On C.S. Lewis.

My hand raised in abrupt frustration, mouth pursed and tense, sitting rigid in my seat. "Um, are we ever going to read the Bible?! Isn't this "Bible" class?!" I gnawed at my lip, smoldering in my desk.

Eleventh grade. Bible class. Ethics. Mr. Hoekstra. His student-teacher. Blue-grey carpet with creamed walls, desk lined inside. Books and texts and backpacks and pens strewn about.

Thus began my aversion to everything C.S. Lewis.

Oh, how many times have I heard, "C.S. Lewis says..." or "Well, C.S. Lewis..." or "According to C.S. Lewis..." or "I was reading C.S. Lewis...." Oh to hear the tone of my voice and inclination in my jaded reprieve; even sarcasm lacks the growl that vents into my words.

Then, to add insult to misery, even Taylor University set up The Center of Study for C.S. Lewis the year I graduated.

It seems everyone is fascinated, mesmerized, captivated, and enthralled at this Master. Like he alone is Aslan. And they are mortal readers, bowed at his feet, sucking from him their very lifeblood.

But I, stand alone, hedged against this mortared piling of essays of poems of books of quotes of writers of readers of film, of everything labeled, or every known to be touched by the mystic power of C.S. Lewis.

Then along came Jonathan Keenan and his handing over of Sheldon VanAuken's words penned in love story form, A Severe Mercy (link to blogpost). Only in this book, did I find myself peeking and peering in to this legacy of man with respect and honor and admiration and interest for the first time. Only in reading VanAuken's words did I dare quiver to turn the page, find more of their letters exchanged, script induced with profound yet so-simple language that I sat back often, perplexed with understanding, to mire through the understated and grapple with its applications. It was their relationship that opened the door to a mellowing of my soul. I was fascinated by their intimacy -- shared in pen -- and the intellectual depth that gave breadth to faith.

This past month, I was handed a second book, my own copies of Mere Christianity and The Screwtape Letters still as dust gathered on the shelf. Rachel (Mark's mom) lent me Through the Shadowlands and I mauled through it in one transcontinental flight from Seattle. Though written in prose, in factual and biographical style, its intricacy of detail further propelled the quelling of my brooding ostracism.

"You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call him Lord and God." (p58)

I again stirred. Liar and Lunatic, or Lover and Lord. C.S. Lewis. Perhaps, this man, this human born of flesh, remained of flesh, is one to be modeled after, crafted towards. Perhaps he was a prophet of his own right, regarded as the twentieth century instigator of intellectual faith, by merely his simplicity in complexion.

I comb through the pages, struck and stunned by his words shared in letters, regarded in speeches, broadcast in radiowaves, printed in pamphlets, and languaged in rows on shelves. His way is of ease, his life quarantined to the closest few. His faith, though, a source of friendship for those ruminated with questions for conversation.

And so here I find myself. Sitting too with C.S. Lewis. Pondering the complicated and the elementary. Asking him fusions of my own thoughts, a synthesis of questions and statements, remarks and rhetoric.

And wondering, if all my perceptions were a misnomer. If perhaps the jarring I felt, the onslaught of contempt, the banishment of his print, the scorn tied to his name, is all derived from.... truth. If instead, this man, this C.S. Lewis, and I would find ourselves at The Eagle and Child stewing and sharing and writing together, and forge a friendship on such behalf. If perhaps, C.S. Lewis is more of a great orator than I lended. If perhaps, he was just a man, used by the God-Man, to make heaven a little more understood to earth, and earth a little more accessed to heaven.

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Footmark from Trish:

There was once a 9 year old boy who was afraid he loved Aslan more than he loved Jesus. Here is CS Lewis' response:

"Tell Laurence from me, with my love," Lewis wrote in a detailed letter, "[He] can't really love Aslan more than Jesus, even if he feels that's what he is doing. For the things he loves Aslan for doing or saying are simply the things Jesus really did and said. So that when Laurence thinks he is loving Aslan, he is really loving Jesus: and perhaps loving Him more than he ever did before. I don't think he need be bothered at all. God knows all about the way a little boy's imagination works (He made it, after all)."