need not be afraid of them. In Surprised by Joy, Lewis has the following to say:

Curiously enough it is at this time [while living at Campbell College], not earlier in my childhood, that I chiefly remember delighting in fairy tales.  I fell deeply under the spell of Dwarfs–the old bright-hooded, snowy-bearded dwarfs we had in those days before Arthur Rackham sublimed, or Walt Disney vulgarized, the earthmen.  I visualized them so intensely that I came to the very frontiers of hallucination; once, walking in the garden, I was for a second not quite sure that a little man had not run past me into the shrubbery.  I was faintly alarmed, but not like my night fears.  A fear that guarded the road to Faerie was one I could face.  No one is a coward on all points. (54-55)

It may well be that this chance “meeting” in the garden helped inspire his depiction of the sidhe in “The Autumn Morning.”  Both ideas are there–the basic encounter and the fact that, whatever the creature was, Lewis need not fear it.  I do wish that Jack had given us just a bit more detail in the Surprised by Joy account, though.  For instance, if we had know what time of year he saw the dwarf, we could perhaps make a stronger case. Too bad the dwarf didn’t sit down for a chat–I for one should like to know exactly how representative Trumpkin and Nikabrik were of the real thing!  🙂

Posted in C. S. Lewis, Spirits in Bondage, Surprised By Joy | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment »

Finished Spirits in Bondage!

April 23, 2012 by Brian

Just finished up Spirits in Bondage. In all fairness to Lewis I wanted to jump on-line and say that it was much improved as it progressed–though it may just be that my ability to appreciate it has improved instead. His “God and Satan” poems, which are the weakest, fade out and are replaced by much more engaging ones on faerie and the otherwold. These latter he seems to do more naturally and he succeeds in drawing you in more effectively.

I saw some definite parallels to some points in Lewis’s life and several of his later works. The strongest seem to be references to his friendship with Arthur Greaves and some relatively clear foreshadowing of Narnia. I’ll. Be posting on those over the next few weeks.

Ah! Post fodder! 🙂

Posted in C. S. Lewis, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | Leave a Comment »

« Newer Posts - Older Posts »