"To Come Awake...To Remain Awake" (C.S. Lewis)

"We may ignore, but we can nowhere evade, the presence of God. The world is crowded with God. God walks everywhere incognito. And the incognito is not always hard to penetrate. The real labor is to remember, to attend. In fact, to come awake. Still more, to remain awake."

(C.S. Lewis, Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly On Prayer)

25 Ways You Can Celebrate C.S. Lewis

It's the Literary Day of Days! That's what I call November 29, the day we celebrate the birthdays of Louisa May Alcott (1832), C.S. Lewis (1898), and Madeleine L'Engle (1918).

In keeping with a list of ways to celebrate Alcott, which I first posted four years ago, I thought I would have fun posting a similar list in honor of Lewis. With Alcott, all ideas were inspired by Little Women and Little Men. With Lewis, I decided to keep my inspiration to the Chronicles of Narnia, though I certainly could have widened the field through many of his other writings. Narnia felt like the best place to be today though.

So without further ado, here are 25 ways you can celebrate C.S. Lewis:

Explore an old house.

Quibble with your siblings (but make sure you make up).

Open a wardrobe door and peek inside. You never know…

Take a walk in the woods, preferably a snowy woods if you can find one. (Don a warm fur coat if you have one; let it remind you that you’re royalty.)

Lean up against a lamppost.

Carry someone’s packages.

Have a splendid tea. Or enjoy a fish and potatoes supper.

Learn how beavers build their dams.

Remember you’re a daughter of Eve or a son of Adam.

Stay on the lookout for Father Christmas.

Don’t forget to clean your sword.

Don’t be afraid to anoint someone with a bit of healing cordial.

Let your mind and heart linger on Aslan.

Let out a ROAR!

Romp with a cat.

Recall the beauties of a blossoming spring.

Hang out at a railway station. (Listen for the sound of a beautiful horn.)

Set up an archery contest with friends.

Enjoy time with a pet mouse. You might want to name him Reepicheep.

Imagine climbing inside a favorite painting.

Take a long boat trip.

Recite some of Aslan’s instructions from memory.

Gallop across a desert on a horse.

Plant an apple tree.

Climb a mountain – go further up and further in!

Reading Round-Up: Beginning of Advent

I haven't done a normal "reading round-up" post in so long. The beginning of Advent (my favorite season of the year in many ways) feels like a good time to do so, especially since my headaches, while still present, are getting better enough for me to be able to focus more on reading again. I'm still struggling with staying awake when reading (mostly because higher doses of pain meds make me sleepy) but I am finding I am able to read more again, and that's always a blessing.

Here's a peek at what I've been working on in recent days and weeks....

Andy Crouch's Strong and Weak is a beautiful little book that's all about what it means to flourish. Crouch (whom I've had the blessing of hearing speak) talks about embracing both our authority and vulnerability as image-bearers of God. Following in the footsteps of Jesus, who embraced both of those better than any human being before or since, we can find our way into true flourishing instead of falling into the traps and sins of exploiting others or withdrawing from suffering into safety. It's a really good book, one that I think has plenty of insights for anyone, but maybe especially for those who are leaders or serving in ministry.

I'm about half-way through Majestic is Your Name: A 40-Day Journey in the Company of Teresa of Avila. These "40 Day" journey books came out in the early 1990s, I think, and I don't know if they're all still in print, but I like the concept -- you get excerpts from the saint's writing, accompanied by daily Scripture readings and prayers. I am enjoying what I am learning from Teresa and feeling especially comforted by her picture of the soul as a castle. How good it is to remember that our hearts are throne rooms for Jesus!

I've been reading essays in C.S. Lewis' Mere Christianity with the sweet girl for school. It's been a while since I've revisited the book (such a classic) and I am loving doing so with her, especially as we talk our way through Lewis' ideas. I have her reading The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe for literature right now (she's heard it read more than once, but this is the first time she's really studied it as literature) and the essays are helping us think through some of Lewis' "big ideas" that come through in all his writing, children's stories as well as essays. We've talked about forgiveness, pride, and charity -- important virtues and vices.

November is a Lewisian month, so I am also enjoying Live Like a Narnian: Christian Discipleship in Lewis's Chronicles (bits of which I am assigning to the sweet girl as well). Some lovely essays here by Joe Rigney, who really loves and understands the Chronicles well.

I've discovered a new-to-me poet: Philip Terman. He's a Jewish writer that I stumbled across a few weeks ago on the Writer's Almanac. I put his collection Our Portion on hold, and it's been wonderful to have it on nights when I am too tired to keep my eyes open with longer work.

I actually finished a novel -- yes, I managed a bit of fluff! -- from the new book shelves at the library. I picked up Nina Stibbe's Paradise Lodge on a total whim, and I'm glad I did. It was funny and acerbic and incredibly British. It's set in the 1970s and stars Lizzie Vogel, a teenager whose first person narration was so funny and strong that it carried me through even though reading novels has not been easy for me for a while. I think I probably picked it up because I saw that Lizzie was learning about life working in a nursing home, something that sounded interesting to me (having grown up with my grandmother living with us for several years, and having spent a lot of volunteer hours in a nursing home as a young adult). Those scenes in the nursing home, as she works with the elderly, are some of the best -- the most homespun, poignant, and funniest.

Natalie Babbitt's recent passing (she was the author of the well-known middle grade novel Tuck Everlasting) sent me to the library shelves to read her first picture book: Nellie, A Cat on Her Own. A sweet fantasy with especially sweet pictures...and Babbitt herself was the illustrator. It was neat to find out that she was an accomplished artist as well as writer.

Other books I'm starting or hoping to start soon: Ann Voskamp's The Broken Way, a couple of older prayer resources -- Praying in Color and Prayer and Temperament, and Joanne Fluke's Christmas Caramel Murder (more fluff...you know how much I love to think about how I would re-write or edit Fluke's books!). I've got some Advent resources on hold, but I don't think they're in yet...though I need to re-check my library bag. I was so tired when we went to the library on Saturday that I might have missed some of what we picked up on hold.

It's good to be reading again.

Not Without Pain, But Without Stain

A few minutes ago I was scrolling through my FB feed and saw a quote posted by a friend that stopped me in my tracks. It was credited to my beloved C.S. Lewis (whose name all by itself is guaranteed to make me pause and read). Here is what it said:

"God, who foresaw your tribulation, has specially armed you to go through it, not without pain, but without stain."

Wow.

I was so blown away by this quote and the way it spoke into my life experiences this year that I immediately went to Google to discover if Lewis had actually said it, and if so, where. I know that sounds cynical, but I've run into wrongly attributed quotes on social media once too often to fully trust them, especially if it's printed as a meme (what I call a "sight-bite") and doesn't list a source. In this case, it also seemed to be missing a comma or two (it was; I've corrected it above) which didn't seem Lewis-like, but could obviously be a copy error.

Happily, this one does seem to be something Jack said. Thanks to this blog post by a scholarly looking blogger who seems to have actually read the quote in a book, I now know that Lewis wrote this in a letter to someone named Mrs. Lockley, and that it's in the collection Letters of C.S. Lewis on page 394.

I'm not surprised that Lewis wrote this in a letter. He often seemed at his warmest and wisest when he was giving counsel to a friend or to an admirer who had written him to share about their life and to ask him questions. This bit of counsel packs a wallop. It makes me wonder what precisely Mrs. Lockley was going through, given that Lewis hoped to strengthen her with the strong tonic of these words.

They comfort and strengthen me. I've been thinking lately about the fact that the cancer diagnosis that took me by such surprise did not take God by surprise. I was meditating just the other day on my favorite Jessica Powers poem, "The Cedar Tree" in which she writes:

In the beginning, in the unbeginning
of endlessness and of eternity,
God saw this tree.
He saw these cedar branches bending low
under the full exhaustion of the snow.
And since he set no wind of day to rising,
this burden of beauty and this burden of cold,
whether the wood breaks or the branches hold
must be of His devising.

****
And at the end of the poem, the final powerful lines:

I clasp this thought: from all eternity
God who is good looked down upon this tree
white in the weighted air,
and of another cedar reckoned well.
He knew how much each tree, each twig could bear.
He counted every snowflake as it fell.

****

(I've come close to putting the whole poem here, but have resisted the urge because of copyright. You can see the entire thing at the link I gave above. But there's enough here to chew on for quite a while.)

The poem is now dancing in my head with Lewis' more prosaic but still musically lilting advice that "God, who foresaw your tribulation, has specially armed you to go through it, not without pain, but without stain."

The pain is not always withheld. This can feel like an unfathomable mystery, especially when we have long held onto God and know him deeply for his goodness and loving-kindness. But in allowing the pain, in knowing it will come, even perhaps so heavy that it bends us with "a burden of cold," God does not leave us abandoned. He arms us to go through the tribulation and suffering, to go through the pain, but to do so without stain. What I read there is that suffering need not diminish our souls.  They may remain healthy, hearty, and whole even in the midst of the worst and heaviest times of tribulation. Times that may surprise us, but don't surprise God, because he knows what "each twig could bear" and even counts "every snowflake" as it falls (like he numbers the hairs on our heads!) sometimes in a wild or heavy blizzard of falling.

Did you notice that the "burden of cold" is simultaneously a "burden of beauty"? More mystery. More truth.

On Monday, I went to the cancer center for treatment but also for scans. I was supposed to have CT scans of my chest, abdomen, and pelvic area, as well as a full body bone scan. They ended up holding off on the bone scan, because the CT scans provided evidence, real evidence that I am experiencing some healing. There is still no sign of cancer in the bladder (the site of origin). There has been no spread to other organs (they've been particularly worried about the lungs). And in the secondary site of the cancer, the bone near my hip, the change since I've begun immunotherapy has been pretty dramatic. One of my wonderful oncologists, the one who bounded joyfully into the room to announce the good news, told me what a "big, ugly mess" that site was three months ago, with the largeness of the cancer and the erosion of the bone.

And in this Monday's scan? That area of the cancer had shrunk by 20-30 percent, and there is evidence of healing around the area, including new bone growth. New bone growth! I felt like Ezekiel was standing in the room with us -- along with Jesus, of course! As I wrote to friends later that day, I am being re-knit!

As we celebrated this good news with both of my amazing doctors and later with nurses and other caregivers, one of my doctors reminded me of the day back in the early spring when I had faced the decision they gave me to go ahead or not go ahead with a fourth round of chemotherapy. I was so exhausted that they felt they needed to give me that option. As my doctor said, the chemo treatments they gave me are some of the hardest, most intense that you can give. (I told her that she didn't need to convince me, I remember!) She added that in looking back on that day, she was so very glad that I had decided to go forward.

And so am I. I can hardly remember the thought or prayer processes that went through my mind and heart that day. I remember my head was bowed (partly with tiredness) as I thought through the possibility of not going on for a fourth round of the exhaustion and nausea. I had been hospitalized twice already during chemo treatments, and unbeknownst to me would be hospitalized yet again after making the decision to go on, and I'd already had at least one of my two blood transfusions. I had never in my life felt more bowed down with heaviness and weariness as I did that day.

I don't know if I remembered the Powers poem, but it's been a part of my heart for many years, so maybe somewhere it was whispering to me the truth that God knew my burden of cold, knew what each twig could bear, and was indeed counting every flake that fell. At any rate, I said yes to going forward, both to the remaining chemo and to the mostly as yet untried (for my kind of cancer) immunotherapy, and right now I am so grateful that I did. Thanks be to God, so far the branches under that full exhaustion of snow are holding.

"God, who foresaw your tribulation, has specially armed you to go through it, not without pain, but without stain."

That's a new line for my heart to hold onto, one I have a feeling I will need to remember again and again as I continue to go forward on this healing journey.

The Pevensies at Hogwarts

I feel nigh unto certain that someone has written about this already, but have you ever noticed how neatly you could divvy up the Pevensie children in The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe into houses at Hogwarts?

I was not feeling terribly well last night and picked up my well-worn copy of LWW just to let myself dip into a few of its friendly and familiar pages. And right there, on page three, we have this exchange among the four children who have just landed at the Professors' house:

"It's an owl," said Peter. "This is going to be a wonderful place for birds. I shall go to bed now. I say, let's go and explore to-morrow. You might find anything in a place like this. Did you see those mountains as we came along? And the woods? There might be eagles. There might be stags. There'll be hawks."

"Badgers!" said Lucy.

"Snakes!" said Edmund.

"Foxes!" said Susan.

Laying aside the fun possibility that the owl they hear hooting outside is delivering mail, don't you find their animal choices somewhat fascinating? In the world of Harry Potter, the animals associated with people are always "telling" about someone's character -- whether they are the animals associated with their Hogwarts house, or with their patronuses or an animagus form.

Peter's enthusiasm gives us a lot of animals to choose from, but I find it interesting that he ends with stags and hawks. The reference to stags here at the beginning of the story could be a pre-echo of the end of the tale, but as I think of it in connection to Harry Potter, I think of course of Prongs. Hawks are birds associated with heraldry -- not to mention hawks rhymes with Fawkes. Put that all together with Peter's kingly courage and the gift of the sword from Father Christmas, and I'm going to say the Sorting Hat would put him in Gryffindor.

Lucy's badger puts her firmly in Hufflepuff, which I find delightful and just right. Her loyalty to the truth, her faithfulness to Aslan, and her perseverance in the face of trials all seem to make this Hogwarts house just the right place for her.

"Snakes!" said Edmund...which is where I almost started laughing. Slytherin, anyone? Edmund, pre-Narnia and especially pre-encounter-with-Aslan, seems to fit the scheming, ambitious, smart-yet-insecure portrait of many a Slytherin. Post-Aslan, of course, he's a different sort of boy, and one can imagine him having more trouble fitting into Slytherin after that (one thinks of Jill Pole noting how much Eustace has changed when he goes back to school after his adventures in Narnia) but perhaps he could bring qualities that house sorely needs.

Susan's mention of foxes is a little more ambiguous, though I do think that foxes, as very smart animals, make her a potentially good fit for Ravenclaw. It's too bad that she didn't say eagle instead of Peter, or this whole scheme would feel almost tailor-made for the four houses.

It would be interesting to see a whole family sorted into different houses, unlike the Weasleys who are just Gryffindors through and through.

I feel half-way certain that I must've read something about this somewhere at some point, or it wouldn't have jumped off the page and bitten me like it did last night. So forgive me if the thoughts aren't entirely original. I just found it fun to contemplate story worlds colliding. I've written about that in other ways before, both here (where I find preludes to Rowling in E.M. Forster) and here (where I find them in Elizabeth Goudge). Hmm. And I've found bits of Tolkien in Rowling too. Once again, we realize just what a wonderful story soup Rowling has stirred up in Harry Potter.

Middle School Reading: Then and Now (Or Old Books and New)

An interesting post hit my FB page earlier today, with a link to this list of middle school reading in Minnesota today and Minnesota of 1908. (And all Betsy-Tacy fans will almost immediately think, "Margaret Ray would have been in middle school just a few years after this!")

The accompanying article, which I confess I only had time to skim, addressed the significant differences in the time periods, thematic elements, and reading levels addressed by the books in question. Under time period, she was chiefly pointing out that the 1908 list didn't hesitate to recommend reading to students that had been published 50-100 years before, while the current list mostly features contemporary work of the past 20 years.

While I think the article makes some valid and important points, especially on reading levels and on our current trepidation about giving young people older books, I think the discussion could be even more fruitful if we allowed ourselves to notice that at least some of the contemporary books appear to contain literature that provides some cultural perspective beyond Anglo-American. I agree with the writer of the article that we need to give our young people literature that helps them understand the foundation of the United States and of western civilization. (And I totally agree we need to give them language and sentence structures that challenge them.)

Without addressing the merits of the individual books in question on either list (some of which I know pretty well, and others I don't know at all) wouldn't it be wonderful if we could both give them the foundational literature of our country and culture and the more contemporary literature that tries to broaden our understanding of the complexities of American history, the riches of the American melting pot, and the responsibilities and joys of global citizenship? Just a thought, but wouldn't having the grounding in foundational American and English literature prepare them to better read (and appreciate in context) some of the literature that is being produced in the English-speaking world today?

Seems to me that we would all be well-served by C.S. Lewis' idea of varying our reading diet to include three old books for every new one (not a challenge I always meet, but one I appreciate). If you haven't ever read Lewis' Introduction to Athansius's On the Incarnation, where he explains this idea and the reasons behind it, it is well worth your time. In fact, the whole book is worth your time, and one of those delightful exercises in reading something "relatively new" (the Lewis introductory essay) and then something very old, the Athanasius work. As someone who has sometimes questioned my own ability to read, comprehend, and absorb older literature, I occasionally read Lewis to bolster my courage and enthusiasm. He helps me want to dive and dive deep, even if I end up getting in over my head. (Was it Karl Barth who once used the metaphor of surfing to describe reading theology? It sometimes feels just about that vigorous!)

Reading Round-Up: August (and the "Slim Little Volumes")

I’ve been reading a lot of small books lately. The smallness describes their physical size, not necessarily their content. It’s interesting how reviewers often pick up on a book’s diminutive size as if surprised that a book with relatively few pages and a thin spine can contain something of worth. During my ten years of regular reviewing, I know I sometimes lapsed into the phrase “slim little volume,” which I now recognize as lazy writing, a sort of shorthand to express surprise that writing gems can be found in such little packages. It’s a strange sort of assessment. All we have to do is look to the world of humanity to understand how strange it is, since sometimes absolute dynamos (William Wilberforce, Mother Theresa, just to name two) are small in stature.

It’s possible, I suppose, that I’m drifting to smaller books in my non-fiction reading time because in fiction-world, I am still enamored of the work of P.D. James. My twelve year old sometimes gets an almost pained look on her face when she sees me bring home another James novel from the library. “Another P.D. James?” she’ll say a little skeptically, or sometimes just “that’s a loooonng book.” They are long books, full of slow, detailed prose, but I’m enjoying them immensely. I haven’t raced through James’ canon the way I raced through Deborah Crombie’s a couple of years ago. I seem to need breaks, sometimes of a few months or more, between outings. But when I get onto a P.D. James kick, I usually don’t stop with one. And I’m starting to prematurely mourn that I only have a few volumes left before I run out. I’m up to The Murder Room, which means that her detective Adam Dalgleish has actually embarked upon a romance, something I’m still a bit ambivalent about.

Whether or not I am moving toward smaller books because my brain needs a break from hefty mystery novels, the fact remains that the books on my nightstand (or rather in the unwieldy floor pile by the bed) are all fairly short right now. I’ve mentioned two of them here recently: I’m re-reading Justo Gonzalez’ The Changing Shape of Church History and I’m reading Macrina Wiederkehr’s A Tree Full of Angels.

Both of these books take me back to earlier seasons in my life. Gonzalez is the author of The Story of Christianity, my first real foray into the study of church history seventeen years ago. I will always feel indebted that he was my introduction to the discipline; he writes beautiful, readable historical chronicles. I was introduced to Wiederkehr even longer ago, when I worked for the Cabrini sisters (it’s been over 21 years now since I started my four and a half year stint with Cabrini, and I’m still learning from the time I spent with them). I’m pretty sure most of the Wiederkehr I’ve read was in excerpt, brought to prayer rooms on photocopied pages – the sisters and lay people I worked with there always brought beautiful poems and snippets of prose to prayer and meditation time. I’ve had one line floating in my head for two decades now, which I’m fairly certain is Wiederkehr’s, though I’m not sure of the context: “This is a trust song, Lord. I am in your hands like clay.” (If anybody knows where she says this, I’d love to be reminded.)

I’m also reading – or maybe it’s re-reading, I’m not quite sure – C.S. Lewis’ The Weight of Glory. I would have told you that of the five essays included in that volume, I had definitely read two or maybe three of them. I go back to the title essay, “The Weight of Glory,” probably once a year. This summer I decided to move straight on from there and read everything else in order, and so far I’m remembering them all, so perhaps this is a re-read. No matter. Everything Lewis wrote is worth reading and then chewing on again.

Lewis is one of the few writers in my life that I actually sometimes wake up feeling I need to read. It happened again this morning. I find myself thinking “it sure would be nice to spend some time with Jack this morning,” and I reach for whatever book happens to be handy (I’m blessed we have a lot of his books on our shelves, and there are a lot more right down the road at the seminary library). This morning, Jack wanted to talk with me about “Learning in War-Time,” and I was happy to listen again. The slightly browning edges of the page and the note underneath the title “A sermon preached in the Church of St. Mary the Virgin, Oxford, Autumn, 1939,” gave me a moment’s pause, as it suddenly occurred to me that this voice that feels so fresh first spoke these words seventy-five years ago. It’s strange that a mere one-line description of the sermon itself could move me so much, but it somehow made the whole thing feel more rich and real as I sat there on my bed and the morning sun slanted silver through the blinds. As I read, I found myself feeling like I’d slipped into a pew of the church, right behind a lady wearing a WWII era hat. When I left the pages, no doubt I would find myself traipsing down an English road lined with trees whose leaves were turning red and gold. 
 
In the “slim little volume” category (sorry, I couldn’t resist), I’m also reading More Baths Less Talking, Nick Hornby’s witty collection of literary columns. This was a Christmas gift from my sister last year, and it’s been mostly sitting on my desk intriguing me with its title. Not long ago I found myself drawn to it on the new non-fiction shelves at the library (“what a funny title!”) and then realized that I’d thought that before and the book was at home on my desk. It’s my first dip into Hornby’s work and it’s delightful. He has a droll sense of humor and an insightful way of cutting right to the heart of a book and what it meant to him.

I’m re-reading Meindert DeJong’s The Wheel on the School. I decided recently that I wanted to get back to my literary devotional project, and saw that I had broken off (sometime last year) in the midst of ideas for a devotional based on this book. At that time it was fresh in my mind because I’d just read it aloud, for the second time, to the sweet girl. I thought I’d better give it a quick re-read to refresh my memory, since my notes were not entirely jogging my brain. But it’s such a beautiful story that reading it quickly feels almost impossible. I’m also having that interesting experience of realizing how different it is to read a book silently (and just to yourself) after having gotten to know it while reading it aloud.

My quest to read everything Gary D. Schmidt has written continues with his early novel Anson’s Way. I’m not very far into it yet, so I will probably take this one (along with the new P.D. James) to the peninsula when we head out on our few-day vacation soon.

Thoughts to Ponder: Writers for Life

One of the habits I’ve cultivated over the years is collecting quotes. I used to jot them 

down in my journal, and while I still do that sometimes, these days I am more likely to past them (or type them, depending on where I find them) into a document on my computer. I add scripture verses, snippets of poetry, prayers, and inspiring quotes from all sorts of sources, and the ultimate collection can get pretty long (last year’s ran 13 pages). So each year I start a fresh document, labeled with the new year, and begin again.

I thought that from time to time, I’d post one of my daybook quotes here. I kicked off 2014 with these words I so resonated with from C.S. Lewis scholar Don W. King:

“Each of us should find a writer

we can read for the rest of our lives.”

sweetclipart.com

Lewis may be the writer that is truest of for me. But also L’Engle, Tolkien, Austen. Sayers is moving toward that list as well. And Eugene Peterson. I go through seasons where I read them more or less, but I go back to all of these particular writers a lot, never feeling like I’ve exhausted what they have to say. They are also writers I love to read about – biography, literary analysis, appreciation.

With Lewis, I always feel especially glad that I have so much more of his work to read…I don’t think I could ever exhaust it. Even if I eventually read it all, it always bears repeat readings. That’s also true of Tolkien.

I’ve probably come closest to reading everything of L’Engle’s. In my late teens and early-mid twenties, I went out of my way to collect as much of her work as I could, even the harder to find things (and for at least a handful of Christmases, my family did an amazing job of giving me hard-to-find L’Engle books). She was hugely formative in my developing spiritual life, and while there are a few books of hers that I feel I’ve somewhat outgrown (not, by the way, her children’s books) many of them I still revisit often, and a few of them have deep places of honor in my mind and heart.

I’ve purposely not ever read all of Austen’s letters, her juvenalia, or her incomplete novel, mostly because I don’t want to say I’ve read everything she’s written! I’ve read most if not all of Sayers’ novels, and also Mind of the Maker, but only some of her drama and essays, and not many of her letters. Peterson is so prolific that I don’t think I could possibly exhaust all of his work, but I like knowing so much of it is there, and that I can always drink deep when I turn to him.

One reason why Lewis has moved to the top of my list over the years, besides the obvious richness to be found in his work, is that he is the kind of writer one really can visit in different seasons and moods. Narnia was my foray into Lewis’ world, and I entered it around the age of ten. But I still revisit Narnia, and I still find more there to learn and ponder and enjoy and love thirty-five years after I first read the books. They are perhaps richer for my having visited them so often, and richer still because I’ve now read so many others books by (and about) Lewis, including books it took me a while to be ready for. Essentially, he is not a writer I ever outgrow – he’s always somewhere I feel I need and want to be, saying something I need and want to hear, challenging me, delighting me, at different seasons and times in my life.

Is there a writer, or writers, that you feel you could read for the rest of your life?

Moveable Feasts and Holy Flexibility

I think this may have been the longest unintended hiatus I've ever taken from this blog. It's not been for lack of anything to say -- in fact, I've had ideas for probably a dozen posts during the past few weeks. It's just been a very busy season. Illness and travel colored the first part, and a great deal of work has colored the second. Not to mention entry into the wonderful Advent season, always a blessed time!

I was delighted that we got to travel to see family in Virginia for Thanksgiving, another very blessed time. However, it meant that I was without internet access for a few days (not a bad thing in and of itself) including on November 29, what I like to call the Literary Day of Days. Every year I try to celebrate the mutual birthdays of Louisa May Alcott, C.S. Lewis, and Madeleine L'Engle, three amazing writers who have influenced my life in some very deep ways. I find it beautifully serendipitous that they share a birth date. Though I was sorry to not be able to publicly celebrate the trio this year, it felt comforting to know that other people were. There was a lot of celebration around Lewis this year in particular because it was the 50th anniversary of his death (his feast day just a few days before his birthday) and that too felt comforting.

The church, in its wisdom, sometimes moves holy feasts out of practical necessity. I love that -- it reminds me that it's not the date in and of itself that is sacred, but the person or event we celebrate, and that can happen at any time. We can learn a lot from holy flexibility, even with our more "secular" feasts (though the older I get, the less I feel that anything worth celebrating with joy and gratitude to God is secular). I remembered that this year when our typical Thanksgiving plans had to change to accommodate the needs of our aging parents. The sweet girl, who struggles so mightily with change, briefly had a hard time with the notion that things were going to be "different" this year, but in the end, it all worked beautifully. We practiced holy flexibility (you're picturing monks doing yoga now, right?) and I think we were blessed for, by, and through it.

The Staying Power of Art

My husband brings home the most interesting books. This week it's Charles M. Knight: The Artist Who Saw Through Time.

You may think you don't know Knight, but if you're at least forty, you probably do -- even if not by name. Knight was the artist/naturalist who, for many years, was the "go-to" guy for artistic renderings of dinosaurs in museums and textbooks.

Although the jury is still out on what dinosaurs looked like/acted like (in recent years, there's been a switch to quicker moving avian-like as opposed to slower moving reptilian-like) it was Knight's imaginative renderings, based on fossil reconstructions and the scholarship of his day, that captured the public imagination for so many years. When I look at the paintings in this book, especially of his T-Rex and Brontosaurus, I harken back to elementary school...and I also think "yup...that's what's dinosaurs look like." Stephen J. Gould is referenced for saying that "although Knight never published original research in scientific journals, he was more influential in shaping our ideas about ancient extinct animals than any paleontologist who ever lived."

I found this buzzing around my brain this morning as I thought again about what I reflected on in my last post ("Feeling and Thinking"). The power of imaginative work that engages our senses as well as our minds is staggering. Work that captures our curiosity, makes us feel or ponder, has real longevity -- in our own lives and in the life of the culture. It's not that creative artists can't be scholarly -- many creative artists are also scholars, or are creating their works of art (paintings, songs, stories) as part of a responsive engagement to scholarship. But it's the stories/poems/songs/paintings that have the staying power, long after the scientific (or theological) journals are set aside.

For evidence of that, one need only turn to an imaginative storyteller like C.S. Lewis whose heart and imagination capturing work has phenomenal staying power. So does J.R.R. Tolkien's. The pictures these writers painted of a world invaded by grace have an ability to raise questions, stir eternal longings, and move people Godward. Their work lives on in a way that the work of academic theologians of the same era -- and there were some good ones -- simply can't. I'm not saying that good, theological scholars aren't necessary; I'm not even saying that either Lewis or Tolkien saw themselves as theologians. But they were actively engaged people of faith who poured their grace-steeped views of the world into their work, with the result that the gospel truth was so intricately and beautifully woven into their stories that people still see it and marvel and respond to the whole big picture (and sometimes without even seeing all the threads). 

One of the reasons I think it's so deeply necessary for Christians to engage in the arts (beyond the sheer joy of doing so, in response to our very creative God!) is that it's storied/poemed/sung/painted truth that has a lasting power in the shaping of the human soul and a lasting influence on the culture.

What He Said

I had planned to post a reflection for the second week of Advent, but a bout of flu interrupted. While I'm exhausted and recovering (this has been a doozy of an illness) I thought I'd post this tried and true thought from C.S. Lewis, whose thoughts on the importance of re-reading are just one of the many reasons I love him.

By the way, this is one of the memes making the round on Facebook right now, originally posted by Ignatius Press. They have a new and rather lovely looking blog up -- all about Lewis and Tolkien. You can find it here at the link. 

Happy Birthday, Louisa, Jack and Madeleine!

As I post every year on November 29, today is what I call the "literary day of days." It's the birthday of Louisa May Alcott (1832), C.S. Lewis (1898), and Madeleine L'Engle (1918) three of the most important writers of my heart.

I love that these three -- so different, yet each so wonderful -- share a birthday. It feels like lovely serendipity!

Just in time for her birthday, an official FB page in Madeleine's honor has been launched. It's called Tesser Well and they've been posting some wonderful tidbits this week, including a review of Leonard Marcus' new biography of Madeleine (which I've not yet read, but have on hold) and an article about the dedication today of St. John the Divine's library (where Madeleine was cathedral librarian for years) as a literary landmark. The page is definitely worth checking out. They've created a beautiful photo collage of various editions of A Wrinkle in Time, including many translated into languages besides English.

C.S. Lewis is being honored in a few newspapers who can't seem to resist quoting the eminently quotable Jack. Huffington Post has nine quotes in his honor, but the Christian Science Monitor has gone them one better and posted ten.

The Monitor, bless them, did ten quotes from Louisa in honor of the day too.

Wrinkle Read-Aloud

A momentous event at our house this week...we've begun reading A Wrinkle in Time during morning reading time.

It was such an important book to me when I was around eleven. Although I hadn't put a whole lot of thought into when to introduce it, I guess I always had "eleven" in the back of my mind as the magic number. I'm not sure I had thought of it as a read-aloud either, given the fact that when I first read it, I fell into it headfirst on my own steam. But then, nobody really read aloud to me when I was a child (at least not much, and not onto in later childhood).

If I had thought about it at all, I think I assumed I would likely give the sweet girl Meet the Austins sometime this year. She's been acquainted with the Austins her whole life because I have about a quarter of a century tradition of reading The Twenty-Four Days Before Christmas every Advent, and she was born somewhere in the middle of that tradition and joined it early. She's always liked that story and so it seemed a natural extension to move her on to the rich, middle-grade goodness of Meet the Austins, a lovely book of Madeleine's that I don't think gets enough attention.

But then we were discussing possible reads for our homeschool group this fall (we try to do a monthly book, with families coming in ready to discuss it on a given Friday) and I found myself suggesting Wrinkle. It's kind of funny how it happened -- we'd asked the two older kids, the sweet girl and her good friend (whom I'll call science boy) what kinds of books they'd like to read this year. We're mostly pitching to the two of them in our group, since the rest are littles more or less along for the reading ride. Science boy immediately said "let's read something with spaceships...and aliens!" and not a heartbeat behind him, sweet girl said, "let's read something girlish!"

Now there aren't many books that fit both bills, but Wrinkle comes awfully close. Granted, the elegance of tessering does away with the clunky need for spaceships, but there are "aliens" -- beings who live on other planets and even visit our own. So...space travel, check. Aliens, check. Then there's the added bonus of a girl protagonist. And not just any girl protagonist, but the wonderfully gawky, braces-wearing, scraggly-haired, impatient, math genius Meg Murry -- and seriously, don't you just feel like hugging Madeleine right now, for gracing the world with Meg?

So I said "How about  A Wrinkle in Time?" and everybody said yes, and we picked October as our reading month for it.

I could have just handed the sweet girl the book...but she is just past ten, and does love being read to still. Plus we have a tradition of reading the homeschool books together. Plus -- true confession -- I just couldn't bear being left out of it. It had not occurred to me how momentous it would feel to read Wrinkle with my daughter. Nor had it dawned on me that apparently I've never read the book aloud. I have recommended it to countless people over the years -- I think I could seriously make a list of people I introduced to Madeleine L'Engle (I'm pretty sure reading the time trilogy was a prerequisite for anyone who dated me in college) but I don't think I've ever read it aloud.

Doing so has been a delight but also a bit bizarre. How does one pronounce Uriel -- with a short or long u? How do you reeeaaad ttthhee ssstammmering words of Mrs Which? For that matter, how do you read Mrs Who's Greek quotes when you don't know how to read Greek? What does Calvin sound like? How do you make Charles Wallace sound like a petulant, normal five year old somehow tinged with mysterious otherness? How do you change Mrs Whatsit's voice when she metamorphoses from one kind of being to another? (In the end, I decided not to.) And wow, the Black Thing -- it's pretty scary.

Those are some of the questions and thoughts that have been running through my mind as we've read the first few chapters together this week.

Oh...and in a marvelous bit of serendipity...the amazing "you could not possibly have scheduled this to happen if you'd tried a million times" kind...we are also re-reading Magician's Nephew as our bedtime read aloud. Today I got to read both Mrs Whatsit's flight with Meg, Calvin and Charles Wallace on her back and Fledge's flight with Digory and Polly on his back. I am a very happy reading woman.

Happy Birthday to the Hobbit!

It's the 75th anniversary of the original publishing date for The Hobbit. I intended to celebrate today by having a second breakfast, but alas, it was one of those days that got off to such a crazy start, I hardly got a first one!

A few things have been making the rounds in honor of this special day. One I especially enjoyed was this article by Devin Brown on the C.S. Lewis blog. It's a lovely post. While most Tolkien and Lewis enthusiasts won't learn much from it that's new, it's still delightful to be reminded of the story of The Hobbit's genesis and of the life-giving friendship between Lewis and Tolkien in the early years.

Two things I especially took away from my reflections on this post today. The first is in reference to The Hobbit's beginning. About that momentous and mysterious start, when Tolkien scribbled the line "In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit" inside an exam booklet he was correcting, Brown writes:

"Had Professor Tolkien not needed the money which grading secondary school exams provided, had there not been so many of them, had there not been a blank page left in one exam booklet, there might never have been the beloved story we know today."

Don't you love that thought? We can trace the lines in hindsight, but at the time they were such ordinary things. Tolkien was a hard working teacher who needed money and took what I'm sure was a mind-numbing job. (There's that insight again: limitations can sometimes push us to new creative territory.) And in the midst of the mind-numbing pile of papers, a blank page beckoned and a story he didn't even know was percolating put forth its first tentative shoot as he scrawled that one gift line.

Isn't it good of God to give us gift lines and gift images? Remember Lewis saying that Narnia started with the picture of a faun carrying parcels in a wood? From such small beginnings -- one line, one picture -- whole stories can bloom. What a wonderful, mysterious thing creativity is.

And I loved this wonderful reminder from Brown's reflection:

"In a real life story as fascinating as the imaginary ones they would later write, J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis became friends, Tolkien became instrumental in Lewis’s conversion to Christianity, and then Lewis became instrumental in Tolkien’s completing his great works.  Together they formed the Inklings, the close-knit Oxford reading and writing group which met in Lewis’s college rooms and at a pub named The Eagle and Child.  It was at these meetings that the early versions of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings were first read aloud, critiqued, and made into what they are today."

Again we can trace the lines. Lewis and Tolkien's friendship, complex as it was, was nourishing and fruitful for them both. As Brown goes on to say, after Jack's death Tolkien would talk about what a debt he owed him and how he wouldn't have finished LOTR if it hadn't been for Lewis' encouragement. It was because Lewis wanted to hear more of the story that Tolkien kept writing; he was the kind of writer who needed that encouragement (I think most writers are, but some more than others). Sometimes in our rush to write and create as artists, we can forget how important that gift of encouragement can be to other artists who are also giving their all to write stories that are good and beautiful and true. What it would be to have a friend like Lewis to draw out the best in us. What it would be to be a Lewis for other writers.

It's the beauty and complexity of that collaboration amongst Lewis and Tolkien and the other Inklings that Diana Pavlac Glyer captures so beautifully in her masterful book The Company They Keep: C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien as Writers in Community. The book is a great read for many reasons, but I think it especially helped me to understand Tolkien better. As I wrote in my review of the book three years ago:

"If one individual Inkling stands out in this volume, it's Tolkien. Though Glyer does a great job of covering the group as a group, it's inevitable that the members who wrote more and are better known will receive fuller treatment. But I think there's more than that in the thoughtful depths of her look at Tolkien: Glyer clearly wants to paint a more accurate portrait of his working style than has been attempted before. He's often been looked at as a kind of solitary genius, but as Glyer points out (and brilliantly backs up) of all the Inklings, Tolkien may have been the most dependent on community for inspiration and encouragement, as he was what I believe she terms a "notorious non-finisher." 

That was due in part to his incredibly lengthy revisions: he could write for years on one project, and create draft after draft. Just consider that the 600,000 plus words of Lord of the Rings took him about two decades to bring to completion, and that he worked many more years than that on his Silmarillion (only published after his death, its many drafts finally edited by Christopher).  Tolkien, Glyer asserts, would never have finished LOTR without the Inklings: "they supported Tolkien's natural impulse to keep polishing and perfecting his work." Beyond this general encouragement, the Inklings and Lewis in particular made specific comments and suggestions that we know (from evidence Glyer provides here) "led to modifications" in the work. Key changes were made in the shape of the narrative, and even in Tolkien's choice of how to end the book" 

On the 75th anniversary of The Hobbit, we can celebrate not only a wonderful story that has lasted in our hearts for so long, but the creative inspiration and collaboration that stood behind it.

For Louisa, Jack, and Madeleine... (Literary Day of Days)

It's my favorite literary day of the year: the anniversary of the birth of three of the deepest writers of my heart. Louisa May Alcott was born on this day in 1832, Clive Staples (Jack) Lewis in 1898, and Madeleine L'Engle in 1918. What an amazing gift it is to be able to celebrate all three of them on the same day!

I fell in love with all three of these writers when I was very young and my love for them has continued over the years, though it's taken different shape in different seasons. As I pondered today all the profound ways they have influenced me through the years -- far too many ways to count -- it occurred to me that even if each had only graced the world with a fraction of what they wrote, I still would feel grateful. Playing on that idea, I wrote this poem in tribute to them, and in tribute to three of their characters who have been my special friends.

For Louisa, Jack and Madeleine

It would have been enough to give us Jo –

Tree climber, boot stomper, apple muncher,
Snow thrower, writer of tales.
In the mirror of pages across the ages,
We still see the ink stain on her finger,
The scorch on her dress, the wild, rumpled hair.
We hear her tears in the garret,
Mingled with rain, and know
the soft, satin feel of the ribbon
tied round her stories.


It would have been enough to give us Lucy –

Door opener, truth teller, faun friend,
merry queen, lion-hearted girl.
In the mirror of pages across the ages,
We still see the flask of healing cordial,
The white-winged albatross, snowflakes
Glittering in the lamppost light.
We hear her muffled tears the night
The world seemed to end, and know
the soft, tangled tresses of the wild lion’s mane
wrapped round her fingers.


It would have been enough to give us Meg –

Problem solver, hand holder, cocoa maker,
namer, friend of cherubim.
In the mirror of pages across the ages,
We still see glasses slip in the moonlight,
Dragon scales in a dripping garden,
A bright quilt in a wind-rocked attic room.
We hear her tears of relief as she clutches
Her rescued brother, and know
the soft, small boy feel of his hair
pressed close to her cheek.

~EMP, 11-29-11

The Week in Review (6): Patricia Polacco; Shakespeare Meets Marvel Comics; Narnia Code

Hmm...the last week of September was an odd reviewing week. Three movies, completely different from one another, and a Civil War picture book that made me cry.

The Narnia Code is an hour-long documentary based on Michael Ward's literary theory regarding C.S. Lewis' use of medieval cosmology in the Chronicles of Narnia. It provides a great introduction to his ideas, which are unpacked at length and with great scholarly elegance in the book Planet Narnia.

Thor is a totally enjoyable (and action-packed!) feature film based on the comic book character Thor, a sort of Norse god/superhero. The particularly fun twist is that this summer blockbuster kind of movie was directed by Kenneth Branagh, the director who has brought us Shakespearean delights for years. Shakespeare meets Marvel Comics. And it works.


Soul Surfer is an inspirational film based on the true story of Bethany Hamilton, a young surfer who lost her left arm to a shark, survived, and went on to become the world's best woman surfer. The movie asks good questions and walks a lot of potentially cliched lines without falling off any of them entirely. Not a great film, but a solidly good one, with the real story of the young girl's courage shining through some inspired performances.

I don't often cry my way through picture books, but that's what happened when I read Patricia Polacco's Pink and Say. There is a power and beauty to this simple story of the friendship that developed between two young men, one black and one white, who found one another in the midst of the chaos and pain of the Civil War. It's a story of heroism and courage, and it's brought home the Civil War to my nine year old in real and moving ways. The fact that it turns out to be a true story -- a story passed down in Polacco's family for several generations (Say was her great-great grandfather) adds even more powerful punch to the tale.

Wisdom from Jack

A little Monday morning wisdom from C.S. Lewis, courtesy of a friend's Facebook status:

"The task of the modern educator is not to cut down jungles, but to irrigate deserts. " ~C.S. Lewis

Irrigating deserts, yes! And remember, deserts can bloom!

Literary Day of Days: Celebrating C.S. Lewis

It was getting dark when we pulled onto the turnpike last night for the last long push home. At that point, we've still got a good two and a half hours to go -- well, that length if we don't stop for bathroom breaks or a meal (and we usually need to do both) and if traffic is moving swiftly (and on the weekend after Thanksgiving, it was barely moving at all for a while).

We had just finished a family read-aloud earlier in the afternoon, but I knew that reading would be what would get us through the next few hours, as it usually is. And I'd saved the best for last: it was time to begin our read of The Last Battle.

The Last Battle is, of course, the seventh book in C.S. Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia, books I read and re-read as a child (and continue to as an adult). Our family read-through of the Chronicles has taken a long time. We've doled them out like delicious chocolates. We've meandered, reading many other books in between them. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is now so long ago in the sweet girl's memory that we plan to read it again later this winter. (Since we read it the year she was five, it's truly become akin to one of the "ancient stories" recalled about the Golden Age of Narnia in Prince Caspian!) She remembers better the more recent books, especially The Magician's Nephew, which I think has been her favorite of the series so far.

Reading the first several chapters of The Last Battle...at the end of a long and emotional trip, by the light of a tiny booklight, on a busy turnpike under darkening skies, with a voice slightly hoarse from a worsening cough...well, let me just say again how much I love the fact that one can always be transported to Narnia.

I love to read aloud. If my voice holds out, and if I have a willing audience, I can go a long time. Certain stories I love work well when read aloud, but I am fairly certain that Lewis' writing, especially in Narnia, is some of the very best writing for read-aloud ever. A kind, benevolent, generous voice shines through each page, as Lewis the storyteller gently takes you by the hand and leads you through where you need to go. He lets the story unfold of its own accord, creating characters whose lives and feelings you understand, and a world you love to walk through. But once in a while he gives you that authorial nudge, reminding you that it's a story, but somehow not pulling you out of the story-spell you've fallen under:

"If one had known what was going to happen next, it would have been a treat to watch the grace and ease with which the huge bird glided down..."

"Jill had, as you might say, quite fallen in love with the Unicorn. She thought -- and she wasn't far wrong -- that he was the shiningest, delicatest, most graceful animal she had ever met: and he was so gentle and soft of speech that, if you hadn't known, you would hardly have believed how fierce and terrible he could be in battle."

"They drank from a stream, splashed their faces with water, and tumbled into their bunks, except for Puzzle and Jewel who said they'd be more comfortable outside. This perhaps was just as well, for a Unicorn and a fat, full-grown donkey indoors always makes a room feel rather crowded."

Omniscient narration is not terribly "in" these days, but Lewis reminds me of how beautifully and artfully it can be done in the hands of a writer who both loves the cadence of old-fashioned tales and whose story vision is crystal clear.

Happy Birthday, Jack. Thank you for gracing so many of our miles last night, and so many of the miles of my life, with your wonderful voice.