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The Great Divorce by C.S. Lewis

Mar13

40 Inspirational Classics

It’s a hot topic (see Universalism as a Lure? The Emerging Case of Rob Bell): universalism, or to put it as a question, will everybody get to heaven in the end? Rob Bell repeats the old mantra, “If the gospel isn’t good news for everybody, then it isn’t good news for anybody.”

C.S. Lewis answers this objection to divine judgement and heaven and hell as separate for the blessed and the damned in The Great Divorce.

There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, “Thy will be done,” and those to whom God says, in the end, “Thy will be done.” All that are in Hell, choose it. Without that self-choice there could be no Hell. No soul that seriously and constantly desires joy will ever miss it. Those who seek find. To those who knock it is opened.

“What some people say on Earth is that the final loss of one soul gives the lie to all the joy of those who are saved.”
“Ye see it does not.”
“I feel in a way that it ought to.”
“That sounds very merciful: but see what lurks behind it.”
“What?”
“The demand of the loveless and the self-imprisoned that they should be allowed to blackmail the universe: that till they consent to be happy (on their own terms) no one else shall taste joy: that theirs should be the final power; that Hell should be able to veto Heaven.”
“I don’t know what I want, Sir.”
“Son, son, it must be one way or the other. Either the day must come when joy prevails and all the makers of misery are no longer able to infect it: or else for ever and ever the makers of misery can destroy in others the happiness they reject for themselves I know it has a grand sound to say ye’ll accept no salvation which leaves even one creature in the dark outside. But watch that sophistry or you’ll make a Dog in a Manger the tyrant of the universe.”

However, these two excerpts are only the pertinent quotations in regard to universalism and the complaint that it’s unfair for anyone to go to hell. The book itself is much more, a wonderful story about an excursion bus from hell to the outskirts of heaven. I learned more about heaven and God’s mercy from reading The Great Divorce than from many a sermon listened to in my youth.

Maybe I’m a better reader than listener. Or maybe I learn better through story. A little of both I think. Also C.S. Lewis is just a great writer and thinker. You’ll come across several of his books in this series of 40 Inspirational Classics that I’m recommending for Lent. Now go out and get The Great Divorce; it’s only 125 pages long, but there’s lots of truth in that small package.

Orthodoxy by G.K. Chesterton

Mar12

40 Inspirational Classics

I spent a couple of days re-reading G.K. Chesterton’s spiritual autobiography, Orthodoxy and decided that I should read a bit of Chesterton every few months, if only to remind me that Christianity is a merry and somewhat eccentric philosophy of life. Chesterton says that the “frame” of Christianity, its conservatism and rules, enables us to be like children playing on a cliff with a fence to keep them from falling over. We can range far and wide, “fling [ourselves] into the every frantic game and make the place the noisiest of nurseries.”

Chesterton himself was a merry old soul. He weighed over 300 pounds, played the part of the absent-minded professor in his daily life, and enjoyed a beer, a debate, and a nap, but not all at the same time. Nicknamed “The Prince of Paradox,” his verbal gymnastics are sometimes exhausting, usually entertaining, but at the same time full of wisdom and insight into the fallacies of pagan and modern philosophy and into the satisfying rightness of Christian orthodoxy. Here a few assertions and witticisms that grabbed me as I read through Chesterton’s philosophical defense of orthodoxy:

“I have attempted in a vague and personal way, in a set of mental pictures rather than in a series of deductions, to state the philosophy in which I have come to believe. I will not call it my philosophy; for I did not make it. God and humanity made it; and it made me.”

Of course, I am reminded of the song, Creed, by Rich Mullens:

“Of all horrible religions the most horrible is the worship of the god within. . . . That Jones shall worship the god within him turns out ultimately to mean that Jones shall worship only Jones. Let Jones worship the sun or moon, anything rather than the Inner Light; let Jones worship cats or crocodiles, if he can find any in his street, but not the god within.”
The Jones part is probably what reminded me of Jim Jones who went from rejection of the God of the Bible, to worship of himself, to the insistence that his followers should also worship him as God. They certainly would have been better off worshipping cats.

Christianity came into the world firstly in order to assert with violence that a man had not only to look inwards, but to look outwards, to behold with astonishment and enthusiasm a divine company and a divine captain. The only fun of being a Christian was that a man was not left alone with the Inner Light, but definitely recognized an outer light, fair as the sun, clear as the moon, terrible as an army with banners.
If the world and its meaning begins and ends with me, I am of all creatures most tragically unhappy. I have a friend who believes that he will find any meaning that there is to be found in this world inside himself. I pity him.

“The essence of all pantheism, evolutionism, and modern cosmic religion is really in this proposition: that Nature is our Mother. Unfortunately, if you regard Nature as a mother, you discover that she is a step-mother. The main point of Christianity was this: that Nature is not our mother: Nature is our sister. We can be proud of her beauty, since we have the same Father; but she has no authority over us; we have to admire but not to imitate. . . . To St. Francis, nature is a sister, and even a younger sister: a little dancing sister, to be laughed at as well as loved.”
What breathtakingly beautiful freedom there is in that order of things. We are not beholden to nor dominated by Nature; we are the stewards, the caretakers. God is still over all and through all, without Nature taking over His role as Creator and Sustainer.

“A characteristic of the great saints is their power of levity. Angels can fly because they can take themselves lightly.”
“It is much easier to write a good Times leading article than a good joke in Punch. For Solemnity flows out of men naturally; but laughter is a leap. It is easy to be heavy: hard to be light. Satan fell by the force of gravity.”
In this season of Lent, and certainly as we approach the celebration the Resurrection, take time to laugh. The Story is after all a comedy, and God wins in the end.

“[Modern Philosophy’s] despair is this, that it does not really believe that there is any meaning in the universe; therefore it cannot hope to find any romance; its romances will have no plots. A man cannot expect any adventures in the land of anarchy. But a man can expect any number of adventures if he goes travelling in the land of authority.”
A world without meaning and without Christ at the center is either too terrible to explore or too boring to enjoy—or both. Hence, voodoo dolls and fetishes or Sartre’s existential hell play, No Exit.

Choose the adventure.

Links:
The ‘Ample’ Man Who Saved My Faith by Phillip Yancey at Christianity Today.
The American Chesterton Society
Semicolon thoughts on The Man Who Was Thursday by G.K. Chesterton.

Poetry Friday: Poetry of George Herbert

Mar11

40 Inspirational Classics for Lent

LOVE. (II)

IMMORTALL Heat, O let thy greater flame
Attract the lesser to it : let those fires
Which shall consume the world, first make it tame,
And kindle in our hearts such true desires,

As may consume our lusts, and make thee way.
Then shall our hearts pant thee ; then shall our brain
All her invention on thine Altar lay,
And there in hymnes send back thy fire again :

Our eies shall see thee, which before saw dust ;
Dust blown by wit, till that they both were blinde :
Thou shalt recover all thy goods in kinde,
Who wert disseized by usurping lust :

All knees shall bow to thee ; all wits shall rise,
And praise him who did make and mend our eies.

I’ve posted poems by George Herbert, the seventeenth century Christian poet, on this blog numerous times. If one were to spend Lent and Eastertide just reading through the poems of Mr. Herbert, one a day, it would be devotional enough to last you through the season and to bring you to an awareness of poetry of faith.

Here are some of the posts from Semicolon about George Herbert’s poetry:
Love Bade Me Welcome
The Pulley
Christmas
The Dawning
The Sonne
A Wreath
Easter Wings

Other Links:
More poetry by George Herbert.
The God of Love My Shepherd Is by George Herbert at Rebecca Writes.

Pensees by Blaise Pascal

Mar10

It’s Lent, and as a growing Christian you want to read something that will bring you closer and deeper in your relationship with Jesus. Or you’re not a Christian, but you think that this time leading up to the celebration of the resurrection of Christ would be a good time to explore the Christian faith and see for yourself what it’s all about.

I would suggest that first and foremost you read the Bible, but not just any old books of the Bible. If you’ve never read the Bible before I would suggest starting with one of the Gospels, the four books in the New Testament that tell about the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. Even if you’ve read the Bible several times from cover to cover, springtime and Lent and Easter are good times to review the story of Jesus and let God refresh you spiritually through His Word as it tells about the Greatest Love Story Ever Enacted.

Then, if you’re like me and still want some more reading to inspire and encourage you in your journey, try one or more of the recommended books in this series, 40 Inspirational Classics.

Pascal was a French mathematician, physicist, inventor, writer and philosopher. He was educated at home by his father and he grew up to be a talented scientist and mathematician. In 1654, Pascal had a mystical experience of the presence of God, a sort of “second conversion,” and he devoted himself to writing a book about the reasons for belief in God and in the Christian faith.

Pensees means “thoughts,” and these “thoughts” are really Pascal’s notes for a book of Christian apologetics that he planned to write, but never managed to finish. Pascal believed that to bring a person to faith in Christ it was necessary to make him want to believe.

In faith there is enough light for those who want to believe and enough shadows to blind those who don’t.

Make religion attractive, make good men wish it were true, and then show that it is. Worthy of reverence because it really understands human nature. Attractive because it promises true good.

The heart has its reasons, whereof reason knows nothing. We feel it in a thousand things. It is the heart which knows God, and not the reason. This, then, is absolute faith: God felt in the heart.

Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature; but he is a thinking reed. The entire universe need not arm itself to crush him. A vapour, a drop of water suffices to kill him. But, if the universe were to crush him, man would still be more noble than that which killed him, because he knows that he dies and the advantage which the universe has over him; the universe knows nothing of this. All our dignity consists, then, in thought.

…there are two kinds of people one can call reasonable; those who serve God with all their heart because they know Him, and those who seek Him with all their heart because they do not know Him.

Pascal’s Wager: “You must wager; it is not optional. Let us weigh the gain and the loss in wagering that God exists. If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing. Wager, then, without hesitation, that He exists.”

I found Peter Kreeft’s edition of and commentary on Pascal quite accessible; it’s called Christianity for Modern Pagans. I wrote some reflections on the chapters of Kreeft’s book in these posts a couple of years ago:
Order and Fear of Religion
Sinners Need Silence and Ultimately, A Saviour
Gloom, Despair and Agony on Me
Animal or Angel?
Vanity, Vanity, All Is Vanity
Every Day in Every Way: The Vanity of Justice.

Free Kindle edition of Pascal’s Pensees.

The Practice of the Presence of God by Brother Lawrence

Mar9

40 Inspirational Classics for Lent

Brother Lawrence, born Nicolas Herman, was a lay brother in a Carmelite monastery in Paris during the seventeenth century. When he entered the monastery at the age of twenty-four, he took the religious name Lawrence of the Resurrection. He spent most of his religious life working in the monastery kitchen, cooking and washing dishes. Father Joseph de Beaufort, a priest who knew Brother Lawrence, compiled a booklet of Brother Lawrence’s letters and stories and maxims and published the book after Brother Lawrence’s death in 1691.

“The time of business does not with me differ from the time of prayer; and in the noise and clatter of my kitchen, while several persons are at the same time calling for different things, I possess God in as great tranquility as if I were upon my knees at the blessed sacrament.”

“We ought not to grow tired of doing little things for the love of God, who regards not the greatness of the work, but the love with which it is performed.”

“There is not in the world a kind of life more sweet and delightful, than that of a continual conversation with God; those only can comprehend it who practice and experience it.”

You can read or print your own copy of this twenty page booklet by a 17th century French monk.
Text and audio available at Christian Ethereal Library.
Librivox’s audio version of The Practice of the Presence of God.

“In this small book, through letters and conversations, Brother Lawrence simply and beautifully explains how to continually walk with God – not from the head but from the heart.”

Edwardian, Turn of the Century and The Great War

Mar8

I’ve been spending a lot of my time in the years 1890-1920 for the past week or two, via fiction, nonfiction, a couple of British period TV series, and my history class. It’s a fascinating time period. I’ll tell you what I’ve been watching and reading, and then I’ll try to share some of what it all made me ponder and put together in my mind.

Fiction:
She Walks in Beauty by Siri Mitchell. I’m not sure exactly when this novel is set, about 1890 or the turn of the century. I read this one because it won the INSPY award for historical fiction this last year. It’s about New York City debutante, Clara Carter, who becomes the leading belle of the season with a little help from her overbearing aunt and her rich, social climber father. Unfortunately, Clara wasn’t really the “spunky, defiant heroine” that we all love and tend to expect in these sorts of historical romances. She’s a seventeen year old girl who’s been indoctrinated to believe that her only worth lies in her ability to attract a rich husband and restore her family’s honor. As Clara makes her way through the balls, dinner parties, and social visits of her coming out season, she changes very little and allows cultural expectations to mold her and pressure her to become what she actually hates. Only a family tragedy forces her to come to her senses and begin to make decisions that will give her a chance to live a real, authentic life. (The Kindle edition of this one is showing as free right now. Definitely worth your time if you like historical romance.)
After the Dancing Days by Margaret Rostkowski. We read this YA novel for my English/History class at homeschool co-op. Annie is a thirteen year old girl living in a small town in Kansas at the end of World War I. As she begins to visit the returning soldiers at the veterans’ hospital where her father works as a doctor, Annie is at first repulsed and frightened by the severely injured men. However, she comes to be friends with them, one in particular, even though her mother is opposed to Annie’s hospital visits and wants her to forget about the war and its consequences.

Nonfiction:
Bold Spirit: Helga Estby’s Forgotten Walk Across Victorian America by Linda Lawrence Hunt. Semicolon review here. In this true story of a mother and daughter in 1896 who accepted a wager that saw them walk across the entire continent of North America, I found a couple of women who not afraid to strike out and do something unexpected and unacceptable to many of those in their community. Unfortunately for the two women, the book also tells how they paid a steep price in betrayal and social ostracism for their daring.
The Great Silence: Britain from the Shadow of the First World War to the Dawn of the Jazz Age by Juliet Nicolson. This book of social history covers the years 1918-1920 and tells lots of little stories, vignettes really, about people in Britain both great and small and their experiences in the aftermath of World War I. The book featured lots of fascinating people that I wish I had time to find out more about:
plastic surgeon Harold GIllies who repaired and reconstructed the faces of thousands of wounded WW I soldiers,
Joseph Enniver, inventor of Pelmanism, a secular program for strengthening of the mind and character,
nurse Edith Cavell, who helped two hundred allied soldiers escape to freedom in Belgium during the war before she was captured and executed by the Germans,
Coco Chanel, the greatest couturier of all time,
Nancy Astor, the American lady who became England’s first woman Member of Parliament, and many more. Look for a post of quotable stories from this book in the near future.

Television:
Lark Rise to Candleford. This series from the BBC is set in rural England just before the turn of the century, c.1895. The story is taken from a trilogy of semi-autobiographical novels by author Flora Thimpson. In the novels Ms. Thompson tells about her experience as a young girl getting a job in a post office and seeing the changes that were coming to England as a result of industrialization and the new modes of transportation and communication that were coming into use during the time period. Laura Timmins, the character through whose eyes we see the stories of village life and cultural transformation, is a village girl and as such, much more adaptable than some of the upper class young women in these stories. She’s able to become independent and see the world as one in which she can rise above her circumstances and become an intelligent voice while retaining her femininity and her place in the community.

Downton Abbey. While I was waiting for the DVD’s of the several episodes of Lark RIse to Candleford to get here in the mail, I began watching Downton Abbey, another period piece set in the years just before WW I, from the sinking of the Titanic in 1912 to the announcement that England was at war with Germany (1914). Downton Abbey is amazing in its deft characterization of both the upper classes and the their servants, and even the burgeoning middle class gets a nod in the appearance of Lord Grantham’s new heir, Matthew Crawley, a distant cousin who becomes the new heir after the death of a couple of closer relatives in the Titanic tragedy. Lord Grantham has only daughters, three of them, who are of marriageable age, but with very little inheritance to hook a husband since almost all the money in the family is tied up in the estate. The servants in this grand old English family are all intimately involved in family matters as well as in the working out of their own lives and relationships. Downton Abbey is something of a soap opera, but it just manages to transcend that genre because the problems and the issues that make up the plot are very real and identifiable and intriguing, leading to both reflection and a feeling of connection. The characters are appealing, sometimes frustrating, and the dialog is spot on and funny. I loved this series, and I was only sorry to see it end.

I’ll have to leave the pondering and putting together for another post. However, I would recommend any or all of the above for your viewing or reading pleasure.

Sunday Salon: Books Read in February, 2011

Mar5

The Sunday Salon.com

Bible:
Proverbs

Children’s and Young Adult Fiction:
Epitaph Road by David Patneaude. Semicolon review here.
Dirt Road Home by Watt Key.
Harmonic Feedback by Tara Kelly.
Amy and Roger’s Epic Detour by Morgan Matson. Semicolon review here.
The Ink Garden of Brother Theophane by C.M. Millen. Semicolon review here.
Nothing To Fear by Jackie French Koller. Semicolon review here.

Adult Fiction:
Certain Women by Madeleine L’Engle. Re-read for Faith ‘N Fiction Roundtable. Semicolon thoughts here.
Baking Cakes in Kigali by Gaile Parkin.
Listen by Rene Gutteridge. Semicolon review here.
Imaginary Jesus by Matt Mikalatos.
Blackout by Connie Willis. Semicolon review and recommendation here.
All Clear by Connie Willis.

Nonfiction:
Blood River: A Journey to Africa’s Broken Heart by Tim Butcher. Semicolon review here.
Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience and Redemption by Laura Hillenbrand. Semicolon review here.
W.F. Matthews: Lost Battalion Survivor by Travis Monday. Semicolon review here.
Obama Prayer by Charles M. Garriott. Semicolon review here.
The Unheard: A Memoir of Deafness and Africa by Josh Swiller.
Bold Spirit Helga Estby’s Forgotten Walk Across Victorian America by Linda Lawrence Hunt. Semicolon review here.
Orthodoxy by G.K. Chesterton.

Best Fiction: Blackout and All Clear by Connie Willis.

Best Nonfiction Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand.

I would suggest that you run, not walk, to the nearest bookstore, better yet, order on Amazon, any one of the three “best” above and read it. You will be glad you did. And no one paid me for that endorsement.

Pied Beauty by Gerard Manley Hopkins

Mar4

Pied Beauty
by Gerard Manley Hopkins

Glory be 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 áll trádes, 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.

Megan at Homeschooling on the Run: “Here is my all-time favorite GMH poem – it smacks of glorious springtime, and happy abandon in the warming climes of creation.”
Kelly Fineman at Writing and Ruminating: “What I like about the second stanza is its ambiguity: is Manley telling all those things that are freckled, fickle, etc. to praise God, or is he praising God for having made them? The stanza reads well both ways, and I rather think that was on purpose.” (Kelly has a good discussion of the poem. You should read it if you’re interested in poetry in general or in Mr. Hopkins in particular.

Nothing To Fear by Jackie French Koller

Mar1

My American History class has reached the era of the Great Depression, the 1930’s, and we’re reading Nothing To Fear by Jackie Koller. This read is going much better than the last book they were asked to read, Christy by Catherine Marshall. Christy is one of my favorite novels, but had I known when I wrote the syllabus that I would have a class of nine fourteen-fifteen year old boys, I might have chosen a different book to exemplify the early twentieth century.

Back to Nothing To Fear. All of the boys were enthusiastic about this one. It’s the story of a boy, Danny Garvey, who lives with his Irish American family—father, mother, and little sister Maureen–in a tenement apartment in New York City in 1932. Like all of the men in Danny’s neighborhood, Danny father is out of work and feeling desperate about providing for his family. Danny’s mother does laundry and ironing from her home for Miss Emily’s Hotel for Young Women. Danny shines shoes to make a few extra pennies.

But when Danny gets in with the wrong crowd and a window gets broken at old man Weissman’s store, Danny learns just how important his good name is to his father and eventually through the course of events, Danny also learns to value his own name and reputation.

Some bad stuff happens in this book, but it ends on a note of hope and perseverance. Danny and his mother trust in God and President Roosevelt to get them through the Depression, a trust somewhat misplaced in my opinion, but it’s true to the era and matches the stories that I’ve heard from people who lived during the 1930’s. Danny and his mom and all their neighbors are ecstatic when Roosevelt is elected, and even though, again realistically, the election of Roosevelt does nothing to improve the Garveys’ lives, they still cling to the hope that FDR will do something to end the Depression and return the country to prosperity. It reminds me of people nowadays who still maintain that President Obama will get our economy going again, except that I don’t think we’re as desperate as people were during the Great Depression. Therefore, we have a little room to see clearly that Obama is not our rescuer. FDR was any port in a storm and too much of a last chance for people to give up on him, even when he didn’t/couldn’t deliver.

I would recommend Nothing To Fear for boys ages 12-16 who are studying the Depression era in history or who just enjoy history and historical fiction. A few other recommended fiction books set in the same time period for children and young adults:

Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry by Mildred Taylor. Cassie Logan lives with her family in rural Mississippi and experiences the family closeness and racial tensions of the 1930’s time period.

I like these Dear America diaries:
Christmas After All: The Great Depression Diary of Minnie Swift. Indianapolis, IN, 1932 by Kathryn Lasky.
Mirror, Mirror on the Wall: The Diary of Bess Brennan, The Perkins School for the Blind, 1932 by Barry Denenburg.
Survival in the Storm: The Dust Bowl Diary of Grace Edwards, Dalhart, Texas, 1935 by Katelyn Janke.

Year Down Yonder by Richard Peck. Winner of the 2001 Newbery Medal. Fifteen year old Mary Alice is sent downstate to live with Grandma Dowdel while her Ma and Pa stay in Chicago to work.
Bud, not Buddy by Christopher Paul Curtis. Bud, not Buddy, Caldwell is an orphan who thinks he might just have a dad, Herman E. Calloway, bass player for the Dusky Devastators of the Depression. Will he find Calloway, and is Calloway really his father?
Moon Over Manifest by Clare Vanderpool is the story of a girl, twelve year old Abilene Tucker, whose father, Gideon, is a hobo. Abilene and her dad have been riding the rails together for as long as she can remember, but now (summer, 1936) Gideon has sent Abilene to live with an old friend of his in Manifest, Kansas while Gideon takes a job on the railroad back in Iowa. 2010 Newbery Award winner. Semicolon review here.
Ten Cents a Dance by Christine Fletcher. For older teens and adults. Semicolon review here.
William S. and the Great Escape by Zilpha Keatley Snyder. William escapes his abusive home along with his little sister and brother, but can the three fugitives find a place to call home in a time when home is hard to find? Semicolon review here.
Turtle in Paradise by Jenifer L. Holm. Semicolon review here. Take one eleven year girl named Turtle with eyes as “gray as soot” who sees things exactly as they are. Plunk her down in Key West, Florida with her Aunt Minnie the Diaper Gang and a bunch of Conch (adj. native or resident of the Florida Keys) relatives and Conch cousins with nicknames like Pork Chop and Too Bad and Slow Poke.