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C.S. Lewis: A Life by Alister McGrath

Oct17

In this new (2013) biography of well-known the Medieval scholar and Christian apologist, C.S. Lewis, Alister McGrath states his purpose in the preface to the book: “This book aims to tell the story of the shaping and expressing of Lewis’s mind, focussing on his writings . . . exploring the complex and fascinating connections between Lewis’s external and internal worlds.” McGrath says his book will be “firmly grounded in earlier studies, yet able to go beyond them.”

Well. I did glean several tidbits of information from Mr. McGrath’s biography, information about Lewis and his work that either was new or new to me. I’ve read Surprised by Joy, Lewis’s own account of his early life and his conversion to Christianity. I’ve also read The Narnia Code by Michael Ward, Jack: A Life of C.S. Lewis by George Sayer, The Narnian by Alan Jacobs, and various other sketches, articles and most of Lewis’s writings, too. So I come to this biography with some background in the subject, although I’m certainly no C.S. Lewis scholar.

First, the (random) things I learned:

Lewis thought writing was a cure-all for depression.
“As he once advised his confidant Arthur Greeves: ‘Whenever you are fed up with life, start writing: ink is the great cure for all human ills, as I have found out long ago.'”
I tend to agree. I think better when I write down my thoughts, and I feel better afterwards, too.

C.S. Lewis not only had trouble typing accurately because of having only one joint in his thumbs, but he also chose not to type.
“This mechanical mode of writing, he believe, interfered with the creative process in that the incessant clacking of the typewriter keys dulled the writer’s appreciation of the rhythms and cadences of the English language.”
Maybe that’s why I can’t write decent poetry.

Tolkien said that he would never have finished The Lord of the Rings without C.S. Lewis’s encouragement.
“The unpayable debt I owe to [Lewis] was not ‘influence’ as it is ordinarily understood, but sheer encouragement. He was for long my only audience. Only from him did I ever get the idea that my ‘stuff’ could be more than a private hobby. But for his interest and unceasing eagerness for more I should never have brought The L. of the R. to a conclusion.”
And the world would have been much impoverished by the lack of that book and all that stemmed from it.

Lewis heavily annotated his books and may have thereby gained a depth of knowledge that most of us don’t even understand.
“Nobody who has worked through Lewis’s heavily annotated personal library can doubt the intensity or quality of his engagement with the texts he studied. . . . Lewis increasingly seems to witness to a lost age of scholarly methods, above all the mental inhabitation of primary sources, which does not appear to have survived his generation.”
Wouldn’t I love to have Lewis’s copy of one of my favorite pieces of medieval or ancient literature with his annotations to guide me and pique my interest and make me think of things I wouldn’t think of on my own? Joy.

So those are the passages I marked with sticky notes. I noticed, too, however, that Mr. McGrath and I do not agree on some basics. He is rather dismissive of Lewis’s attempts at apologetics, saying that most “critics” and “academic theologians” are able to poke holes in Lewis’s arguments quite easily. All I can say is that Lewis not only convinces me, most of the time, but he’s also influenced and convinced quite a few people who are probably much more erudite and learned than I (Chuck Colson, Peter Kreeft, John Piper, Randy Alcorn, Joseph Pearce, Anne Rice, Francis Collins, Phillip Yancey, and many, many more).

Then there are things that Mr. McGrath glosses or skips over completely. Charles Williams, Owen Barfield, G.K. Chesterton, and George Macdonald, to mention a few of the major influences on Lewis’s writing, are all mentioned only very briefly. Tolkien is, on the other hand, given center stage. Now, as I said above, I love Tolkien, but I consider that in a book about influences on C.S. Lewis’s life and thought, Tolkien is only one of the people who should be featured or emphasized.

And in another example of misplaced emphasis, McGrath writes about the Narnia books in excruciating details while speeding by the Space trilogy and The Great Divorce with indecent haste. These books constitute some of Lewis’s best writing in my estimation. The balance just feels off, but what there is there is interesting and informative.

For a more extensive and scholarly review of C.S. Lewis: A Life, see this article by Arend Smilde in The Journal of Inkling Studies.

By the way, I went with Eldest Daughter this past weekend to an academic conference on Walker Percy, the Southern author best known for his novel The Moviegoer, and my thoughts about Mr. Percy and his works became entangled with my thoughts about Lewis, to some benefit perhaps. More on Percy and Lewis and the intersection thereof in a later post.

The Bronte Sisters by Catherine Reef

Sep20

The Bronte Sisters: The Brief Lives of Charlotte, Emily and Anne by Catherine Reef.

Brief, indeed. Emily was 30 years old in December 1848 when she died of tuberculosis. Anne died of tuberculosis a few months later in May 1849. She was 29 years old. Their older brother Branwell had predeceased them by a few months (September 1848). He was 31 years old.

Charlotte wrote: “A year ago–had a prophet warned me how I should stand in June 1849, had he foretold the autumn, the winter, the spring of sickness and suffering to be gone through—I should have thought–this can never be endured. It is over. Branwell—Emily—Anne are gone like dreams.”

Charlotte managed to outlive her siblings by a few years. She died at the age of 39—probably of tuberculosis. Oh, and by the way, the Brontes had two older sisters, Maria and Elizabeth, who died when they were young. Want to guess what killed them?

Therefore, one thing I learned from reading this tragic, true story of Victorian genius was that tuberculosis was (is?) really, really deadly, and I’m glad I didn’t live back then, before antibiotics. And I hope I don’t live to see a resurgence of TB, post-effective antibiotics.

I’ve alway found the Bronte family to be fascinating, even before I read Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights. I read a different book when I was just an elementary school student called The Return of the Twelves by Pauline Clarke. Ms. Clarke’s fantasy about the Brontes’ toy soldiers who come to life and try to return to the Bronte home in Yorkshire won the Carnegie Medal in 1962 (British title The Twelve and the Genii). Anyway, I loved that book, and it’s the story about the Brontes as children and about the stories they told to each other that first got me interested in the Bronte family.

I didn’t actually read Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights with understanding and enjoyment until I was in college. And I also read Mrs. Gaskell’s biography of Charlotte Bronte when I was in college. What an amazing family! Even Branwell, with his Heathcliff/Mr. Rochester/Byron alcoholic character, hold a certain fascination.

This biography by Catherine Reef was more than decent, and I did learn a lot about the Bronte family. The book mentions the toy soldiers, and the friendship between Charlotte and Mrs. Gaskell, and several other details that were familiar to me. I also gleaned some new information. For instance, I had forgotten that Charlotte married, after Emily, Anne, and Branwell died. And I never knew how very dissolute Branwell was.

Nevertheless, I’m not sure Ms. Reef really understood the Christian faith of Charlotte and Anne, and perhaps Emily, although Emily seems to have been more private and perhaps less orthodox. She writes several times about how “religious” Anne was and about how Charlotte’s faith was “unshaken.” But their faith comes across in the book as a kind of quaint Victorian notion, rather than a real conviction and solace in grief. The author does quote Charlotte’s reaction to atheist Harriet Maritneau’s apologetic for atheism, Letters on the Law of Man’s Social Nature and Development. Charlotte wrote in response to Ms. Martineau’s lack of faith in God:

“The strangest thing is that we are called on to rejoice over this hopeless blank, to welcome this unutterable desolation as a pleasant state of freedom. Who could do this if he would? Who would do it if he could?”

Still, if this biography doesn’t capture the fullness of the Brontes’ faith, it does give a reasonably detailed picture of the life and times of this remarkable family suited to readers age 12 and up. After reading Ms. Reef’s biography, I am wanting to read Charlotte Bronte’s other novels, Villette and Shirley, and Anne’s two books, Agnes Grey and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. I’d also like to re-read Wuthering Heights and The Return of the Twelves, but not until after Cybils season is over.

Rose Wilder Lane and Anne Morrow Lindbergh

Aug19

The Aviator’s Wife by Melanie Benjamin.

A Wilder Rose: Rose Wilder Lane, Laura Ingalls Wilder, and their Little Houses by Susan Wittig Albert.

This week I serendipitously read both of these biographical novels about two strong women of the early twentieth century: Rose Wilder Lane, who was an author and independent world traveler, and Anne Morrow Lindbergh, also an author, a mother, and wife to the most famous American man of the 1920’s, aviator Charles Lindbergh.

Both Rose and Anne have been in danger of being overshadowed by their more famous family members and collaborators, Laura Ingalls Wilder and Charles Lindbergh, respectively. Both women wrote under difficult circumstances: Rose while essentially supporting her parents and two adopted “sons” through the years of the Great Depression, and Anne while raising a family of five children almost single-handedly during Charles’ long and frequent absences. Both women have not always received the credit due them for their extraordinary accomplishments.

It was fascinating to read about Rose Wilder Lane and Anne Morrow Lindbergh and realize as I read that these two women could very well have crossed paths during their lifetimes, maybe more than once. Of course, Anne’s life story is dominated by her marriage to Charles Lindbergh and by the tragic kidnapping and death of the couple’s first son, Charlie, when he was only two years old. Anne Morrow knew when she married the famous aviator who had been the first to fly across the Atlantic Ocean that her life would be forever changed and circumscribed by Lindbergh’s overwhelming fame and by the press that hounded him and wrote about every detail of his days. But she had no idea how Charles Lindbergh’s celebrity and popularity would damage her family and transform even her accomplishments.

“Working for months on an account of our trip to the Orient, in the end I still wasn’t satisfied with it; I had found it impossible to capture the innocence of that time before my baby’s death. It had done modestly well, and Charles was proud of it, although I couldn’t help but think that most people bought it out of morbid curiosity. The bereaved mother’s little book—cold you read her tragedy between the lines? I’d imagined people paging feverishly through it, eager to find evidence of a splotch tear, a blurry word, a barely suppressed sob.”

The sad thing is that, if I am honest, back when I first read Anne Lindbergh’s published diaries, and again when I read this novel about her life, I was waiting to get to the part where her son was kidnapped. I wasn’t “paging feverishly”, but I was anxious to see how the tragedy would be written, how the utter horror of the defining event in the Lindberghs’ family life would be handled in print. Well, it’s vey sad and quite moving to read about a family torn apart by journalistic excess and by criminals who fed on that excessive notoriety that made the Lindberghs a target.

It’s very interesting that both of these books are not biographies, but rather fictionalized blends of fact and imagination that both Ms. Benjamin and Ms. Albert felt were more vivid ways to tell the real story of these two women than a straight piece of nonfiction would have been. In A Wilder Rose, Rose Wilder Lane tells her mother, Laura Ingalls Wilder, several times that her books (Little House on the Prairie and its companions and sequels) can’t be told as the exact history of her family’s travels and travails as they really happened. The family stories must be turned into fiction, shaped and reworked as stories that hang together and have a beginning, a middle and an end. And somehow in doing that reshaping, the story become more true than it would be if it were a simple recitation of the dry facts. The fiction gives the stories a context and a theme and tells more about the feelings and drama behind the history than could be done without the framework and freedom of fiction.

“‘I want to tell the true story,’ she said firmly. Her blue eyes darkened and her mouth set in that hard, stubborn line that I knew very well. ‘I’m sorry if it’s not exciting enough to suit those editors in New York, but I’m not going to make up lies to make it more exciting.’
‘Nobody’s suggesting that you tell lies,’ I replied cautiously.’But sometimes we need to use fiction to tell the truth. Sometimes fiction tells a truer story than facts.'”

It’s an odd truth, but it works in both of these books and in the Little House books. I very much enjoyed reading about Rose Wilder Lane and Ann Morrow Lindbergh, and I feel as if I know them both in a way. I must say, however, that I don’t think I would have liked Ms. Lane very much, too prickly and independent, and I’m sure I would have wanted to slap Charles Lindbergh up the side of the head, if he really did what the book says he did and if I knew anything about it.

The Aviator’s Wife by Melanie Benjamin has been quite the popular beach read this summer and is available in bookstores, libraries, and from Amazon. A Wilder Rose by mystery writer Susan Wittig Albert is due to be published in October, 2013, but is not yet available for pre-order, as far as I can tell.

Running the Books by Avi Steinberg

Jul24

Running the Books: The Adventures of an Accidental Prison Librarian by Avi Steinberg.

I’m willing to read almost anything that focuses on books and libraries, written by a librarian, even if the setting is a prison and even if the librarian is a lapsed, formerly Orthodox Jewish, now agnostic, Harvard graduate. Mr. Steinberg is hip, cool, humble, lost, aimless, and somewhat annoying. Anyone who can afford to wander around taking crummy jobs whilst he wonders what to do with his life after graduating from HARVARD, is annoying.

Mr. Steinberg has a friend who becomes an anthropologist, studying leftover hippies somewhere in the Midwest or Colorado or something. Steinberg himself comes across as an anthropologist who is studying the tribal customs of that esoteric and mysterious tribal group, the American felons. He opens his library to pimps and prostitutes and con artists and drug dealers while pondering that age-old question, “What is the purpose of the library anyway?” To provide books, education, access to information? He is soon disabused of such a quaint notion by his prison clientele who generally use the library for more practical purposes: socialization, communication, and sometimes criminality. The criminal pursuits of these, well, criminals, shouldn’t be a complete surprise, but Mr. Steinberg seems to keep forgetting that he works inside a prison.

And, of course, there are the one or two inmates who are the exceptions that prove the rule:
Jessica, who comes to writing class to catch glimpses of her son, also incarcerated, through the window of the classroom. Her story ends tragically.
Chudney, whose ambition is to have his own cooking show called Thug Sizzle. His story also ends tragically.

I was never sure of the point of all of these stories of lost, violent, victimized, and tragic people, compiled with commentary by the narrator, who was sometimes lost, sometimes victimized, sometimes even a little bit violent in response to all of the violence around him. Maybe that was the point: all of our stories are tragic. We observe and tell each other’s tragic stories. But coming from a Harvard graduate, the moral of the story sounds a little hollow. Avi Steinberg is in prison (as a librarian) for a couple of years, but he doesn’t have to be there. He can get a real job, write a book, get a life. And eventually, by the end of the story, he does.

I first heard about this book on NPR. It’s an NPR-ish kind of book.

Joni and Ken by Ken and Joni Eareckson Tada

Jul22

Even the title and cover picture says it: there are issues related to being married to a famous Christian author, artist, speaker and quadriplegic who heads a world-wide ministry to disabled persons. Whose name (and ministry) comes first? Ken Tada knew about some of the difficulties when he married Joni, but the “daily-ness” of Joni’s physical needs plus the annoyance of always living life in Joni’s shadow was enough to wear down Ken’s dedication to Joni and to their life together and transform their marriage into a series of tasks that had to be done instead of a joyful journey.

In case you don’t know, Joni Eareckson Tada is the founder and CEO of Joni and Friends, an organization that provides practical support and spiritual help to special needs families worldwide, and equips thousands of churches in developing disability ministry. Joni is the author of numerous best-selling books, including When God Weeps, The God I Love, Heaven: Your Real Home, Joni, and A Step Further. Ken Tada recently retired from thirty-two years of teaching school. He and Joni have been married for over 30 years.

Joni and Ken is a great “anatomy of a marriage” kind of memoir that probes deep into what it means to love someone consistently, daily, and sacrificially. Ken knew what he was getting into when he married Joni. She was already a bestselling author and a quadriplegic when the two of them met, began dating, and eventually married, believing that they could serve God together better than apart. Ken knew, in a sense that he would have to take care of Joni physically for the rest of their lives, that there would be difficulties in their marriage that able-bodied spouses can only imagine. He knew, but mostly on an intellectual level. He didn’t know how exhausting the quotidian tasks of caring for Joni, supporting her emotionally, and following behind her in her calling would become. After many years, Ken seems to have done what many spouses who are in difficult marriages do, both men and women: he checked out emotionally. He And in response to his distancing himself from her, Joni began to pull back, too. It happens in many (most?) relationships, even those with far fewer challenges than Joni’s and Ken’s marriage.

This book would be a good read for someone who is caregiver for a disabled spouse or parent or child. The narrative could have been improved with a more chronological organization of the story and with more information from Ken’s point of view about the couple’s struggles. However, the lack of particulars about how Ken was feeling and what he was thinking may come from a difference in the personalities of the two people involved. I get the idea that Ken tends to keep his thoughts and feelings more hidden and unspoken whereas Joni comes across as the more emotive and dramatic of the pair.

Marriage is an endlessly fascinating subject. How do two people get married and stay married? What makes a good marriage? Do all marriages go through seasons of aridity and apathy? How does a married couple go about renewing their passion and love for one another? Where does the ardor for a lifetime of mutual submission and servanthood and love come from?

The answer to that last question: the Holy Spirit himself who is the Maker and Sustainer of any marriage, even, I believe, non Christian marriages. But no one ever said it was going to be easy. Worthwhile, yes, but not easy.

Seeing Through the Fog by Ed Dobson

Jul19

I think that had I met Ed Dobson twenty years ago, we would have annoyed each other. That was before he was diagnosed with AML, Lou Gehrig’s disease, and before I had my own peculiar area of suffering and grief in my life. Wikipedia says that Ed Dobson, who used to work for Jerry Falwell and who used to be a leader in the Moral Majority, went on to pastor a large church in Michigan and became a mentor to Rob Bell, the Love Wins guy. I freely admit that I find aspects of the Moral Majority’s agenda and of Rob Bell’s teaching to be suspect and annoying.

Nevertheless, reading Mr. Dobson’s reflections on facing his own mortality and suffering, Seeing Through the Fog, was an encouraging, life-affirming, God-glorifying experience. This book is not Rob Bell speculating on things beyond his understanding (or mine). It’s not a legalist Christian giving a list of rules to be kept and sins to be repented. Seeing Through the Fog is the honest, painfully honest, meditations of a man who is facing a slow deterioration of his muscles and of his ability to care for himself and for others. And he’s not thankful for all the horrible, life-sucking symptoms and disabilities that manifest as AML. He’s not happy all the time, and he doesn’t know why God doesn’t heal him. However, Mr. Dobson’s memoir is an inspiration because he continues to embrace the life that God has given him, continues to serve others, and learns to accept the help and service of friends and family, with thanksgiving.

The book reminded me a somewhat of The Little Way of Ruthie Leming by Rod Dreher. Mr. Dobson pursues healing, too, like Ruthie did. His life gets smaller, and richer in some ways, as the disease progresses. He learns to appreciate his family, his wife in particular, in new ways as he must depend on her for help with daily tasks. And still the disease itself is not a good thing. No one has to feel as if reading this book will make them feel guilty for not embracing their own personal suffering as unqualified blessing. Instead, in Rod Dreher’s book about his sister and in Mr. Dobson’s essays on his experience with AML, we are called to see the suffering and disease as realities that may be used by God to teach us and mold us and even bring us into His presence.

The Twelve Little Cakes by Dominika Dery

Jul5

I have had this memoir on my TBR shelf for a long time, but I finally got the urge to go ahead and read it when Brown Bear Daughter left about a week ago to go back to Slovakia for her third summer mission trip there. Dominika Dery’s memoir of her childhood lived under Communist rule in a village on the outskirts of Prague, Czechoslovakia, obviously doesn’t take place in Slovakia, but rather in the Czech Republic. However, it’s as close as I can get right now. (Does anyone know a really good book, fiction or memoir, set in Slovakia?)

Dominika grew up in a loving home with her mother, a writer of technical reports, and her father, a former economist who is now a taxi-driver, and her much-older sister, who comes across mostly as a spoiled brat and a world-class flirt. Dominika herself seems to be somewhat spoiled, but not a brat. The parents are dissidents associated with the 1968 failed “revolution” called the Prague Spring, which ended when the Russians invaded to stop the reforms of Communism that were being instituted in Czechoslovakia. As a result of their complicity in the Prague Spring reforms, Dominika’s parents are consigned to low level jobs and constantly in danger of being denounced to the political authorities.

Dominika, born in 1975, slowly becomes aware over the course of her childhood of her parents’ political predicament, but she nevertheless remembers a mostly idyllic childhood enlivened by the resilient optimism of her father and the style and panache of her beautiful mother. Even when the family goes on vacation to Poland of all places and the car breaks down because some corrupt mechanic replaced the working engine with a defective one, Dominika and her parents manage to have a good and memorable holiday under ostensibly trying circumstances.

I think I’ll loan this book to Dancer Daughter(23) because of the Czech setting (she’s been to Slovakia a couple of times, too) and also because Dominika spends a lot of her childhood studying to become a dancer. The story of how she gets into a dance school that normally excludes the children of dissidents and only admits children whose parents have Communist Party connections is fascinating, and Dominika’s indomitable spirit is sure to charm the readers of her memoir.

The book ends in 1985 when Dominika was only ten years old. But it seems an appropriate place to stop. Dominika has been accepted to study at the State Conservatory in Prague. Her parents are still stuck in political limbo, but there is some stirring of hope for the future. Things are beginning to change, with the Solidarity movement in Poland and Mikhail Gorbachev‘s rise to power in the Soviet Union. In November-December 1989, The Velvet or Gentle Revolution restored democracy in Czechoslovakia. In 1993, Czechoslovakia became two separate nations, the Czech Republic and Slovakia.

From an adult looking back at childhood point of view, Dominika Dery sees things this way:

“This was the country of little cakes and sausages. This is the memory of my childhood. Driving back home in our old, rusty Skoda; my father’s big hands steering us safely through the night; the soft touch of my mother’s hand on my head. This was the happiest time in my life. The time when we had no money, no choice and no chance.

It would take me another eighteen years to realize that what we had back then was as much as anyone on earth would ever need.

We had each other, and plenty of love in our hearts.”

Twelve Little Cakes by Dominika Dery was recommended by Kerry at Shelf Elf.

The Little Way of Ruthie Leming by Rod Dreher

Jun14

The Little Way of Ruthie Leming: A Southern Girl, a Small Town, and the Secret of a Good Life by Rod Dreher.

I’ve heard excellent things about Rod Dreher’s memoir of his sister Ruthie’s journey with cancer and its effect on his life decisions. And it was a really good book. However, this book is one that should come with a warning: keep reading. Keep reading to the very end, and don’t assume that you understand what Mr. Dreher is trying to say in his story unless you’ve read it all. Even then, you’ll most likely shut the book with a thoughtful look on your face and in a contemplative mood—my favorite take-aways from any story.

On the surface, The Little Way is a book about a courageous and spirited woman who lived a life of service and good works and died at too young an age. Dreher repeatedly calls her a “saint”, and this from a man who was Catholic and converted to Orthodoxy and who believes in “saints” who are singular people especially endowed with God’s grace, not as I believe that we are all saints if we trust in Jesus. Ruthie Leming seems at first to be an uncomplicated, straightforward, country girl who loved teaching school, drinking beer and celebrating life with her friends, and caring for her family. The cancer that eventually ended her life was for Ruthie something to treat according to the doctors’ advice and then ignore as much as she could. As we get to know Ruthie more and more through the pages of Mr. Dreher’s book, however, she is revealed to have depths of character and even faults that go unnoticed and unsuspected in the beginning of the book. Maybe it’s the cancer itself, and its influence in Ruthie’s circle of friends and family, that reveal Ruthie’s essential spirit and her long-lasting influence over her family and her hometown of St. Francisville, Louisiana.

Mr. Dreher’s relationship with his sister, and indeed with his entire family and hometown, turns out to be complicated, too. Suffice it to say that Mr. Dreher and his wife and children try an experiment with the old conundrum of whether or not “you can’t go home again”, and the results are, well, mixed and complex. The Drehers move back to St. Francisville after Ruthie’s death because of something attractive about the way the town supported and loved Ruthie and her family through Ruthie’s illness and death. However, the family tensions and small town prejudices that drove Rod Dreher to leave home in the first place before he even finished high school are still evident. The question isn’t really whether or not you can go home again, but rather what will happen to you as an adult, who has been formed by all of the many settings in which you’ve lived, once you get there? Can an adult who’s lived in Washington, D.C. and New York City and seen Paris ever be content with what Mr. Dreher calls “the little way”?

I want to suggest this book to my Eldest Daughter who will be moving back to Houston soon after several years in graduate school in Nashville, but I don’t want her to get the wrong message from my recommendation. Again, although Mr. Dreher certainly buys into Wendell Berry’s localism and idealistic valuing of community, the book indicates, if you read it all the way through, that creating community among loving but flawed people isn’t easy. And of course, he’s right: those of us who love the Lord and live in the light of His grace are all saints, but we’re broken saints, physically, mentally and spiritually. We get cancer; we make harsh judgments, we hurt each other; and we love one another. All mixed up together. And it’s worth working through the messiness in one place with a specific group of people to call our own community–unless you have to escape that particular place and group in order to find your own “saintliness” and way to Grace.

Wherever you are in your journey away from or towards home and hometown values and community, you’ll find food for thought and discussion in Rod Dreher’s book. It’s much more than just a cancer memoir.

Wisdom and Innocence by Joseph Pearce

May29

Happy Birthday, to Mr. Gilbert Keith Chesterton!

Thanks to the lovely Carol B. of A Living Pencil, who loaned me her personal copy of the book, I have been reading Wisdom and Innocence: A Life of G.K. Chesterton by Joseph Pearce over the last couple of weeks. I’ve been reading about Mr. Chesterton, mostly at bedtime and in small doses, and I haven’t finished the book yet. However, I have collected enough sticky note markers to post something about what caught my eye as I read, and today seems as if it would the appropriate day since Gilbert Keith Chesterton was born on this date, May 29th, in 1876, a hundred and thirty-seven years ago.

(p.79) Chesterton wrote in an article in the Daily News, December, 1903:

“You cannot evade the issue of God: whether you talk about pigs or the binomial theory, you are still talking about Him . . . If Christianity should happen to be true–that is to say, if its God is the real God of the universe–then defending it may mean talking about anything and everything. . . . Zulus, gardening, butchers’ shops, lunatic asylums, housemaids, and the French Revolution–all these things not only may have something to do with the Christian God, but must have something to do with Him if He lives and reigns.”

So true. I try to avoid religious jargon and buzzwords, but I find it difficult to discuss anything without the topic eventually leading back to God and His works in some form or another. As Paul wrote, “For from him and through him and to him are all things.” So, how (or why) would one discuss or think about anything without reference to the One who made and sustains all things?

(p. 213) “One of his secretaries was amazed, when she first started working for him (Chesterton), by his ability to write two articles at once on totally different subjects by dictating one to her while he scribbled away at another himself.”

President James Garfield taught himself to write with both hands. He also knew Latin and Greek. He sometimes would show off and write with both hands at the same time, each in a different language. However, to write on two separate subjects, formulate coherent thoughts and dictate or write them at the same time, seems almost impossible. I wonder if the ever-playful Chesterton was deceiving his secretary into thinking that he was “writing” two articles at once. Maybe he even was deceiving himself. I tell my children all the time that it is impossible to truly “multi-task.” It would be interesting to hear what Chesterton would have to say about the subject.

(p.252) Chesterton on the “underlying pessimism of much modern poetry”: “I will not write any more about these poets, because I do not pretend to be impartial, or even to be good-tempered on the subject. To my thinking, the oppression of the people is a terrible sin; but the depression of the people is a far worse one.”

I agree with Chesterton about modern poetry, indeed most modern (twentieth century and beyond) literature. It’s a question of which came first, depression and degeneration in Western culture which is reflected in the literature, or depression and degeneration in literature which in turn produced at least two, maybe three, generations of depressed, decadent, and sometimes illiterate people. After all, who wants to read about how miserable and corrupt we all are when there is no hope or faith that anything or anyone can fix the mess? (And now I started out discussing modern literature with GKC, and we’re back to God again.)

(p.256) “Through it all he remained totally unaffected by events and as self-effacing as ever. For example, when an enthusiastic reporter asked him which of his works he considered the greatest, he replied instantly, ‘I don’t consider any of my works in the least great.'”

To be able to come up with such an answer”instantly” requires either great humility or great preparation.

(p.295) “Neither was Chesterton embarrassed to be seen laughing at his own jokes. ‘If a man may not laugh at his own jokes,’ he once asked, ‘at whose jokes may he laugh? May not an architect pray in his own cathedral?'”

Again, either humility or a quip waiting to happen.

(p.299) “The aim of life is appreciation; there is no sense in not appreciating things; and there is no sense in having more of them if you have less appreciation of them.”

One could say “joy” (C.S. Lewis) or “enjoying God” (John Piper) instead of appreciation, and mean essentially the same thing. Chesterton seemed to have a gift for gratitude and enjoyment of God’s good gifts.

(p.302) The ignorant pronounce it Frood
To cavil or applaud.
The well-informed pronounce it Froyd,
But I pronounce it Fraud.

No comment necessary.

(p.306) “Most modern histories of mankind begin with the word evolution, and with a rather wordy exposition of evolution . . . There is something slow and soothing and gradual about the word and even about the idea. As a matter of fact, it is not, touching these primary things, a very practical word or a very profitable idea. Nobody can imagine how nothing could turn into something. . . It is really far more logical to start by saying ‘In the beginning God created heaven and earth’ even if you only mean ‘In the beginning some unthinkable power began some unthinkable process.'”

As soon as you admit there is something or someone who is eternal, a Grand Cause or at least Power for the Universe and everything in it, the argument moves to the nature of this Cause or this God. Carl Sagan famously said, “The Cosmos is all that is or ever was or ever will be.” What is this “Cosmos” of Mr. Sagan’s but an impersonal Force that initiates and sustains the universe? We can now discuss whether this impersonal Force or Cosmos makes sense as creator and sustainer and order-er of all that we experience and know to be true and real.

“Nothing comes from nothing–nothing ever could.” ~The Sound Of Music.

And again the God of the Bible makes His appearance, whether we’re discussing evolution or mousetraps or movie musicals. At least, in my thought world, He seems to intrude quite frequently and persistently.

Thank you, GKC, for enriching my thought life today. Thank you, God, for Mr. Chesterton.

Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert by Rosaria Champagne Butterfield

May10

Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert: An English Professor’s Journey into Christian Faith by Rosaria Champagne Butterfield.

“In the pages that follow, I share what happened in my private world through what Christians politely call conversion. This word–conversion–is simply too tame and too refined to capture the train wreck that I experienced incoming face-to-face with the living God.”

This conversion story, written by former lesbian professor Rosaria Champagne Butterfield, contains wisdom on a lot of different subjects. Here are a few quotes that illuminate some things that God taught Mrs. Butterfield.

Fear-based parenting:
“I believe that there is no greater enemy to vital life-breathing faith than insisting on cultural sameness. When fear rules your theology, God is nowhere to be found in your paradigm, no matter how many Bible verses you tack on to it. . . . We in the church tend to be more fearful of the (perceived) sin in the world than of the sin in our own heart. Why is that?”

Sermons:
“I came to believe that my job was not to critique and ‘receive’ a sermon, but to dig into it, to seize its power, to participate with its message, and to steal its fruit.”

Conversion:
“I didn’t choose Christ. Nobody chooses Christ. Christ chooses you or you’re dead. After Christ chooses you, you respond because you must. Period. It’s not a pretty story.”

Betrayal:
“Betrayal deepens our love for Jesus (who will never betray us). Betrayal deepens our knowledge of Jesus and his sacrifice, obedience, and love.(Jesus was betrayed by his chosen disciples and by all who call upon him asSavior and Lord by our sin). Finally, betrayal deepens our Christian vision: The Cross is a rugged place, not a place for the squeamish or self-righteous.”

Church community:
“I think that churches would be places of greater intimacy and growth in Christ if people stopped lying about what we need, what we fear, where we fail, and how we sin. I think that many of us have a hard time believing the God we believe in, when the going gets tough. And I suspect that instead of seeking counsel and direction from those stronger in the Lord, we retreat into our isolation and shame and let the sin wash over us, defeating us again. Or maybe we muscle through on our pride.”

Sexual sin:
“Sexual sin is not recreational sex gone overboard. Sexual sin is predatory. It won’t be ‘healed’ by redeeming the context or the genders. Sexual sin must simply be killed. What is left of your sexuality after this annihilation is up to God. . . . Christians act as though marriage redeems sin. Marriage does not redeem sin. Only Jesus himself can do that.”

Adoption:
“Because we are Christ’s, we know that children are not grafted into a family to resolve our fertility problems or to boost our egos or to complete our family pictures or because we match color or race or nation-status. We know, because we are Christ’s, that adoption is a miracle. In a spiritual sense, it is the miracle at the center of the Christian life. We who are adopted by God are those given a new heart, a ‘rebirth.'”

I have been thinking a lot lately about the recent controversy over “missionary adoption” and the idea that adoptive parents must have the “right motives” before they adopt. While I understand the cautions and caveats that Ms. Headmistress of the Common Room and Ms. Butterfield both repeat and the issues involved with foreign adoptions in particular, I hate to see us as a culture discouraging adoption and the ministry of orphan care.

I believe Ms. Butterfield and the Headmistress when they say that adults who adopt out of selfishness tend to reap trouble and disappointment, just as those who have selfish motives when they give birth to children tend to have parenting and family issues. However, our motives in anything we do are difficult to discern and usually mixed at best. Why did I give birth to eight children? Because I enjoy having children and parenting them and homeschooling them (most of the time). Because I believe children are a gift from the Lord. Because it makes me happy to see my children serving the Lord and glorifying Him. Are these selfish motives or unselfish? Am I less likely to deal well with the disappointments of having some children who are not serving the Lord right now because I expected them to all follow Him? Do I love them less (or should I not have had them in the first place, God forbid) when they are not making me happy? These are all good questions to ask yourself in regard to your children, whether they’re adopted or not. The answers can give Christian parents insight into the growth that the Holy Spirit wants to bring about in their lives so that they can better serve Him as parents.

Being a parent is complicated, whether you birth the children or adopt them. Adoption has its own joys and pitfalls. Yes, I am going off on a tangent here. Rosaria Butterfield has written a great story with insight about homosexuality, Christian conversion, the gospel, and adoption. I recommend the book—and I recommend having children, too, however you go about it.