Tag: Healing

C.S. Lewis, Dentistry & Bones

On By robstroudIn C.S. Lewis, Christian Life, Christianity, Family, Marriage9 Comments

Visiting the dentist for a regular check-up is one thing. Going there to address a painful problem is quite another. That is a truth everyone – including Oxford’s great scholar, C.S. Lewis – understands.

Occasional comments in his letters reflect on his mixed attitude toward dentistry. In 1914 he related to his father this balanced attitude. Many readers will identify with his ironic opening.

This week I have enjoyed the doubtful privilege of having two teeth extracted, both of which had been bothering me a good deal off and on this term. The dentist, who is a thoroughly competent official, pronounced his verdict that as they had been tinkered with over and over again, and were now hopelessly rotten, they had better come out. So out they came, with gas, and I think it was a good job.

I too have “enjoyed the doubtful privilege.” Like Lewis, I appreciate the skill and care of dentists, but hold an aversion to the more painful of their interventions.

Typically, C.S. Lewis was able to use our complex attitudes toward dental work, one of the “necessary evils of life” (Surprised by Joy), to teach about larger truths. An interesting piece on the subject can be seen here.

Lewis says when we move toward God, it will be like going to the dentist. If we dodge and hesitate to move, our aches will only increase.

Lewis wouldn’t tell his mother about his toothache because he knew it meant fixing it, and that likely meant the pokes and prods of the dentist on other infected teeth. So he hid and endured the pain for a time. It didn’t help. And it doesn’t help when we hesitate to be upturn our lives for Jesus. “Our Lord is like the dentists,” Lewis says. “He will give you the full treatment.”

As Lewis learned from experience during his extractions, healthy teeth are inseparable from bone, which forms the “tooth sockets.”

Which segues into a subject of even more significance to C.S. Lewis and every other lifeform with a skeleton: bones. But before we discuss that subject, allow me to share a personal note.

A Patient’s Dilemma

The reason dentistry is on my mind comes from the fact that I recently endured the extraction of one of my molars. That initiated the involved (and expensive) process of getting a “dental implant.”

The molar had served me well for decades, even after having a root canal many years ago. Its full golden crown still shines radiantly. Sadly, one of its roots fractured, and an endodontist determined removal is the only option.

For those who will someday follow this regrettable path, we no longer have to resort to human (or animal) bone to restore our jaws after the extraction of the renegade teeth.

Yes, that’s right. The most common “grafting material” has historically been bone. While it’s possible to transplant some of your own, it usually comes from another source.

Autograft Tissue is from your own body. Allograft Tissue is donated by another – typically deceased – individual. I wonder if others find the thought of having cadaver bone added to one’s personal physiology unsettling.

I’ve been an organ donor since I was first able to sign up. Sadly, being stationed in England during the spread of the Mad Cow Disease (bovine spongiform encephalopathy) has reduced any future value for my redundant body parts.

The seriousness of the danger is revealed in the story of Sergeant Major James Alford, a Green Beret who contracted it during his military service.

Speaking of the armed forces, the military is on the leading edge of medical advances. Shortly before I required my own bone graft, I read a fascinating press release from the Veterans Affairs Health Care System. It describes a new system for using 3D printers to create “3-dimensional bioprinting of vascularized bone tissue.” This breakthrough promises to relieve the suffering of countless people with bone injuries and ailments.

For VA Ventures, the future of using 3D printing to build constructs from each patient’s own cells, matched to their anatomy and defect geometry will soon be a reality, offering customized bone tissue grafts at the point of care.

The connection between teeth and bones is one thing, but there are far more important bones in the human body than the sockets in our jaw bones.

C.S. Lewis & Bone Disease

C.S. Lewis died young; he was nearing his sixty-fifth birthday. Toward the end of his life, he suffered from osteoporosis. He describes his diagnosis in a 1957 letter.

My back turns out to be not slipped disc but osteoporosis – a spongy condition of the bones that is common in men of 75 but almost unknown at my age (58). After full investigation by a great Professor of Pathology the cause remains quite obscure.

It has passed the stage of spasms and screams (each was rather like having a tooth out with no anaesthetic and you never knew when they were coming!), but I still ache a good deal and need sleeping draughts.

As vividly as C.S. Lewis describes the pain created by his bone disease, it diminished to nothing in comparison to the suffering of his wife, Joy. She was dying of cancer resident primarily in her bones, when Lewis married her at her hospital bedside.

Although she would eventually succumb to the disease, she experienced a miraculous respite after an Anglican priest prayed for her healing as he laid his hands upon her frail, pain-racked body.

Peter Bide had laid hands on Joy and prayed for her healing because, some years earlier, he had discovered that when he did this people often were indeed healed: he possessed, it appears, what the Church calls the gift of healing.

In January 1959 an essay by Lewis appeared in the Atlantic Monthly; it was called “The Efficacy of Prayer,” and one of its early paragraphs goes like this: I have stood by the bedside of a woman whose thigh-bone was eaten through with cancer and who had thriving colonies of disease in many other bones as well. It took three people to move her in bed. The doctors predicted a few months of life, the nurses (who often know better), a few weeks. A good man laid his hands on her and prayed. A year later the patient was walking (uphill, too, through rough woodland) and the man who took the last x-rays was saying, “These bones are solid as rock. It’s miraculous.” (The Narnian: The Life and Imagination of C. S. Lewis).

Sadly, Joy’s remission was only that. She did, however, live for several years. Her relative health even allowed the couple to take a bona fide honeymoon.

During her terminal illness, Lewis resorted to a questionable practice to which many of us can personally relate. He prayed that God might spare his wife, and transfer her pain to him instead. This common prayer is fueled by the desperation and helplessness we feel as we witness the suffering of our loved ones.

On these grounds Lewis began [after her release from the hospital] to pray for Joy’s sufferings to be transferred to him. Soon thereafter, Joy’s bones began to heal, and Lewis’s began to weaken. He did not get cancer but rather osteoporosis; nevertheless, as the pain in her bones decreased, his increased.

To Sister Penelope he wrote about his worst period: “I was losing calcium just about as fast as Joy was gaining it, and a bargain (if it were one) for which I’m very thankful.” In the same conversation in which he told Coghill of his unexpected happiness, he explained that he believed that God had allowed him to accept in his body her pain: the way of exchange.

These were for him very strange times. When he still thought that, despite his osteoporosis, Joy was dying, he wrote to Dorothy Sayers . . . “Indeed the situation is not easy to describe. My heart is breaking and I was never so happy before; at any rate there is more in life than I knew about.”

But at this point he still had little hope, though he noticed that she seemed much better than the doctors told him she really was, despite her bedridden status. By November he could tell Sister Penelope that Joy was walking with a cane; a month later he could tell a godson that she “has made an almost miraculous, certainly an unexpected, recovery.”

In August 1958 he wrote to a friend to say that “my wife walks up the wooded hill behind our house”; it seems likely that the image of her doing so was what went into the Atlantic essay. “All goes amazingly well with us.” (The Narnian: The Life and Imagination of C. S. Lewis).

In the previously cited 1957 correspondence, C.S. Lewis describes a curious interplay between their two ailments. It notes a practical benefit to his own osteoporosis.

Joy is now home, home from hospital, completely bed-ridden. The cancer is ‘arrested,’ which means, I fear, hardly any hope for the long term issue, but for the moment, apparently perfect health, no pain, eating & sleeping like a child, spirits usually excellent, able to beat me always at Scrabble and sometimes in argument.

She runs the whole house from her bed and keeps a pack of women not only loving her but (what’s rarer) one another. We are crazily in love. . . .

My back turns out to be not slipped disc but osteoporosis . . . Can you realise the good side? Poor Joy, after being the sole object of pity & anxiety can now perform the truly wifely function of fussing over me – I’m in pain and sit it out – and of course the psychological effect is extremely good. It banishes all that wearisome sense of being no use. You see, I’m very willing to have osteoporosis at this price.

To recognize the grace in being the one “in need,” is a wonderful gift. Something only the mature can ever possess.

So, once again we see just how much we have in common with the creator of Narnia. We may lack his brilliance, and fall shy of his skills as a communicator . . . but his willingness to lay bare his own life, offers encouragement to us as we experience the same challenges – and joys.

Medical Science and God

On By robstroudIn C.S. Lewis, History, Military History, The Future3 Comments

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In his essay entitled “Miracles,” C.S. Lewis described during World War II the Christian viewpoint that God is the author of healing. After discussing the natural order of creation, he argues that God is at work in restoring the health of the those who are ailing.

The miracles of healing [are] sometimes obscured for us by the somewhat magical view we tend to take of ordinary medicine. The doctors themselves do not take this view. The magic is not in the medicine but in the patient’s body.

What the doctor does is to stimulate Nature’s functions in the body, or to remove hindrances. In a sense, though we speak for convenience of healing a cut, every cut heals itself; no dressing will make skin grow over a cut on a corpse.

That same mysterious energy which we call gravitational when it steers the planets and biochemical when it heals a body is the efficient cause of all recoveries, and if God exists, that energy, directly or indirectly, is His. All who are cured are cured by Him . . .

No veteran of World War I trenches would have been unacquainted with the horrors of grievous wounds. Much less a soldier, like C.S. Lewis, who was wounded by an artillery shell that killed a friend standing next to him.

That is why every combat veteran can stand in joyful awe at a science fiction healing tool that is being created a century after the war to end all wars. (Peter Jackson, of Middle Earth fame, just released a moving film about the war. You can listen to Michael Medved’s review of “They Shall Not Grow Old.”.)

The Healing of a Cut

I recently learned about an amazing wave of research related to the relatively new concept of 3D Printing. Even as new applications for these three-dimensional printers are exploding (they even make prostheses!), a variation of the technology is being developed to heal living skin.

Now, this is not like a medicine or bandage of some type. The process actually involves “printing” new skin by laying down layer after layer of one’s own cells over a wound.

Sounds like science fiction, doesn’t it? In fact, my first thought upon reading about it, went to the most elementary of Star Trek healing devices—the dermal regenerator. And, apparently, I wasn’t alone.

In the Star Trek universe, dermal regenerators are so commonplace that no one has a second thought as gaping wounds are closed in the blink of an eye—by merely pointing a high-tech tool at the injury. (You may be thinking it sounds a bit like a magic wand . . . because fantasy and science fiction are close cousins.)

You can read a description of the scientific report in Nature magazine.

In contrast to manual cell seeding or cell spraying, bioprinting has the capability to deliver cells to specific target sites using layer-by-layer freeform fabrication, and it has been applied in numerous applications.

If you’ve ever known someone who suffered from severe burns, you will be pleased to learn “this technology has a wide application, and its application will be expanded to not only treat full-thickness wounds, but also for other types of wounds such as burns and ulcers, and even for deep tissue injuries.”

The Power of Science

Science is a precious gift from God, so long as it “uses its powers for good.” When people begin to look to science for answers it cannot provide, they can devolve into the sort of “scientism” that C.S. Lewis decried.

Science, however, in its purest and most true form, is a wondrous thing. In English Literature in the Sixteenth Century, Lewis discusses the work of Richard Hooker (1554-1600). It’s clear they share this same sentiment.

All good things, reason as well as revelation, nature as well as Grace, the commonwealth as well as the Church, are equally though diversely, “of God.” . . . All kinds of knowledge, all good arts, sciences, and disciplines come from the Father of lights and are “as so many sparkles resembling the bright fountain from which they rise”

In that spirit, I invite you to include in your prayers not only medical personnel and caregivers, but all of those brilliant minds and skilled hands devoted to using science to heal and to support God’s gift of life.

Physical (and Spiritual) Deafness

On By robstroudIn C.S. Lewis, Christian Life, Education, Ministry, Writing16 Comments

kellerSome are born deaf. Others lose their hearing due to accident or illness. Still others find our hearing failing us gradually, as it is displaced by the persistent presence of that unwelcome visitor, tinnitus.

As I was pondering the slow decay of my own hearing, I recalled one of C.S. Lewis’ most brilliant insights.

We can ignore even pleasure. But pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world. (The Problem of Pain)

Even as I am concerned about the inevitable decline of my hearing—and more so, my vision—I try to conscientiously follow my wife’s guidance about vitamins and behaviors that will keep these senses around as long as possible.

At the same time, being a realist, I have decided to disengage my emotions from the matter as much as I am able, and simply accept the unavoidable. In fact, I have learned to enjoy some of the inaccuracies of hearing that I more and more often experience.

Hardly a day passes when I do not get a good laugh out of something I misheard. What I mean is that my brain translates the garbled sounds into actual words that constitute some sense that is in reality nonsensical. It hasn’t cause any problems yet, so I just smile or chuckle. If the mishearing is especially humorous, I sometimes share it with my family.

Recently, I smiled when my pastor went on about how great “Lutheran circuses” are, and how important it was that we invite others to attend our “Lutheran worship circuses” (services). That substitution was easy to recognize; it’s far funnier when I mishear something and what I think they said makes an odd sense that could almost be true . . . but is actually ludicrous.

I don’t share my personal way of dealing with the weakening of my sense of hearing with the intention of belittling the seriousness of a cross many have to bear as their lives are detrimentally impacted by these afflictions.

The Original Plan

Certainly, the impairment of any of the senses God has given us is cause for sadness. After all, when our first parents were created, their senses of sight, hearing, touch, smell and taste were undiminished. That’s the way that the Lord intended for us to enjoy the rest of his creation.

Actually, some people argue that there are seven senses, adding two that do make sense:

Vestibular – the sense of balance, perceiving our body in relationship to gravity and movement (equilibrioception)

Proprioception – the sense of the relative position of different parts of the body, particularly as it pertains to movement (kinesthesia)

Another source declares there are nine senses, adding to the palette

Thermoception – the sensation of the presence or absence of heat

Nociception – “nonconscious perception of nerve or tissue damage”

I personally imagine that when “the day of the Lord” arrives, and we witness the restoration of a new heaven and a new earth, that our restored bodies* will possess a myriad of other senses we are not even capable of fathoming at this present moment.

Yes, it is a tragedy when people have to live with their senses crippled. This is especially true when it is the young who are afflicted. To be born without sight or hearing rightly seems like a curse to many. The testimony of Helen Keller, who actually lost her vision and hearing at the age of nineteen months, illustrates how the human spirit is capable of transcending even these severe limitations.**

In 1952, C.S. Lewis wrote a letter to a young teacher at the Manchester Royal School for the Deaf.

The work you are engaged in is a magnificent one (much in my mind because, as it falls out, I’ve just been reading Helen Keller’s book): hard, no doubt, but you can never be attacked by the suspicion that it is not worth doing. There are jolly few professions of which we can say that.

The translation of great stories into a limited vocabulary will, incidentally, be a wonderful discipline: you will learn a lot about thought and language in general before you are done. I hope you will sometimes let me know how you get on. God bless you.

In writing this column I learned something of which I had been unaware. Keller was also a poet.

And, while I’m a poor judge of verse, I found my brief exploration of hers to be moving. However, here is a review from The New York Times which declares, “Modern psychology cannot account for Miss Keller nor explain the psychic sense by which she apprehends the minutest phases of a beauty she has never witnessed.”

You can download a copy of the book The Song of the Stone Wall, here.

Across the meadow, by the ancient pines,

Where I, the child of life that lived that spring,

Drink in the fragrances of the young year,

The field-wall meets one grimly squared and straight

Beyond it rise the old tombs, gray and restful,

And the upright slates record the generations.

Stiffly aslant before the northern blasts.

Like the steadfast, angular beliefs

Of those whom they commemorate, the head-stones stand,

Cemented deep with moss and invisible roots.

The rude inscriptions charged with faith and love,

Graceless as Death himself, yet sweet as Death,

Are half erased by the impartial storms.

As children lisping words which move to laughter

Are themselves poems of unconscious melody,

So the old gravestones with their crabbed muse

Are beautiful for their halting words of faith,

Their groping love that had no gift of song.

But all the broken tragedy of life

And all the yearning mystery of death

Are celebrated in sweet epitaphs of vines and violets.

Helen Keller’s life is a witness to the fact that God can intervene in our brokenness and make us whole. It is also a foretaste of that complete restoration that awaits disciples of Jesus on the Last Day.

And one more thing her life proves is the truth of C.S. Lewis’ insight that in our suffering we become more attuned to our need, and God “shouts in our pains: it is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world.”

_____

The image at the top of the page shows Helen Keller as she looked on the day of her graduation from college.

* This transition from these fragile and perishing bodies to the new is described here. And, here’s a link to a readable essay on the subject of the resurrected or new body Christians are promised.

** Helen Keller found hope in the good news of Jesus Christ, albeit through the extremely peculiar teachings of the philosopher Emanuel Swedenborg. Helen Keller’s book My Religion is available for free download here.

C.S. Lewis’ Wedding

On By robstroudIn C.S. Lewis, Christian Life, Counseling, Dorothy Sayers, Family, Military Chaplaincy, Ministry, Modern Life, Ordained Ministry, Theological Matters, Writing9 Comments

jack & joyC.S. Lewis put his priest in an awkward position, relying on him to perform a wedding ceremony that was contrary to church rules—for at least two reasons. (More on this below.)

I performed a wedding this past weekend. Clergy commonly say “I married so-and-so,” but that phrase sometimes leads to confusion, and occasionally elicits snickers.

At any rate, I’m marrying fewer couples now that I’m semi-retired. Serving as a military chaplain, with a youngish population, I sometimes got weighed down by the number of requests to conduct wedding ceremonies. That’s no longer the case, although ironically both bride and groom in this case are on active duty in the United States armed forces (the Air Force and Army respectively).

The reason I allude to weddings being a bit of a burden, is that—for the conscientious pastor, which I strive, imperfectly, to be—they involve far more than the ceremony itself.

The majority of pastors I know require premarital counseling . . . and that requires time. It may come as a shock to some, but pastors don’t schedule those counseling sessions for their own benefit. Pastors provide them (and even require them) for the benefit of the couple. It’s called “pastoral care,” and decently done, it can only enhance the chances for a marriage’s success.

This was one of those wonderful weddings where I am quite confident the couple will live happily ever after. I really don’t mean to be trite, but they have the qualifications that strongly influence marital success, e.g. emotional maturity and a shared faith in Christ (who will be the cornerstone of their union, just as he is of the Church).

They understand, insofar as our finite minds are capable, that God truly has accomplished the miracle of making of the two of them a single flesh. And now they are living out that adventure.

So, as I write this post my thoughts are not about Independence Day (although it is the fourth day of July). Instead I’ve been rereading the story of C.S. Lewis’ two weddings with Joy Davidman. Their initial union was a sham, in the sense that it was a legal act conducted for ulterior reasons (circumventing immigration laws).

And this fact, that they were not married with the intention of truly being husband and wife, is one reason to validly question the validity of the very act.

If you’ve never read about Joy, or at least viewed the film Shadowlands, you are missing out on a fascinating story . . . and you lack familiarity with one of the most important elements of C.S. Lewis’ life. I’ve briefly discussed Lewis and Joy at Mere Inkling in the past, including “Dating Like an Inkling” and “C.S. Lewis and Women.”

When the two of them married, it was in a purely civil ceremony, on 23 April 1956, in Oxford. Naturally, they continued to live separately.

Only after she was diagnosed with terminal cancer did Lewis realize he had fallen in love. He accordingly sought to make of their fiction a true marriage. This meant, for Lewis and Joy, marrying “in the church.”

Unfortunately, the Church of England would not sanction the marriage, since Joy was divorced. (The fact that her husband, William Gresham was a serial adulterer did not excuse that fact.)

And thus we arrive at the focus of my reflection.

Since the church could not officially bless his marriage, Lewis turned to an Anglican priest who was a former student and a personal friend. His name was Peter Bide.

Pastoral Flexibility

I suspected that the Reverend Bide needed to give the request some prayerful consideration. After all, a pastor does not “bend” the practices of the church (and faith) he represents without serious reflection. Still, Christian ministers do possess what is referred to as pastoral discretion.

The concept is already developed in early Christian theology. In the Orthodox churches, it is referred to as pastoral economy (οἰκονομία, oikonomia). It relates to the pastoral principle of following the spirit, rather than the strictest letter of the law.*

Joy’s death was thought to be imminent when Bide joined them in marriage at her hospital bedside. Yet, they were blessed with a three year remission of the cancer, and enjoyed some precious time together before its grim return. Bide had initially been asked by Lewis simply to come and pray for her.

In a fascinating letter to Dorothy Sayers, written on the 25th of June, Lewis alludes to this concept while relating his special news.

I ought to tell you my own news. On examination it turned out that Joy’s previous marriage, made in her pre-Christian days, was no marriage: the man had a wife still living. The Bishop of Oxford said it was not the present policy to approve re-marriage in such cases, but that his view did not bind the conscience of any individual priest.

Then dear Father Bide (do you know him?) who had come to lay his hands on Joy—for he has on his record what looks very like one miracle—without being asked and merely on being told the situation at once said he would marry us. So we had a bedside marriage with a nuptial Mass.

It is interesting that Lewis uses the words “without being asked.”

That’s not quite how Bide recalls it.

Fortunately, Bide provided an account of this event, published under the title “Marrying C.S. Lewis.” (The title provides a prime example of what I said earlier about how pastors talk about weddings.) It appears in C.S. Lewis and His Circle: Essays and Memoirs from the Oxford C.S. Lewis Society

When I got there, up to the quarry where he lived, Jack said, ‘Peter, what I’m going to ask you isn’t fair. Do you think you could marry us? I’ve asked the Bishop, I’ve asked all my friends at the faculty here, and none of them will.’ He said, ‘It doesn’t seem to me to be fair. They won’t marry us because Joy was divorced, but the man she married in the first place was a divorced man, so in the eyes of the church, surely there isn’t any marriage anyway. What are they making all this fuss about?’

Well, I must admit that I had always thought that the Church of England’s attitude to marriage was untenable. They rested everything upon the promises given in the marriage service, and said that they couldn’t possibly be repeated elsewhere. However, there was one exception. If the man turned out not to be able to consummate the marriage, then a Decree of Nullity would go through the courts and be recognized by the church. This made the whole thing collapse in my view. I mean, if you promise for better or worse, and non-consummation isn’t for worse, I don’t know what is.

On the other hand, I went to a minor public school, and a public school is a terrible place not least because it gives you a lasting fear of authority. ‘The headmaster wants to see you.’ And that lasts all through life—I’ve never got rid of it totally. And so the fact that there were church laws by the dozen which forbade me to do anything of the sort really worried me. I mean it worried me because it wasn’t something that I just thought was a superficial thing, something I could just push to one side. I wasn’t in my own parish, I wasn’t in my own diocese. What right had I to go charging into a situation like this which everybody else had refused to have anything to do with?

Well, I know you’ll probably find this a rather corny thing, but after long cogitations—and it took me the best part of an hour—I said to myself, ‘What would He [Jesus] have done?’ and then there wasn’t any further answer at all. Of course He would have married them, wouldn’t He? Would He have regarded the law and everything else above the expression of love which this woman had made both towards the church and Himself and to her future husband? And so I married them in the hospital, with Warnie and the ward sister as witnesses.

Bide continues, expressing his frustration at how differing versions of the story have proliferated, while the truth of the matter has been left unexplored.

I don’t understand this, I never have . . . but that is the story, and what you see in Shadowlands has little or nothing to do with it. It made me very cross that there have been about six different treatments of this episode in the course of the last ten years and nobody has ever come and asked me what happened. It strikes me as absolutely extraordinary.

A.N. Wilson went all the way to America to talk to somebody who had talked to me: an expensive journey, when he could have walked down the road and found me himself. It’s a very odd thing, but now you know what the truth is.

Reverend Bide died in 2003, and his obituary includes some fascinating facts. I had not realized that, like Joy, in his early and foolishly idealistic years he too became a communist!

The article in The Telegraph describes his reprimand by the Bishop of Oxford, and the gentler correction offered by his own bishop. And it uses a word rarely seen in the United States to describe the episode.

A year at Wells Theological College was followed by ordination at Chichester in 1949 and appointment to a curacy at Portslade with Hangleton, near Hove. His dynamic ministry there led to the creation of a separate Hangleton parish, with himself as its first vicar since the Middle Ages. Then came the contretemps over the Lewis/Davidman marriage and his move to Goring-by-Sea in 1957.

It is interesting to note that Bide was no child when he chose to conduct the marriage ceremony. Although he had only been ordained for eight years, he was a veteran of WWII and MI6 before attending seminary.

A Sad Postscript

Lewis and Bide shared the pain of losing their wives the same year. Immediately after learning about Bide’s wife’s death, Lewis wrote the following letter. It provides a fitting conclusion to our reflections on the subject of the contretemps of Lewis’ wedding.

The Kilns, Headington Quarry, Oxford 20 Sept 1960

My dear Peter I have just come in from saying my morning prayers in the wood, including as always one for ‘Peter and Margy and Joy and me,’ and found your letter. I hope they are allowed to meet and help one another. You and I at any rate can. I shall be here on Wed. next. If you could let me have a card mentioning the probable time of your arrival, all the better. If not, I shall just ‘stand by’. Yes–at first one is sort of concussed and ‘life has no taste and no direction.’ One soon discovers, however, that grief is not a state but a process–like a walk in a winding valley with a new prospect at every bend God bless all four of us.

Yours Jack

_____

* Several New Testament passages refer to the “letter of the law,” including Romans 7:6-7 and 2 Corinthians 3:5-6.

The photograph above was created by combining images of the real couple with a transparent image of the couple as portrayed in Shadowlands by Anthony Hopkins and Debra Winger.

Reading Into an Author’s Work

On By robstroudIn C.S. Lewis, Christian Life, Literature, Writing11 Comments

shakespeareSometimes authors are not quite so brilliant as we think them to be.

It is possible to read into someone’s work ideas, and even profundity, that was not present when they were originally composed.

That’s an odd thought, I will admit. But the truth is that each of us as readers carry with us our own knowledge and personalities.

Imposing those upon a text is a subconscious reality, and it may even be unavoidable. Minimizing our presuppositions is one of the key elements of honest literary criticism.

This is one of the reasons that it is insanity to impose contemporary “political correctness” on writers who lived before such constraints were imposed. Intelligent people recognize that we must read Twain as an iconoclastic nineteenth century author, and Bunyan as a Baptist preacher of the seventeenth.

I just read a letter in which C.S. Lewis describes how this works. He wrote to a Roman Catholic correspondent, a priest, on Christmas Day 1959. In the letter he responds to his friend’s reference to something he had not consciously included in a particular book.

It is a fascinating letter, and even though it is the final portion that pertains to the subject I’ve been discussing, I will share it in whole.

The Kilns, Headington Quarry, Oxford   Christmas Day 1959

I hope my last letter to you did not sound chilling: still less (heaven help us!) as if I were offended by criticism. I think the chief reason why I am less disposed than you for large-scale discussion by letter is the difference of our ages. In youth we conduct (at least I did) long and deep disputations through the post. It is indeed a most valuable part of our education. We put into it quite as much thought and labour as would go to writing a book. But later, when one has become a writer of books, it is hard to keep it up. One can’t fill one’s leisure with the v. same activity which is one’s main work. And in my case not only the mind but the hand needs rest. Penmanship is increasingly laborious, and the results (as you see) increasingly illegible!

If you sometimes read into my books what I did not know I had put there, neither of us need be surprised, for greater readers have doubtless done the same to far greater authors. Shakespeare would, I suspect, read with astonishment what Goethe, Coleridge, Bradley and Wilson Knight have found in him! Perhaps a book ought to have more meanings than the writer intends? But then the writer will not necessarily be the best person with whom to discuss them.

You are in my daily prayers. Will you pray much for me at present? The cancer from which my wife was (as I believe, miraculously) delivered 2½ years ago, when death in a few weeks was predicted, is returning. Can one without presumption ever ask for a second miracle? The prophet turned back the shadow for Hezekiah once: not twice. Lazarus, raised from the dead, presently died again.

Yours

C.S. Lewis

P.S. I never thought of it before, but how Lazarus was sacrificed. To have it all to do over again–bis Stygios innare lacus!

_____

Father Peter Milward, SJ, taught English Literature at Sophia University in Tokyo. He has extensively published on his major subject, and A Challenge to C.S. Lewis (1995), which I just now ordered for my library. A curious title, however, for a student and “fan” of Lewis.

As a Shakespeare scholar, he has persuasively argued that the bard was Roman Catholic. “When the archbishop of Canterbury recently broke his church’s long silence and acknowledged that William Shakespeare was probably a Catholic, it was a moment of quiet satisfaction for Father Peter Milward, the author who began researching this subject a half century ago.” Read the article here.

Humor & Health

On By robstroudIn C.S. Lewis, Christian Life, Humor, Narnia9 Comments

I had to have blood drawn today for an upcoming physical exam. It’s not one of my favorite things to do, but I consciously try not to allow my feelings to negatively affect the caregivers who provide these essential procedures for our wellbeing. (Trust me, dentists especially are sorely in need of our appreciation.) I often try to add a little smile to their day employing a touch of light humor.

Today, for example, I was repeating a blood test I had already accomplished earlier this week. When the corpsman (Naval hospital) asked which arm I said, “you better take it out of my left arm . . . they weren’t happy with the numbers in the sample they got from my right.”

Now, a modest joke like that won’t make it into any comedians’ monologues, but it did inspire a chuckle from the four of us in the lab at that moment.

It reminded me of getting my flu shot last year and having my choice of four different corpsmen to administer it. Each had a waiting line. I could only imagine what it was like to be puncturing one anonymous arm after another for eight hours. Most “victims” silent, but many grimacing and some feeling compelled to describe to you just how much they hate shots.

Three of the corpsmen were normal sized human beings. But the fourth was a behemoth. The seams of his uniform were near to bursting due to his extraordinary musculature. I doubt he was on steroids, but his massive figure could have fit into the offensive line of any team in the NFL. And, for some mysterious reason, his waiting line was the shortest.

When I approached him to receive my vaccination, I ventured (in a voice loud enough for his companions to hear): “I chose you because you look like you’re gentle.” Everyone got a laugh out of that, and I felt pleased at having momentarily brightened their day.

My kids are always wary when I make comments like this. They recognize that every time we open our mouths, it’s a gamble. We can achieve our goal, and elicit someone’s precious smile . . . or we can make a fool of ourselves.

As a grandfather, I have the added “protection” of not having too much expected of me, in the wittiness department. By the grace of God, I’m still in possession of the bulk of my mental capacities. I imagine that, should I live long enough, most of my attempts at humor may grow rather lame. But, if there remains any cultural respect for our elders, even these attempts will be recognized for what they are—goodwill. And, as such, there are those from whom they will still elicit a smile.

We should not be afraid of humor, especially in its most humble and intimate forms. Woven amidst the threads of our daily conversations, it enriches life.

C.S. Lewis recognized this quite well. In The Magician’s Nephew, which recounts the creation of Narnia, Aslan says to the newly anointed animals: “Laugh and fear not, creatures. Now that you are no longer dumb and witless, you need not always be grave. For jokes as well as justice come in with speech.”

Lewis notes something in Reflections on the Psalms that I too have found to be true. “A little comic relief in a discussion does no harm, however serious the topic may be. (In my own experience the funniest things have occurred in the gravest and most sincere conversations.)”

Because of this, it’s not uncommon when we sit with those who have lost a loved one, to find that the conversation often drifts towards those happy and humorous moments that were shared with the departed. I’ve heard much healing laughter in the still sorrowing presence of the grieving. And, whether the words or thoughts evoke bold laughter or simple smiles, I tend to consider them a good thing indeed.