Further Up and Further In

During our final get-together we read selected readings from C.S. Lewis and commented on them. We picked excerpts from some of his writings, read them out-loud and commented on them, sort of a communal lectio divina. We chose the readings from a Lewis Yearly Reader according to the date of our birthdays, so the readings were rather haphazard. In retrospect it probably would have been better to have consciously selected from his wide range of writings; we hit upon some pretty meaty passages that forced us to chew a good bit to get to some understanding.

Keep in mind the vast range of his writings:

+Autobiography
+Children's Fiction
+Adult Fiction
+Nonfiction on Christian Topics
+Poetry
+Philosophy
+Literary History, Theory and Criticism
+Letters

Maybe one of the best resources for gaining a taste of all that broad range would be The Essential C.S. Lewis, edited by Lyle Dorsett.

From the Preface:

This anthology is designed to meet an ever-growing need. It is an introduction to C.S. Lewis and his writing for the person who hears him quoted and sees numerous references to his books. Such men and women are aware of Lewis's reputation and importance, they desire to become acquainted with his work, yet they have no idea where to begin. It is also for those who have read one or two of his books, but have no idea what to read next. Finally, this volume attempts to represent essential Lewis for those whose time or resources are limited.

That sounds like you and me!

Let me close with two of my favorite excerpts from The Chronicles of Narnia:

from The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe

"Aslan a man!" said Mr. Beaver sternly. "Certainly not. I tell you he is a King of the wood and the son of the great Emperor-Beyond-the-Sea. Don't you know who is the King of the Beasts? Aslan is a lion - the Lion, the great Lion."
"Ooh!" said Susan, "I'd thought he was a man. Is he - quite safe? I shall feel rather nervous about meeting a lion."
"That you will, dearie, and no mistake," said Mrs. Beaver, "if there's anyone who can appear before Aslan without their knees knocking, they're either braver than most or just silly."
"Then he isn't safe?" said Lucy.
"Safe?" said Mr. Beaver. "Don't you hear what Mrs. Beaver tells you? Who said anything about safe? 'Course he isn't safe. But he's good. He's the King, I tell you."

from The Last Battle

It was the Unicorn who summed up what everyone was feeling. He stamped his right fore-hoof on the ground and neighed and then cried:
"I have come home at last! This is my real country! I belong here. This is the land I have been looking for all my life, though I never knew it till now. The reason why we loved the old Narnia is it sometimes looked like this. Bree-hee-hee! Come further up, come further in!".....

.....And for us this is the end of all the stories, and we can most truly say that they all lived happily ever after. But for them it was only the beginning of the real story. All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth had read: which goes on for ever: in which every chapter is better than the one before.

And finally one last selection from Lewis himself, written a few weeks before he died, from Letters to Children:

The Kilns, Kiln Lane
Headington Quarry,
Oxford.
26th October 1963

Dear Ruth...,

Many thanks for your kind letter, and it was very good of you to write and tell me that you like my books; and what a very good letter you write for your age!
If you continue to love Jesus, nothing much can go wrong with you, and I hope you may always do so. I'm thankful that you realized [the] "hidden story" in the Narnian books. It is odd, children nearly always do, grown-ups hardly ever.
I'm afraid the Narnian series has come to an end, and am sorry to tell you that you can expect no more.
God bless you.

yours sincerely,
C.S. Lewis

First Sunday with C.S. Lewis

In our first meeting we simply went around the table and shared what each knew about C.S. Lewis and his writings. Experience ranged from having read him since childhood to having heard quotes in sermons but never having read him.

We then went through the range of his writings, passing around samples of his work that Brenda and I had brought with us, maybe 15-20 books in all. Everything from The Screwtape Letters to The Four Loves, with The Chronicles of Narnia and his science fiction trilogy, Perelandra, Out of the Silent Planet, and That Hideous Strength, in the middle.

I also shared some of the books that George McDonald had written: the many romance novels, highlighting (and strongly recommending) the Elizabeth Yates 'translation' of Sir Gibbie, 'translation' because they were all written in Scottish dialect for the most part, near impossible to understand for us, the 'unscotched'! And McDonald's phantastes which according to Lewis "baptized my imagination" and led him to repeatedly refer to McDonald as his literary "master" during the course of his life.

Finally I offered up a series of photos taken during my visit with Lisa, Summer 2007, to Lewis's home, The Kilns, just outside Oxford, England. Here they are if you care to look.



Our final meeting for the Summer Series takes place on Sunday, August 31. The plan right now is to practice 'lectio divina' on some selected passages from his varied work and share our thoughts with each other.

We will wrap up with a quick assessment of the series overall and whether and to what degree it has fulfilled its goal of helping us more fully live into our Vision and Mission here at St. Matthew's.

See you then!

C.S. Lewis and Liturgy

I believe—and it has been my experience—that ongoing participation in the liturgy is ongoing participation in the life of God and, as such, will lead, as C.S. Lewis envisions human transformation, to a life “dazzling, radiant . . . pulsating all through with . . . energy, joy, and wisdom and love as we cannot now imagine.”

I came across the above quote from C.S. Lewis as I read the introduction to a new book that I just learned about today: Beyond Smells and Bells: The Wonder and Power of Christian Liturgy, Mark Galli, p. 12. I have made the title a live link, so that if you are interested in reading a bit more, you can go to a twenty page excerpt by clicking the link.

See you Sunday!

Two Pearls

I just discovered two lovely pearls today. Addresses by Dr. Herbert McGonigle:

John Wesley's Vision of Authentic Christianity

and

"A Heart from Sin Set Free" - Holiness in the Hymns of Charles Wesley

These addresses were given at the 2007 New Life Conference in Rora, England. You may listen to them by clicking the titles above; they are live links.

I am listening to the one on Charles Wesley right now. What a delight! It does open with some off-key hymn singing for the first few minutes, but don't let that stumble you. You can fast forward if you wish...

He mentions that three major themes run through all of the hymns Charles Wesley wrote:

Universal Grace
The Witness of the Spirit
Christian Holiness

Moving On

So we had a good meeting last Sunday: spent some more time with two Charles Wesley hymns, Come, O Thou Traveller Unknown, and And Can It Be that I Should Gain; and learned a bit about John Wesley's heart being strangely warmed and his coming to a living faith unlike anything he had experienced until then.

We are now moving on to the 20th century and C.S. Lewis. There is such a wide variety of writings by this man and his influence is both so varied and wide-ranging that I have selected one thread to follow over the next two meetings.

One thread, two short phrases:

1) Further up and further in, a phrase the man himself coined somewhere in his writings, and
2) Much more, a phrase that Paul uses again and again in his letters to the churches.

It seems to me that just about anything I read by C.S. Lewis urges me on in both those ways, to realize how great, how vast, how wide and how deep is God and the reach of his redeeming love. He seems to be able to help us escape what so easily become flat and two dimensional, religious and spiritual words and ideas and doctrines, and understand them in their fulness, three-dimensional as it were.

And finally, once again revisiting the Benedictine model and the Wesleyan revival, two more passages I came across this week:

"Hospitality is one form of worship," the rabbis wrote. Benedictine spirituality takes this tendency seriously. The welcome at the door is not only loving - a telephone operator at a jail can do that. It is total, as well. Both the community and the abbot receive the guest. The message to the stranger is clear. Come right in and disturb our perfect lives. You are the Christ for us today....Benedict wants us to let down the barriers of our souls so that the God of the unexpected can come in.

pp. 140-141, The Rule of Benedict, Insight for the Ages, Joan Chittister

Francis Asbury, born to a poor family near Birmingham, England, and eventually the first bishop of the Methodist Church in America, had this to say, at the age of thirteen, after attending his first Methodist service:

This was not the Church but it was better. The people were so devout, men and women kneeling down, saying 'Amen.' Now, behold! They were singing hymns, sweet sound! Why, strange to tell! The preacher had no prayer book, and yet he prayed wonderfully! What was yet more extraordinary, the man took his text and had no sermon book: thought I, this is wonderful indeed! It is certainly a strange way, but the best way.

p 440, The One Year Christian History, E. Michael and Sharon Rusten

On the Last Day of July

Sad I am to see it go.
More than anything
I know:

School just around the bend;
Summer fun about to end.
They wait not for Labor Day.

This journey never ends;
Happy I am for friends.
They help me walk the Way.

Along with you my present-day friends, we have friends from days, years, centuries gone by: even Benedict of Nursia and the Wesley brothers. Today I came across something about Benedict, taken from the Prologue of Book Two of the Dialogues of St. Gregory the Great.

There was a man of venerable life, blessed by grace, and blessed in name, for he was called "Benedictus" or Benedict. From his younger years, he always had the mind of an old man; for his age was inferior to his virtue. All vain pleasure he despised, and though he was in the world, and might freely have enjoyed such commodities as it yields, yet he esteemed it and its vanities as nothing. more

After reading it I was reminded of a verse in one of Charles Wesley's hymns.

Dead to the world
And all its toys,
Its idle pomp and fading joys,
Be Thou alone my one desire.

See you this Sunday for another time together, and bit more on the Wesleys, before we move on to the 20th century and C.S. Lewis for our last two meetings. In short, we will meet three times in August: the 3rd, the 17th, the 31st.

A Marker Along the Way

I took a glance at Esther de Waal's Seeking God, The Way of St. Benedict, and thought this little comment from her Intro (p. 13) was a good reminder to all of us:

I have one hope in writing this book and that is that it may serve as a first step to an encounter with the Benedictine Way, for reading about it is no substitute for living it.

Reading about it is no substitute for living it....well, amen, and amen, to that, sister! In all our studies and all our reading, amen to that!