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During his final interview in May 1963, C.S. Lewis claimed that his role in his own conversion was surprisingly passive.  One simply makes a decision to follow Christ, but Lewis sees his conversion more as a recognition of “being chosen”, not necessarily of “choosing”.  “I was glad afterwards at the way it came out,” Lewis admits, “but at the moment what I heard was God saying, ‘Put down your gun and we’ll talk.’”

What irony saturates the final statement.  Lewis views his conversion more as a concession.  He, the mortal armed with intelligence and spiritual reluctance, while God boldly waves the white flag in negotiation.  Of course it was Lewis who would ultimately surrender to Christ, but the war metaphor is quite fitting for Lewis’ life.  Few know that Lewis was a World War I veteran.  As an Irish citizen, he was not required to apply for the draft, however, Lewis chose to volunteer in the war effort (as his brother Warnie also did).  He celebrated his 19th birthday on the battlefields of WWI, watching in horror as his friends succumbed to injuries.  Lewis himself would sustain wounds during the Battle of Arras in France.  It was during his convalescence that Lewis read G.K. Chesterton for the first time.  Surely this was a divine strategy, as Chesterton’s The Everlasting Man is a work that Lewis dearly admired and credited in helping establish his faith.  But uncovering Chesterton was one of a few fond artifacts of his war experiences.  In his autobiography Surprised by Joy in the chapter “Guns and Good Company”, Lewis admits that he lost several friends, among them a young Oxford scholar named Johnson who “would have been a life-long friend if he had not been killed”.  He also discusses Sergeant Ayres who was “killed by the same shell that wounded me” and who also showed genuine compassion for the young soldier Lewis. Lewis continues, “…he turned this ridiculous and painful relation into something beautiful, became to me almost like a father”.

As the young Lewis marched to and fro across France, he carried with him a notebook. Here he furiously scribbled his reflections on war, on the utter chaos man creates, and his spiritual bankruptcy.  After the war, Lewis would publish his dark recollections as Spirits in Bondage: A Cycle of Lyrics. Published under the pseudonym Clive Hamilton (his mother’s maiden name), Lewis celebrated his first publication, hence public validation of his work. *Note: George Sayer states in his biography Jack: C.S. Lewis and His Times that the original publication bore the name “George Lewis” and “Lieut. G.S. Lewis”.

However, it is a far cry from the Lewis most know; the Lewis who crafted the fine wisdom of Mere Christianity, The Chronicles of Narnia, and The Screwtape Letters.  This Lewis was only a few years removed from the death of his mother, had endured ceaseless torture from other boys in boarding schools, and then came under the tutelage of the intelligent yet religiously dismissive Mr. Kirkpatrick. His disenchanted perspective of the world is captured in the second section of Spirits in Bondage, a piece titled “French Nocturne (Monchy-Le-Preux)”:

Long leagues on either hand the trenches spread

And all is still; now even this gross line

Drinks in the frosty silence divine

The pale, green moon is riding overhead.

The jaws of a sacked village, stark and grim;

Out on the ridge have swallowed up the sun,

And in one angry streak his blood has run

To left and right along the horizon dim.

There comes a buzzing plane: and now it seems

Flies straight into the moon. Lo! where he steers

Across the pallid globe and surely nears

In that white land some harbour of dear dreams!

False mocking fancy!

Once I too could dream,

Who now can only see with vulgar eye

That he’s no nearer to the moon that I

And she’s a stone that catches the sun’s beam.

What call have I to dream of anything?

I am a wolf. Back to the world again,

And speech of fellow-brutes hat once were men

Our throats can bark for slaughter: cannot sing.

The poem begins in the evening after an attack on a village.  Notice Lewis’ use of darkness here to also indicate the absence of morality, civility, and compassion.  Out among the trenches, Lewis notices that “all is still” now where earlier chaos had once reigned.  The silence, which Lewis refers to as “divine”, inhabits the trenches and its men.  The moon is overhead, illuminating the ruin of the village; the village “jaws” have “swallowed the sun” or eliminated all means of hope.  A plane flies over, and seems to fly “straight into the moon”; Lewis imagines the moon as a symbol of dreams. This is obviously an image conjured up in his childhood, but as a young, disoriented adult, he dismisses the childish notion that the moon “harbours of dear dreams”.

Lewis reveals this misguided notion as a farce – “False mocking Fancy!”  And then, the poet draws the reader to himself.  “Once I too could dream/Who now can only see with vulgar eye”.  Lewis has been contaminated by his war experiences.  Once a young boy who experienced a brief encounter with “joy” in a toy garden, now Lewis is a young man, shooting bullets at an unacquainted enemy, astonished beyond disbelief at “horribly smashed men still moving like half-crushed beetles, the sitting or standing corpses…”.  His dreams have vanished, replaced with uncertainty and confusion.  Lewis transforms the beauty of the moon, a symbol of childhood fantasy, into merely an echo of something else, a plain and prosaic rock: “she’s a stone that catches the sun’s beam.”  The moon is nothing on it’s own, rather it reflects a small portion of the absent sun.  Ah, darkness again.  Lewis is empty of emotions, of hope: “What call have I to dream of anything?”  He and his fellow soldiers squirm into foxholes, shoot into a midst of enemies, suffer through shellings and pouring rain and endless marching.  What is there to live for?  Lewis sees himself fundamentally altered: “I am a wolf / Back to the world again”.  He snaps out of his delusion of childhood, of the ideas which poisoned him as a boy.  Deep in the trenches, where his fingers wrap tightly around his rifle, his knapsack is muddy, and his hope is dashed, Lewis has lost his innocence.  The men are changed from men to animals – “fellow-brutes that once were men” open their mouths to sing, but can only “bark” like carnivorous beasts.

An interesting aside, Lewis’ first poem in the collection, titled “Satan Speaks”, uses first-person narration to illustrate how Satan (and darkness) are omnipresent.  This is quite ironic because later Lewis will craft his epistolary masterpiece The Screwtape Letters in the voice of the devil to his protege Wormwood.  Most surprisingly, the first words of Lewis ever officially published are actually words spoken by Satan:

I am Nature, the Mighty Mother,

I am the law; ye have none other.

I am the flower and the dewdrop fresh,

I am the lust in your itching flesh.

I am the battle’s filth and strain,

I am the widow’s empty pain.

I am the sea to smother your breath,

I am the bomb, the falling death.

I am the fact and the crushing reason

To thwart your fantasy’s new-born treason.

I am the spider making her net,

I am the beast with jaws blood-wet.

I am a wolf that follows the sun

and I will catch him ere day be done.

Notice here, in comparing the two poems, that Lewis consistently uses the imagery of death, and more specifically, the repetition of the words “wolf” and “jaws”. In one poem, the term “wolf” describes Satan; in the other it describes Lewis.   Lewis uses contrasting images, one of birth and refreshment (the “flower” and “dewdrop fresh”) juxtaposed with images of death and entrapment ( the smothering sea, the widow’s pain, the “bomb” and the spider’s “net”).  Satan is the “reason” that crushes the “fantasy”, an obvious reference to the faith he no longer embraces.  However, even in Lewis’ spiritual drought, he conjures up authentic imagery of Satan’s deceptive lure, the one who ends the “fantasy” with his dark reality.  If he set out to make Christianity unattractive, he certainly made Satan all the more undesirable in these verses.

Overall, Spirits in Bondage illustrates a young Lewis who is ripening with potential as a writer.  The overt references to his faith are certainly absent, but small roots are stretching beneath, slowly forming the philosophical Lewis who would progress into a voice of optimism during the second world war.   Lewis is not forthcoming with many of his war experiences.  In fact, he states in Surprised by Joy:

It is too cut off from the rest of my experience and often seems to have happened to someone else.  It is even in a way unimportant.  One imaginative moment seems now to matter more than the realities that followed.  It was the first bullet I heard – so far from me that it ‘whined’ like a journalist’s or a peacetime poet’s bullet.  At that moment there was something not exactly like fear, much less like indifference: a little quivering signal that said, ‘This is War.  This is what Homer wrote about.’ 

Next week, I will continue with more from Lewis’ Spirits in Bondage.

A couple of weeks ago, I corresponded with my friend and fellow scribbler Kelly Belmonte (http://allninemuses.blogspot.com/) about changing the direction for this blog.  I felt that my inspiration was running dry, a side effect of juggling work and life.  I have been fascinated by the poetry of C.S. Lewis for some time, and thus wished to dive more deeply into his verse.   Many are unaware that Lewis aspired to be a poet as a young man.  Just recently, Dr. Holly Ordway of Houston Baptist University posted a fantastic reflection of Lewis’ “The Apologist’s Evening Prayer” (located on Kelly’s site mentioned above).

For the next few weeks, I wish to examine more of Lewis’ poetry.  This week, the first post will discuss a popular poem by Lewis utilized by author Donald Miller, who penned such spiritually-imbued works as Blue Like Jazz and A Million Miles in a Thousand Years.  Some have spectulated that Miller is the Lewis of our generation, a man who accurately records his impressions of culture, capturing the spiritual zeitgeist with honesty and vulnerability.  In his autobiographical exploration Blue Like Jazz, Miller borrows some verses from Lewis’ “As the Ruin Falls”:

All this is flashy rhetoric about loving you.

I never had a selfless thought since I was born.

I am mercenary and self-seeking through and through:

I want God, you, all friends, merely to serve my turn.

Peace, re-assurance, pleasure, are the goals I seek,

I cannot crawl one inch outside my proper skin:

I talk of love – a scholar’s parrot may talk Greek –

But, self-imprisoned, always end where I begin,

Only that now you have taught me (but how late) my lack.

I see the chasm. And everything you are was making

My heart into a bridge by which I might get back

From exile, and grow man.  and now the bridge is breaking.

For this I bless you as the ruin falls. The pains

You give me are more precious than all other gains.

One of the traits I most admire about Lewis is his humility.  He spoke at length about the unbridled pride which infects like a disease;  it is the root of arrogance and condescension.  In the first few lines, Lewis dissolves the pretentious nature of spiritual “rhetoric”.  How often have the age-old rhymes sprang from our lips, stirred more by tradition than passion?  Do we mutter these phrases in earnest praise or from spiritual obligation?  Some may ask, “What is the difference?”  Everything.  The difference is everything.  Love, as Lewis illuminates, is hollow here.  The only love present is love for the self.  The truth, Lewis states, is in the pudding.  Actions, motivations, and decisions reveal what is truly adored – “me”.  In fact, the theme of “I” has been a motif since birth, creating mercenaries who will conquer with fierce enthusiasm for the laurel and crowns of self-achievement.  Our focus is exclusionary; only topics of great personal concern are noteworthy.

That narrow perspective can be confining, using relationships (even one with a benevolent God) to simply acquire more for ourselves (“I want God, you , all friends, merely to serve my turn”).  Lewis once wrote to a correspondent that humanity has two basic motivations for completing a task:  1) because it is compulsory or 2) because it brings pleasure and joy.  Basically, we “have to” or we “want to”.  We  seek “peace, re-assurance, and pleasure” because we desire them, and will forsake all others to achieve them.  However, there is something deeply troubling about this aspect of our nature. Why can’t we extend our concern for ourselves to each other?  What will we lose/gain in the transaction?  Often many seek opportunities to destroy rather than to build.  We understand that our salvation is a gift, and yet, we are often guilty of indulging a nagging self-righteousness.  We lie, we gossip, we steal, we judge…and we all understand that we are flawed.  And so settles our passion into a stew of spiritual mediocrity and contradiction.

Lewis’ message here: Do not be comfortable with your brokenness.  Strive for something better.

Perpetual brokenness is Lewis’ theme.  I will always end where I begin, in a fog of my own selfishness.  I am consumed with myself.  It is difficult to “crawl one inch outside my proper skin” because I am narcissistic and hopelessly unsatisfied.  It is, as Lewis describes, a “self-prison”, locked up within the shallow perimeter of my understanding.  I proudly construct my ideal, and watch hopelessly as it crumbles.  Today, in a writing exercise, I contemplated how Shakespeare’s characters always blamed Fortuna (the mythological goddess of fortune and luck) for their poor circumstance.  However, the characters were only experiencing the consequences of their decisions.  “Oh, I am Fortune’s Fool”, cries Romeo.  But Romeo, in his naivety, does not understand that “falling in love” with a new acquaintance who happens to be an adversary is an improbable reality.  Fortune is not to blame.

In the third stanza, clarity arrives at last.  God reveals to Lewis his “lack” and he acknowledges the wide separation.  God is constructing a “bridge” to help us return to him, a bridge that will rescue us from self-exile.  Once Lewis and all of us are free from ourselves, we will gradually develop into who God wants us to be.  And yet, we prevent it.  We get in our own way. “The bridge is breaking”, Lewis writes.  We dismantle the work God performed on us, lifting the planks and pulling out nails.  Piece by piece we come apart again.

And when the ruin falls, the poet utters a blessing.  The pain is one of holy recognition.  Our brokenness is an ever-present obstacle.  Blame Adam and Eve (like Shakespeare’s protagonists blamed Fortuna) but ultimately Eden is forbidden.  We lost it long ago and in its absence, we were introduced to the long struggle which haunts us infinitely.  The cycle continues uninterrupted.  We fall, we stagger, we stand, we fall again.  Thank God for his mercy.

No matter how many consecutive weeks you have attended a church service or elderly ladies you have assisted across a busy street, we are all broken.  We all possess a sinful nature.   Brokenness cannot be cured by a pill or extinguished by therapy.  One can learn to cope with the consequences of being broken.  For example, one can attend therapy to move through a rough time or seek counseling in order to receive healing.  But understand this:  we will always fall short of God’s glory.  We can never earn it.  There should never come a moment when we are comfortable with God enough to be convinced that He simply ignores our transgressions.  Do not abuse his grace.  Fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.  God does not use a scale to weigh our worth; His justice and mercy eliminate the need for one.  We are sons and daughters, but servants still.  We should continually be in awe of God, of the sacrifice that grants us freedom and eternity.  The grace and mercy of our Father should never become commonplace.  As He renews your mind, renew your devotion.

So as the ruin falls, praise the One who consistently begins to repair the mess.  Watch Him create something wonderful and appreciate the wisdom of each experience.

This past week, bells rang, students scuffled through the hallways, and books opened once again.  The rusty gears of public education, silent for the last few weeks, began to spin once more, stiffly at first.  School busses are now toting fresh-faced children to school.  Teachers are busy preparing for a new school year and implementing routines to help ensure student success.  We strive to give each student an equal opportunity to change the future for the better.

However, the social experience that characterizes high school is another matter entirely.  We control our decisions, over whether or not we complete homework or study for a test, but we cannot alter the fierce judgments of others.  This pressure of being “in or out” is the origin of bullying, of which recently we have seen persistent campaigns in the press and in local communities.  We can all reflect on high school and recall the various “social groups”.  In fact, the television show Saved By the Bell capitalized on this phenomena.  The show was a hit during my adolescence, and perhaps because it resonates with all of us who matriculated through high school and possessed the impulse to categorize.  This person is into this, so we file them in this group.  Quite contrarily, college affirms the brilliance of the unique.  In college (or at least it was my experience), those who blurred social definitions, who defied categorization, triumphed.

I cheer on students who refuse to be defined by shallow preconceptions.  The best thing one can do is celebrate uniqueness and despise conformity.  If you can unplug yourself from such frivolous desires (such as the desire to gain conditional acceptance), you have defeated the giant which psychologicially anesthesizes so many.  Unfortunately, this does not always disappear once we graduate.  When we mature, it is to new heirarchies, different systems which demand for us to adapt. We learn what and what is not socially acceptable.  We learn who must follow the rules and who can thwart them. It is in our adulthood where we make the disappointing discovery that we may change, but the awful heirarchies which made us nauseous can often survive adolesence.

And what then?  Do you change to gain this acceptance?  Do you at once repress the voice in your head which warns you that the acceptance is conditional?  Is association and not individual satisfaction your premiere goal in life?

Ah, but then again, a grin crosses your lips.  To be “one of them”!  To have access to the information, to the “right” people, to be seen with “that crowd” – what elation! What this will do for my reputation/job opportunities/social life!

And thus begins the uphill struggle, the sacrifice. You do things for the appobation of others. Yes, I did this, you say, but did they see me?  Did they notice me?  Doing activities for your own personal pleasure is lost, replaced with the burning desire to win “them” over so you can become “we”.  But you see, if you do make it in friend, you will find a new struggle, one to maintain what you have “earned”.  Sadly, there is no brass ring, just the illusion of one.  The joke is on you.  Your behavior will evolve to pattern yourself after “them” until no trace of yourself is left.  You gladly compromise everything for admittance, to find that what you tossed so quickly and carelessly on the alter was what you should have cherished.  But the time is gone and realization came too late.

C.S. Lewis spoke of this in his appropriately titled essay, “The Inner Ring”.  In it, Lewis argues that the “Inner Ring” is actually menacing.  He states that if we do not take steps to prevent it, it will steal our time and ambition. The essay serves more as a warning than an exposition:

My main purpose in this address is simply to convince you that this desire is one of the great permanent mainsprings of human action.  It is one of the factors which go to make up the world as we know it – this whole pell-mell of struggle, competition, confusion, graft, disappointment, and advertisement, and if it is one of the permanent mainsprings, then you may be quite sure of this.  Unless you take measures to prevent it, this desire is going to be one of the chief motives of your life, from the first day on which you enter your profession until the day when you are too old to care.  That will be the natural thing – the life that will come to you of its own accord. Any other kind of life, if you lead it, will be the result of conscious and continuous effort.  If you do nothing about it, if you drift with the stream, you will in fact be an ‘inner ringer.’ I don’t say you’ll be a successful one; that’s as may be.  But whether by pining or moping outside Rings that you can never enter, or by passing triumphantly further and further in – one way or the other you will be that kind of man.

There is, Lewis illuminates, a deep meaning behind the supposedly benign use of the pronouns “we” and “they.”  Lewis identifies an “invisible line” in which exists association or lack of association.  There’d be no fun if there were no outsiders, Lewis writes. The invisible line would have no meaning unless most people were on the wrong side of it. Exclusion is no accident; it is the essence.  For some, that bears no importance.   For others, it encompasses the foundation on which they build their worth. Essentially, you are admitting that you are nothing of your own accord, that you require the company of others before that value arrives.  What you must do is disregard the impulse to elevate association as crucial to your value.  Exalt your own individuality, given to you by a God who established variety, over the conceptions which other people create.

Gerard Manley Hopkins once confirmed this in his poem “Pied Beauty”

Glory to God for dappled things –

For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow,

For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;

Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings

Landscape plotted and pieced – fold, fallow, and plough;

And all trades, their gear and tackle and trim.

All things counter, original, spare, strange;

Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)

With swift, slow, sweet, sour, adazzle, dim;

He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:

Praise him.

Diversity is a keystone of creation. Differences should be celebrated. If you find yourself trying to fit into a social group, it proves that you do not belong there naturally.  Transitioning to the group is not an option; transcendence is.  Rise above the propensity to blend.  Those who treasure their uniqueness do not wish to change.  They see that the mirror reflects a masterpiece.  Loving who you are at your very core is absolute necessity.  Changing to simply be different is not the essence of who you are.  Those who truly know who they are would never entertain the thought.

You see, you cannot dangle what you assume is a privilege in front of an individual for whom the lack of that privilege has no value. A cup of water is only desired by a thirsty man.  If I care not for it, then it cannot be used as a means of control.  Live your life by your own dreams, not by the demands of the sacred oligarchy.

Lewis continues, The quest of the Inner Ring will break your hearts unless you break it.  But if you break it, a surprising result will follow.  If in your working hours you make the work your end, you will presently find yourself all unawares inside the only circle in your profession that really matters. You will be one of the sound craftsmen, the other sound craftsmen will know it.  This group of craftsmen will by no means coincide with the Inner Ring or the Important People or the People in the Know…And if in your spare time you consort simply with the people you like, you will again find that you have come unawares to a real inside, that you are indeed snug and safe at the centre of something which, seen without, would look exactly like an Inner Ring.  But the difference is that its secrecy is accidental, and its exclusiveness a by-product, and no one was led thither by the lure of the esoteric, for it is only four or five people who like one another meeting to do things that they like.  This is friendship.  Aristotle placed it among the virtues.

There are times where I have pined for that approval but it was not simply meant to be.  Individual solitude is more valuable than corporate association. In the past, I have disappointed those I love to achieve that association. Last year, I left my mother’s bedside at the hospital to do so.  I deeply regret it.  My mother would easily forsake all others for me, and yet, I strived to feel “in” with a group to whom I clearly did not belong.  It is disheartening to feel alone in a room full of people.  I have made it “in the door” and have still not felt the warmth of the hearth.  The margins of “in” are just as cold as “out”.

Lewis provides great advice here.  Do your work and be found a craftsman.  Value individuality over “people to know.”  Figure out who wears a mask and who is genuine.  When you find the latter, hold them very close to your heart.  Delight in their friendship for they love you as you are, as God created you to be.

Earlier this summer, Ray Bradbury, a great American literary monolith, passed away at the age of 91.  Bradbury wrote such classics as Fahrenheit 451, and a myriad of great short stories.  Among these is a story titled, “A Sound of Thunder.”  Today, I teach this story multiple times a year and I enjoy it increasingly more because it has a personal significance.

The story’s protagonist, Mr. Eckles, lives in the year 2055.  In the future, time travel is not only possible, it is a lucrative business.  Time Safari Inc. ensures that its presence in the past will not alter future events.  Eckels pays to hunt and kill a Tyrannosaurus Rex, one already identified as succumbing to a falling tree without the trespassing of visitors.  Mr. Travis, the tour guide, informs the travelers that they must stay on the path.  If not, they could alter time forever.  When Eckles asks why stepping on a mouse would cause such historical disturbance, Mr. Travis explains,

“Well, what about the foxes that’ll need those mice to survive? For want of ten mice, a fox dies. For want of ten foxes a lion starves. For want of a lion, all manner of insects, vultures, infinite billions of life forms are thrown into chaos and destruction. Eventually it all boils down to this: fifty-nine million years later, a caveman, one of a dozen on the entire world, goes hunting wild boar or saber-toothed tiger for food. But you, friend, have stepped on all the tigers in that region. By stepping on one single mouse. So the caveman starves. And the caveman, please note, is not just any expendable man, no! He is an entire future nation. From his loins would have sprung ten sons. From their loins one hundred sons, and thus onward to a civilization. Destroy this one man, and you destroy a race, a people, an entire history of life. It is comparable to slaying some of Adam’s grandchildren. The stomp of your foot, on one mouse, could start an earthquake, the effects of which could shake our earth and destinies down through Time, to their very foundations. With the death of that one caveman, a billion others yet unborn are throttled in the womb. Perhaps Rome never rises on its seven hills. Perhaps Europe is forever a dark forest, and only Asia waxes healthy and teeming. Step on a mouse and you crush the Pyramids. Step on a mouse and you leave your print, like a Grand Canyon, across Eternity. Queen Elizabeth might never be born, Washington might not cross the Delaware, there might never be a United States at all. So be careful. Stay on the Path. Never step off!”

When Eckles arrives in the past, he becomes frightened and tries to forfeit.  However, he cautiously ventures out on the path, is petrified when he encounters the Tyrannosaurus Rex, and slips off, leaving a bootprint in the viscous mud beneath. Mr. Travis reprimands him for disobeying orders as the machine winds through years and years of history to return to the present.  When they arrive, the language is different and the politician who just won the presidency is a different candidate.  Eckles turns over his boot and discovers a single, beautiful butterfly.  He had carried it into the present, ultimately altering the past.

Amazing how much one butterfly can drastically change the future.

In fact, it was just nine years ago that I was on the precipice of such change.  After returning from college, I secured a customer service, “cubicle”  job.  In my community, these jobs pay well, but I knew deep down that it is not what I wanted to do long-term.  In the summer of 2003, a nearby school system offered me a job as a P.A.L.S. aide.  P.A.L.S. is a remediation program which helps struggling readers learn; the aim is to shrink the gap between good readers and struggling readers in elementary school before time compounds the confusion and leads to student frustration and lower test scores.  At the same time, I was offered another well-paying position in customer service.  P.A.L.S. would only offer me $6.45 an hour of part-time employment while the customer service position offered me full-time hours, benefits, and $10+ an hour.  Most people would easily choose the latter, but I was still very conflicted.

After the interview for the customer service position, I ventured to a store next door.  Before reaching the entrance I paused and did a doubletake.  Laying on the concrete, lifeless yet beautiful, was a vibrant turquoise butterfly.  It was crushed on the pavement.  The contrast is what had caught my eye.  This lovely symbol was juxaposed against grey nothingness, trampled by pedestrians.  Even in death, it possessed an indescribable beauty. Something inside me said, Do you surrender to your desire to have more “stability” or do you chase your destiny?  You know what you are supposed to do. Don’t dispose of your opportunities.  Make the right choice.  From the moment I laid eyes on that butterfly, that one lone butterfly, I knew that the trip had been a waste.  I was destined to take the P.A.L.S. position.

Thus began one of the most incredible experiences of my life. Helping a child read his/her first words is truly amazing.  Teaching children to read introduces them to a whole new perspective, places full of mysterious wardrobes, of young orphans studying wizardry, of hobbits travelling distant lands; ultimately it grants them exposure to endless journeys and new, whimsical worlds.   By the end of the following school year, all of my students were reading.  They all passed the P.A.L.S. end-of-year assessment.  I was so proud of them, my heart felt like bursting.  Later that summer, I was hired to teach high school literature, where I will begin my ninth year of instruction this week.

It’s incredible how one image remains with you.  You sigh when you reflect, but you understand the choice and sacrifice you made in that moment which forever changed the trajectory of your life.  That one insect gave me the confidence to choose the path I already knew I must take.

Just recently, I purchased a copy of David Kinnaman’s You Lost Me, an ominous portrait of young, modern Christians who are walking away from the Church in droves.  Why the mass exodus?  Kinnaman, who serves as president of the Christian research firm the Barna Group, uses statistics strengthened by interviews to reveal that many young Christians cannot reconcile their faith with other cultural influences.  One of the chapters titled “Antiscience” discusses how young members (or in some cases former members) of the faith are struggling to connect scientific inquiry and empirical study to a dogma which requires a surrendered faith, believing without seeing.  Here Kinnaman states:

We must do a bettter job challenging and training all young Christians – not just the science geeks – to think clearly, honestly, and comprehensively about matters of science.  This includes understanding the various philosophies that undergird science, scientism, and knowledge.  Teaching philosophy to teens and young adults is not easy, but if we don’t we may be asking too little of the next generation and setting our expectations of them too low. (142) 

The book began to spark questions I entertained when I was younger.  Growing up in church, I was taught the basic tenets of faith, to pray, to read the Bible, to faithfully attend a church.  But as I grew older, the harder questions began.  Why do bad things happen to good people?  Why do “bad” people seem to always be ahead, while good people suffer?  Brooke Fraser’s latest album Flags addresses this very issue in the title song:

I don’t know why the innocents fall

While the monsters stand

I don’t know why the little ones thirst

But I know the last shall be first

You see, faith is actually very difficult.  Allegiance to a God one has never seen takes courage and the aforementioned faith.  I have wrestled with doubt, but the most recent struggle (and perhaps the toughest one) was in 2006.

As a graduate student in English, I read many of the towering classics which compose the English canon.  In one evening discussion, a comment from another student gave me a real, but painful clarity about my faith. The student was agnostic, from what I could gather in the discussion.  Despite this lack of connection to a faith, the student made a keen observation that many of the faiths are, in fact, quite the same.  Most faiths have some belief in an afterlife.  This afterlife is seen as either a reward or a punishment for actions during our lifetimes.  For some, the afterlife includes a bevy of virgins, or a mansion, but most importantly, a reunion with the Creator figure.  There are Christ figures and Moses figures throughout history – stories retold and transformed through oral history, the lens colored by a specific faith’s perception.

I was taken aback.  Was it possible that someone of another faith was observing me and accusing me of heresy?  But we are the ones who are “right”, right?  Are my convictions any different than others who are Muslim?  or Hindu?  or Buddist?  Furthermore, why are there strains of similarity in so many religions?

Early in Janurary of that year, my uncle lost his battle with an enduring illness.  At his funeral, the preacher’s voice crescendoed from the pulpit, promising that we will see him again one day.  “He is in a place where there is NO sickness.  Amen?”  Voices rose in affirmation.  I briefly paused to think.  So my faith believes that when you die, you go a perfect place called Heaven where many of those who precede us in death will be.  There is no sickness there, everyone has a mansion, the streets are made of solid gold.  Hmmm, I was starting to see why others would question Christianity as they questioned various other religions.

And what of the Bible?  Did Paul know that his epistolary encouragement would one day be, among other manuscripts, an instruction manual for an entire religion?  Are there interpretations which some people have “taken liberties” with?  Why do some  deceivers blur a Biblical interpretation to persuade people to an idealism?  I had seen it before.  When I was young, my parents were supporters of PTL (Praise the Lord).  I remember my mother watching the morning program during which singers would praise God, singing with eyes closed and hands uplifted.  Later, my parents took me to Heritage U.S.A., a theme park in Charlotte, North Carolina that was saturated with Christianity. My parents and I took a tram tour and I distinctly remember the tour guide looking earnestly in our eyes, pleading for “him to come back.”  The comment received thunderous applause.  The man behind PTL and Heritage was none other than Jim Bakker. Earlier that week, unbeknowst to a child such as I, Bakker was arrested on various charges, including mail fraud, wire fraud, and conspiracy.

As a child, I was hurt.  What wickedness!  To steal from my parents and other faithful givers, people who go without to contribute to a network which was hemorrhagging money on frivolous items such as an air-conditioned dog house.  At the time, I assumed Bakker was just a greedy man.  Then another televanglist, Jimmy Swaggart, was featured on the news for infidelity.  His pulpit confession became national headlines (and later made a punchline) when he cried, “I have sinned.”

And in this whirlwind of controversy and uncertainty, my generation began to form its faith.  It is no wonder that Kinnaman was finding such a strong response in his research. Where were our role models?  Who would be the next of the flock to step into leadership?  This idea of leadership had been patronized by the media and society for its hypocrasy.  How does one recover?

In the end, the fault is all mine.  The truth is, PEOPLE WILL ALWAYS DISAPPOINT YOU.  Faith lies in God, not man.  The moment it changes hands is the origin of chaos. As for my questions, I eventually resolved them.  C.S. Lewis, in an essay about the simplicity of writing for children, made clear for me the reason why many endorse the idea of an afterlife:

Does anyone suppose that he really and prosaically longs for all the dangers and discomforts of a fairy tale? – really wants dragons in contemporary England?  It is not so.  It would be much truer to say that fairy land arouses a longing for he knows not what. It stirs and troubles him (to his life-long enrichment) with the dim sense of something beyond his reach and, far from dulling or emptying the actual world, gives it a new dimension of depth. He does not despise real woods because he has read of enchanted woods: the reading makes all real woods a little enchanted.  This is a special kind of longing.  – On Three Ways of Writing for Children

I am not, nor is Lewis, suggesting that fairy tales are real.  But fairy tales echo in our hearts; tales tickle that great desire buried deeply within us – that something else. It cannot be explained, but only experienced.  Lewis argues in several works that God has placed echoes of Heaven here on Earth to serve as reminders of the glory that awaits us.  Many religions have a firm belief in the afterlife because, ultimately, we are wired to desire it.  Fairy tales hint at this.  In my last post, I mentioned that our sense of justice originates from our Creator, so does the grand design to which we only catch occasional glimpses but the glimpses are enough to satisfy a restless heart.  Our conviction that a Heaven exists is simply a default setting.  This is the reason for our spiritual curiosity – the answer to the question some struggle with during their entire lives.  The point is to surrender to it.  Disregard the bad examples, know Christ’s sovereignty is for Him alone, and submit to that design.  The adventure is worth the risk.  Besides, a tested faith is one that emerges stronger.  Trials will come, but our God is bigger.

Despite what Kinnaman uncovered about the spiritual stagnance of our generation, I believe that healing is possible and reconsideration is inevitable.  The emptiness cannot endure so surrender will come.  In the meantime, we should remain optimistic and sensitive to God’s spirit as it moves. He will carry us through a season of doubt and usher us to a renewed passion for our Savior.

Last week, our country experienced collective shock and grief after the heinous, egregious acts committed in Aurora, Colorado.  In the aftermath, we learned details about the seemingly normal killer, as well as the acts of bravery which emerged from the shadow of the tragedy.  Hope, although a little seedling, was springing up in the hours after the shooting.  Stories poured in about the resilience of the movie patrons, of men throwing themselves over women to shield them from bullets, of people who narrowly escaped with their lives and praising God for second chances.

As everyone knows by now, the film the victims went to see was the final installment of the Batman: Dark Knight Series.  I find it no coincidence that the storyline boasts of a vigilante poised and ready to defeat the dark forces of Gotham City.  In fact, heroes are a topic of perennial interest.  We all long to have a hero.  We have all felt powerless before.  We have all experienced uncertainty.  If you are a self-confessed “control freak,” you are nearly sickened by the feeling, nauseated by the lack of power over the situation.  But what can one do?

Trust in a hero?  Is this what the film suggests?  Furthermore, is this what the Bible suggests?  The Bible assures us that God will help us in times of trouble.  He will comfort our grief, pacify our sorrow with the reminder of his promises. Our sense of justice, I firmly believe, originates from our Creator.  As we are fashioned in His image, our desires can often be His; the exuberant joy we feel when the antagonist is finally conquered is deeply planted in the heart of us all. I also have faith that our justice system will deliver due punishment to the young man involved. It will not bring back the precious lives that have been lost, but it will hopefully bring some closure to the families of the victims.

There are times that we desire heroes, in which gross injustices demand action.  Have you ever felt this way?  Have you ever found yourself in a place where you wish to look up and, through the tears in your eyes and the thumping in your chest, see your deliverer rushing to your aid to your great relief?  I have mentioned in previous blogs that my mother is a breast cancer survivor.  Last January, while I was reading The Chronicles of Narnia, she was diagnosed with ductal carcinoma in situ (“in place”). Please note that no one in my family has ever had breast cancer.  It was one of the most difficult periods of my life.  At times, I asked God why.  Then there was the moment during a doctor’s visit where the doctor turned to me and said, “And we’ll probably start checking you out in about 15 years.”   I prayed, on my knees every night, for God to heal my Mom.  I cried incessantly for about a month, striving to appear unaffected at work, but when I was alone, the fear would wash over me afresh.  I remember driving home one night in thick fog and thinking, This is a metaphor for my life.  Limited visibility.  Unsure of where I am headed and most frightening of all, unsure about how all this will end.

Then I began to reflect on what I was reading.  In C.S. Lewis’s The Magicians’s Nephew, protagonist Digory enters Narnia with the assistance of rings and a portal in the Wood between the Worlds. Here, he observes Aslan singing Narnia into existence then attempts to ask his help in healing his mother, who is ill back in London:

“‘But please, please – won’t you – can’t you give me something that will cure Mother?’  Up till then he had been looking at the Lion’s great feet and the huge claws on them; now in his despair, he looked up at its face. What he saw surprised him as much as anything in his whole life.  For the tawny face was bent down near his own and (wonder of wonders) great shining tears stood in the Lion’s eyes. There were such big, bright tears compared with Digory’s own that for a moment he felt as if the Lion must really be sorrier about his Mother than he was himself. ‘My son, my son,’ said Aslan.  ‘I know.  Grief is great.  Only you and I in this land know that yet.  Let us be good to one another'”

Aslan then assigns Digory the task of obtaining an apple from a special tree. Digory does not know why he is to secure this apple.  Like Adam, he is tempted by *Jadis (who would “later” become the White Witch).  He thwarts her attempts and returns to Aslan with the apple.  Aslan then plants a tree.  Digory informs Aslan that Jadis tried to persuade him to eat the apple (as opposed to following  orders and delivering it to Aslan).  Aslan continues:

‘”Understand, then, that it would have healed her; but not to your joy or hers.  The day would have come when both you and she would have looked back and said it would have been better to die in that illness.’ And Digory could say nothing, for tears choked him and he gave up all hopes of saving his Mother’s life; but at the same time he knew that the Lion knew what would have happened, and that there might be things more terrible even than losing someone you love by death.  But now Aslan was speaking again, almost in a whisper: ‘That is what would have happened, child, with a stolen apple.  It is not what will happen now.  What I give you now will bring joy. It will not, in your world, give endless life, but it will heal.  Go.  Pluck an apple from the Tree.”

God, I prayed, isn’t there something else I could do?  Some magic apple I can carry back to her to eliminate the cancer? No, but I have something real and far better.  I have faith in a God who can truly heal her.  He can purge these “antagonists” out of her body.  I must pray and believe, believe with every fiber of my being that healing would come.

Fighting back tears, I progressed into the final chapter of Magician’s Nephew. Digory and his friend Polly plant a seed from the Narnian apple and, to their astonishment, it begins to quickly sprout.

“About a week after this it was quite certain that Digory’s Mother was getting better.  About a fortnight later she was able to sit out in the garden.  And a month later that whole house had become a different place.  Aunt Letty did everything that Mother liked; windows were opened, frowsy curtains were drawn back to brighten up the rooms, there were new flowers everywhere, and nicer things to eat.  And the old piano was tuned and Mother took up her singing again, and had such games with Digory and Polly…”

Aslan was the hero.  I found mysterious strength in that.  I was not retreating from reality by reading Narnia, rather I was seeing God’s promises through it. My mother, on Saint Patrick’s Day of last year, underwent a single masectomy.  The cancer had NOT spread to her lymph nodes, but thankfully was contained in a specific area.  Today, she is cancer free.  I cannot thank God enough for the “apple”, the healing He delivered.  Not a day goes by that I don’t ponder and appreciate it.

The truth is, control is merely an illusion.  If you believe that Christ has a plan for you, you can certainly ignore that plan and take another route (not recommended) or you can surrender to it.  If you believe God is in control, then you must admit that ultimately you are NOT.  Some may feel helpless, but to some degree, I feel liberated.  I am fairly clumsy, so Heaven help me if I were left to determine my own path. I continually need a hero, a safety net.  This life can be difficult to navigate, but like the people of Gotham City, I can look up and know help is lingering above me.  His reach far exceeds the stretch of a rescue signal. We also know that God will grant peace to the victims’ families during this horrific time.  I pray they can endure each day with the supernatural strength supplied by our Father.

Because in the end, the hero is going to win.  The ride may cause our stomachs to turn, may cause us to question if the help really exists, but we know that just before the credits, hope will persevere.  Justice will come, and that swiftly.

My prayers continue for the victims’ families of the Aurora tragedy.  But the story has not reached its conclusion yet, so do not fear. Our Hero, and our hope, will prevail.

*”Later” is cautiously used, dependent upon the order in which one reads The Chronicles of Narnia.  If one reads them in originally published order, The Magician’s Nephew would be next to last (6th).  However, if one reads them in the “intended” order, The Magician’s Nephew would be first.

The last few weeks have been an amalgam of emotions. I have been helping people move.  In a casual sense, this is simply packing one’s belongings up and placing them in a new space.  Over the course of our lifetimes, we move our belongings several times.  The place we choose to live is intimate, a sanctuary perhaps, and reveals much about the things we choose to surround ourselves with.  That is why the first move has been so difficult.

About five years ago, my gregarious grandmother began to exhibit strange behavior.  I went to visit her and introduce her to my new addition (my dog Lucy) when I noticed how she would stray from the topic of conversation unexpectedly.  She began to cry about the loss of her husband, who had died three years prior. She seemed to handle it well despite her grief, but it seemed that the foundation which had supported her strength had collapsed, tumbling beneath the weight of some fresh and enigmatic misery.  After visiting the doctor, she was diagnosed with dementia.  Dementia is a subtle thief.  At first, she would seem disoriented and confused.  She once told my mother, in a moment of clarity, that it was a great tragedy when she couldn’t trust her mind anymore.  She struggled to distinguish fiction from reality, claiming that her first husband, who died nearly 35 years ago, was still alive and being unfaithful. Mental atrophy kept punishing her until she finally required daily assistance.  A vacancy replaced her previous vibrancy.  We were beginning to lose her, perhaps not physically but mentally.  After enduring a long fight to keep her home, the family decided to move her permanently into a retirement home.  As we began to clean out a lifetime of memories to prepare the home for sale, I recognized how brief life can be. The Bible says life is a vapor.  Job 14:2 states:

We blossom like a flower and then wither. Like a passing shadow, we quickly disappear (New Living Translation).

Her home is full of artifacts which have taken a lifetime to accumulate, relics of a long past and of a life well-lived.  But all this will pass away.  The things we cling to in life will eventually suffer our absence.  Either we will pass these on to others, our children will sell them to strangers, or someone will dispose of these items.  We cannot hold on to these things forever.  This is why the Bible suggests that we store treasures in Heaven; the brevity of our lives prevents us from keeping our possessions infinitely.  So as I dig elbow-deep in my grandmother’s memories, I am reminded of my own memories of her. Pictures, spools of thread (she was a seamstress), her vast collection of frogs – all of these things are symbols to a life of laughing often and loving consistently, of laboring proudly and living faithfully.

A few days later, I found myself applying a new coat of paint to a master and guest bedroom.  Our friends recently purchased their first home, and as the sun blazed down on us that summer afternoon, the humidity could not exceed the excitement and anticipation our friends felt as they moved from their apartment to the new house. There is something lovely about new beginnings in this respect.  We embrace it – it’s the page of the new chapter we long to read.

It’s moments like the latter which make the former so painful to endure.  We know every beginning has an end, but not everyone accepts that these ends usher in beginnings.  Not everyone believes in life after death.  I do, but this hope does not insulate us from the pain of loss and/or separation. There are fragments of my grandmother which are lost (in this world) forever.  As I mentioned a few posts ago, homesickness is proof that we are made for another world.  A sense of restlessness is easily diagnosed as an inherent desire for a world beyond ours. As I pondered the past while clearing my grandmother’s home, I thought of C.S. Lewis’s remarkable sermon The Weight of Glory and the echoes of Heaven we experience on Earth.  There are moments of beauty that arrest us and transform the lens with which we view our world.  As time passes, we may long for that feeling again, even returning to the place of the occurrence.  Lewis warns us to prepare for disappointment; only God can satisfy these desires:

Wordsworth’s expedient was to identify it with certain moments in his own past. But all this is a cheat.  If Wordsworth had gone back to those moments in the past, he would not have found the thing itself, but only the reminder of it; what he remembered would turn out to be itself a remembering.  The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust to them, it was not in them, it only came through them, and what came through them was longing.  These things – the beauty, the memory of our own past – are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself, they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshippers.  For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard , news from a country we have never yet visited…our real goal is elsewhere. (31)

Two years ago, I returned to the campus of Berea College.  I spent my first two years of college there, developing personally and academically.  So many memories rushed through me as I approached campus.  I exited my car and walked around for a few minutes, recalling special moments with friends, of the life between classes – it was the backdrop for my bildungsroman, my coming-of-age.  However, as I looked around, I saw strangers.  There are new students matriculating through Berea now, new locals, new businesses.

Time is always moving.  Moving denotes a sense of motion; it suggests that we are in essence always pursuing a path, even if we elect not to choose one.  Neglecting to choose, you see, is a choice in itself.  Every minute we are walking these paths.  We experience joy and we keep moving.  We also experience pain, but we keep moving.  Whatever our next “move” is, we understand that we are always in motion. Beginnings lead to ends, which lead to beginnings.  If we observe our world, we see how God creates and utilizes cycles – the seasons, nature, even our own lives (Shakespeare called growing old a “second childishness”). Why would God disrupt this pattern when it concerns our eternities?  If the rain feeds into oceans, which later evaporates into the sky, why would we doubt that God has prepared something greater for us, the children He loves and adores?  Consider the lillies??

A time will come when someone will be elbow-deep in my possessions, but one cannot dwell on such mundane realities.  If life is A-Z, use B-Y to do something valuable for present and future generations.  Your beneficiaries will eventually sift through your belongings, but what legacy will you leave them?  Approach your life with optimism and contentment.  If you have stains in your past, know that there are always opportunities for beginnings.  Wake up tomorrow and strive for greatness. You’ll be moving anyway, so why not reexamine your life and aim for something extraordinary?

Just recently, my husband and I celebrated our twelfth wedding anniversary.  That morning, I woke up early and on my way through the house, noticed something different in our living room.  As I turned on the light, I was nearly in tears at what I saw…

My husband purchased a rose for every month of our marriage.  I’m not much of a math whiz, but that is 144 roses.  It’s hard to believe when you find such a romantic token of affection on the coffee table that the months can accumulate like this.  Here’s March of 2004, and there is November 2001.  There are twelve roses for every Valentine’s Day.

But there are also roses for the hard months.  There is one for January of 2011, when my Mom was diagnosed with breast cancer (and there is also one for March 2011 when she beat it).  There is a rose for September of 2009 when my Dad (whom I discussed a couple of posts ago) underwent quadruple bypass.  There are several roses representing the difficulty I had when writing my dissertation (and therefore neglecting my husband).

Roses are a wonderful symbol of love but in this case, they also reminded me of the sturdiness of true love.  TRUE love is not what we often see manifested in culture.  Real love requires time and effort, and also a consistency of both in order to maintain it.  When I teach love poetry, I often tell my students that real love is rarely portrayed in our society.  Rather we are innundated with images of LUST.  Lust is a poor substitute for real love.  Furthermore, some people never experience real love because they are not patient enough or because their “ideals” of love are not resilient.  The Bible defines love in I Corinthians 13: 4-8:

Love is patient and  kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not  insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at  wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth.  Love bears all things, believes  all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends. As for  prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for  knowledge, it will pass away.

Also, an obscure poet by the name of William Shakespeare also defined love in his Sonnet 116:

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.
Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle’s compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

Do you see a theme?  Love perseveres over time.  It is not fueled by lust, but by compassion and genuine affection for an individual.  When time adds a few wrinkles, love does not care (although cosmetic surgeons may disagree with this assertion).  Love is not given enough credit for its durability.  It’s so suffocated by images of jewelry, chocolates, and lingerie, that it cannot be seen as a band-aid, a cushion, or even protective padding. When life gets tough, love helps carry us through.  Too many people in my generation believe that when they face a tough situation in their relationship, “It’s over.”  No, no; it is just beginning.  Tests of the relationship will come.  It is how you endure it that will make all the difference.

My marriage has endured issues over the years, but it has always emerged stronger than before.  The night I fell in love with my husband was a most special evening.  We played in a Christian band together and attended a church service.  Afterwards, we along with some other friends visited a bridge over a quiet stream nestled idyllicly in a meadow.  He and I sat in the grass talking and, to our great consternation, a meteor shower began.  Disclaimer:  I PROMISE, I am not fabricating this.  This is not a story distorted into fiction by sentamentality.  This REALLY happened.  I firmly believed that it was God’s validation that Aaron would one day be my husband.  Sometimes, I go back to that meadow in my mind’s eye.  The breeze was blowing, the creek was whispering and carrying leaves on a journey downstream.  The moon flooded the meadow and when my eyes returned from the sky, they met his.  Years will pass, but I still cling to that moment because I know God prepared it for us.  The great C.S. Lewis warns us against these moments, because some people tend to set it up as “the standard.”  Fleeting moments are never the standard, as the outline of mountains always lead to valleys.  Lewis warns us to appreciate these stolen moments (which the great poet Wordsworth referred to as “spots of time”) but to distrust them as they are inconsistent.  But what is consistent in this life?

Love is.  True love endures tough issues because love is stronger.  That is how God created love to be.  This is why it is best to trust Him to write your love story, as I did.  Your love story is something special to you, something organic and realistic.  I never juxtapose my relationship to the relationships of others or to what is reflected on television and in culture.  My love story was especially written for me by a God who created love.  And every word, every page, every chapter has His fingerprints on it.

Here’s to my wonderful husband and many more happy years together!

If you happened to turn on your television today, you could not avoid the onslaught of media coverage that now (unfortunately) defines American politics.  At lunch, I overheard a man muttering on about communism, while the media channels featured an inventory of political analysts who wasted no time appearing on various shows spouting diatribes about the ruin or resuscitation of our country.  I am, by no means, attempting to place a prominent religious figure in this prayground brawl, but wish to illustrate the preceptiveness of C.S. Lewis’s remarks, showing how the issues he highlighted are as relevant today (if not moreso) than in his time.

Some of you will probably think this title quite presumptuous.  In all honesty, I would also.  I, along with the next Lewis fan, shudder to associate Lewis with any political agenda.  In fact, Lewis himself was cautious in even creating the illusion of these associations during his lifetime.  For example, his polite refusal to accept the Commissioner of the British Empire award was not simply out of modesty, but rather a desire to disassociate himself with the conservative party.  In his response to Prime Minister Winston Churchill, Lewis writes,

 I feel greatly obliged to the Prime Minister, and so far as my personal feelings are concerned this honour would be highly agreeable.  There are always however knaves who say, and fools who believe, that my religious writings are all covert anti-Leftist propaganda, and my apprearance in the Honors List would of course strengthen their hands.  It is therefore better than I should not appear there… (4 Dec. 1951).

Lewis understood the burden of social expectations. More importantly for this post, this excerpt illustrates that Lewis was acutely aware of the political minefield and how actions can be misinterpreted as subtle endorsement for political agendas.

The Necessity of Government

Lewis was not a utopian. He understood the purpose of governing bodies.   He stressed the necessity of governments in establishing order, for punishing criminals and maintaining a semblance of peace.  Ultimately, man’s rule cannot usurp God’s rule, nor can man rule like God because God is the perfect head of the body (see I Corinthians 12 concerning the democracy of the Body of Christ). Lewis never considered himself a political expert.  In his essay “Equality,” Lewis writes, “I don’t deserve a share in governing a hen-roost, much less a nation.  Nor do most people – all the people who believe advertisements, and think in catchwords and spread rumors.  The real reason for democracy is just the reverse.  Mankind is so fallen that no man can be trusted with unchecked power over his fellows” (17).

Lewis wisely did not outright criticize his government, nor the governments of other countries (with one particular exception for the Nazi government, but this is well-justified).  Government is a necessary component of modern culture, but as my dissertation on Lewis’s leadership explored, Lewis exposed some of the common errors of governments, as well as the tempting mistress Power and her problematic offspring Pride (which Lewis examines more thoroughly in works like Mere Christianity).

The Welfare State

Lewis was rather forthcoming with his opinions on the role of government as “mothering” the people, although he was sure to camoflage it in fictional works such as The Chronicles of Narnia, The Screwtape Letters and That Hideous Strength.  Most of his opinions are buried deeply and subtley in his Collected Letters.  The government’s  role as “parent” reduces men to wards while convincing him that simplicity prevents a full understanding of complex legislation.  Of course, this provides the so-called government an opportunity to run amok while the people shrug their shoulders in apathy and ignorance. In a letter to Vera Gebbert dated 28 July 1952, Lewis refers to the Welfare State as “The Farewell State” as it disposes of individual independence.

Perhaps in no other text is this perspective more evident than in the essay “Willing Slaves of the Welfare State” (which I will be discussing in a forthcoming Essay Chat on the All About Jack podcast). This essay can be found in the collection God in the Dock.  Lewis was asked to answer two questions: 1) Is man progressing today? and 2) Is progress even possible?  Here Lewis detects an altered relationship between “Government and subjects.”  We are conditioned to obey our government (he calls us “tamed animals”), but never to question it, which ultimately creates children out of citizens.  True happiness is a luxury of independence:

I believe a man is happier, and happy in a richer way, if he has ‘the freeborn mind’.  But I doubt whether he can have this without economic independence, which the new society is abolishing.  For economic independence allows an education not controlled by Government; and in adult life it is the man who needs, and asks, nothing of Government who can criticise its acts and snap his fingers at its ideology…Who will talk like that when the State is everyone’s schoolmaster and employer?  (514)

However, Lewis highlights the fact that a Welfare State can certainly provide for those who are in need (as the Bible commands us), although this often comes at the expense of freedoms:

In every age those who wish to be our masters, if they have any sense, secure our obedience by offereing deliverance from our dominant fear.  When we fear wizards the Medicine Man can rule the whole tribe.  When we fear a stronger tribe our best warrior becomes King.  When all the world fears Hell the Church becomes theocracy. ‘Give up your freedom and I will make you safe’ is, age after age, the terrible offer.  In England the omnipotent Welfare State has triumphanted because it promised to free us from the fear of poverty.  Mind you, the bargain is sometimes, for a while, kept.  A warrior king may really save a tribe from extinction: the Welfare State, at a cost, has come nearer than any society ever did before to giving every man a square meal and a good house to eat it in….But we cannot trust these New Masters any more than their predecessors.  Do you see any solution?  (9 Dec 1959)

Lewis publically lauded Orwell’s politcal allegory Animal Farm. Power in the hands of fallen men is chaos. “Fallen,” mind you, is a term for our propensity for sin, not a particular political persuasion.  History proves men’s fallacy time and time again.  The goverment can alleviate, but never eradicate all issues, be they novel or perennial.  In fact, a government can often create issues itself.  Must we seek dependency from our government like we do our God?  Are we too content with the breastmilk of Lady Liberty to ask for solid food (“Lady Liberty” is quite an ironic title for a State which requires utmost loyalty and dependency)?

So we return to the current legislation.  Lewis himself benefitted from English healthcare, so by his own admission he cannot criticize a system from which he (and his family including his ailing wife Joy) received so much assistance.  The deeper question is, “How much is too much?”  What amount of governmental intercession is too intrusive?  How much is adequate?  Such a determination is perhaps subjective.  Most would agree that the government should help those who truly require assistance, but even Lewis dares to inquire, “Is there any possibility of getting the super Welfare State’s honey and avoiding the sting?” (515).

If you read this blog seeking ammunition or approbation, my apologies in delivering disappointment. Lewis only expressed his discontent on policies which he felt were outrageously amoral,  unethical, or unBiblical. I acknowledge that the issues concerning today’s ruling in conjunction with abortion and birth control would certainly fall in these categories for many religious voters, but the rest is yet to be seen.  Ultimately, the ruling is left to stir discussion, to keep friends and opponents locked in endless debate.  Lewis’s best advice, as he states to Mary Willis Shelburne on 20 October 1957, is to keep moving forward with prayerful consideration:

The great thing, as you have obviously seen…is to live from day to day and hour to hour not adding the past or future to the present.  As one lived in the Front Line ‘They’re not shelling us at the  moment, and it’s not raining, and the rations have come up, so let’s enjoy ourselves.’ In fact, as Our Lord said, “Sufficient unto the day’. 

Praying for our leaders, instead of grumbling, is our first job as citizens.  Lewis admits in a letter he prayed often for his leaders, even leaders of enemy camps such as Hitler and Mussolini.  Complaining is far easier, but far less effective.  American politics is one of great dramatic twists and turns, more of what appears to be playacting than policymaking.  But let us not confuse reality for a pantomine.  Policies made today affect our lives and the lives of our children.  Perhaps we will always make a pageantry of our politics, but let us never forget the significance of their impact.

In America, we enjoy the consititutional freedoms of stating our opinions.  We may always disagree on various policies, but we must never let the disagreement injure the tapestry which characterizes our nation.   Perhaps our desire to state our case, no matter the reception, is something which ironically unites us as a nation.  Sometimes we actually encourage the drama further, as an audience member yells from his seat to the actors onstage.

To conclude, we share a chuckle and enjoy some comic relief over Lewis’s observation of American government, an excerpt from the aforementioned letter to Vera Gebbert and an example of the “passion” Americans possess for their politics:

Does anyone in America understand American politics? Certainly no one over here can make out what is happening, in spite of numerous inspired articles by so called experts…I thought I was going to learn something from an old lady in Connecticut [Mrs. Frank Jones] the other day, but at the end of eight pages so hot that they nearly burnt my fingers, all I could gather was that the ‘Dumbocrats’ as she called them, are a sort of mixture of Hitler, the Russian secret police, and the inmates of the village lunatic asylum: but no doubt this view is a little prejudiced. 

Father’s Day has now passed.  New ties are probably hanging in his closet or a new driver is in his golf bag.  Celebatory meals have been digested, cards given, hugs exchanged.

However, one day seems grossly inadequate to thank someone who has contributed so much, doesn’t it?

One of the reasons why I don’t have children yet (and, trust me, I am asked quite frequently) is because parenting is a challenging job.  Raising the next generation is a difficult task, and one not to be taken lightly.  My parents are amazing people, and I am continually grateful for their leadership and guidance in my life.  My Dad has been a perpetual inspiration.  He  and my mother have modeled for me the Christian walk, pushed me to achieve my goals and dreams, and have loved me unconditionally.  I may be chided for being sentimental, but I will gladly endure it for a man who richly deserves it.

In honor of Father’s Day, I want to identify how my father has influenced me:

1. He Has Shown Me That True Character Is Illustrated at Home.

Transparency is something I admire in people, namely because of my Dad.  My father is the same at home as anywhere else.  This authenticity is rare.  I aspire to be transparent as much as possible because such honesty is a virtue.  Those who know him will attest to his genuine character, his warm and congenial nature, and his gentle spirit.

 2. He “Postures” Responsbility and the Christian Walk

This, I believe, is one of the most prominent responsibilities of parenting.  Children learn the posture of life from parents.  In my years of teaching, I have seen children choose two distinct paths: 1) to follow in the footsteps of their parents (in both good and bad aspects) or 2) to develop into the complete opposite of what their parents are.  Of course, I am discussing teenagers here, not adults.  If you study successful adults, you will see that they succeed BECAUSE of their circumstances or DESPITE their circumstances.  Good behavior is established first in the home.  I will not delve into any nature versus nurture arguments, but I do believe that a healthy environment creates a conducive arena for reinforcing good behaviors. I had a fantastic one, thanks to the leadership of my Dad and his Biblical guidance by my Heavenly Father.

3. He is Selfless and Possesses Compassion for Others

My father is the most selfless man I have ever met.  You may argue that I’m biased, but it’s true.  For his birthday and Christmas gifts, he usually asks for work clothes or something practical.  As an adult, I refuse to do this, but insist on buying him something he will enjoy.  I cannot, in one simple blog post, explain thoroughly all of the ways that he has loved and cared for me over the years.  He and my Mom have cheered me on at nearly everything I have even done (even as an adult).  He was my baseball coach, has watched me graduate four times, and has been in the audience for almost every singing engagement I have ever had.  By the way, my Dad is an excellent bass singer and has sung in various gospel groups over the year.  My love of music stems from early memories of seeing my father warble on stage.

As an adult, I have often asked myself, “How would Dad handle this?” When I was a child, I remember Dad stopping on the side of the road to help stranded strangers or spending copious amounts of time after a long workday assisting others.  I count it a great privilege to be able to call and ask his advice, to benefit from his knowledge and wisdom.

This compassion also extends to animals.  I possess a strong desire to help animals and be an advocate for animal rights.  My parents always allowed me to have a pet (when I was of appropriate age) and taught me how to be a good steward of things with which God has entrusted me.

4. He Reinforced My Work Ethic

My Dad is a hard worker.  He maximizes so much of his time by being productive.  He doesn’t watch much television, but spends his time giving to others and working on projects as a hobby.  My insatiable work ethic, I am certain, is hard-coded into my DNA.  My parents taught me that, in whatever I endeavor, always give 110%.  This advice has served me well in my adult life.

5. He (Along with My Mom) Encouraged Me to Love Education

My parents never attended college, but you wouldn’t have known it in our home.  My parents, nearly from infancy, insisted that I go to college.  They pushed me to make good grades and to desire academic success. They always helped me with homework, which unfortunately included hours of algebraic equations.  Certainly there is a badge or award for parents who endure so much yucky homework for the sake of their child’s welfare!

6. He  and my Mom Modeled a Healthy, Loving Marriage

My parents just celebrated their 35th wedding anniversary.  How many people can boast such an accomplishment?  After 38 years (they dated for three), they are still crazy in love with each other.  They still hold hands.  My Dad had heart surgery in 2009 and my Mom beat breast cancer last year.  Through these tumultuous times, they clung to God and to each other.  As a child, I erroneously assumed everyone had a home life like mine.  Teaching has sobered me to the hard realities of life and made me realize what a privilege it was to have two loving parents.

Also, my father taught me how a man should love, respect, defend, and ultimately treat a woman.  I truly believe I have a good marriage (almost 12 years) because my parents modeled for me what a “good marriage” is.  He made me feel like I was the most important little girl in the world so I would go on to marry a man who believes I am the most important woman in the world.  By illustrating how to establish a household full of love, he has secured for me the perpetuity of a stable home life.  For this, I am forever grateful.

There are many others, but I will pause here.  If you are still blessed enough to have your father, call him and talk.  Even if you have past resentments or difficult feelings you still harbor, understand what a privilege it is to still have him.  Thank him for what he has done.

Happy Father’s Day (belated) to all fathers!