One of the best parts of C. S. Lewis’s The Pilgrim’s Regress is the afterword to the book’s third edition. The book, the first Lewis wrote after his conversion to Christianity, is a fantastical retelling of his journey to the Christian faith as told in a vein similar to The Pilgrim’s Progress by John Bunyan. What is interesting about the third edition’s afterword is this. After a quick articulation of his move from “popular realism” all the way to Christianity via idealism, pantheism, and theism, Lewis admits:
I still think this a very natural road, but now I know that it is a road very rarely trodden. In the early thirties I did not know this. If I had had any notion of my own isolation, I should either have kept silent about my journey or else endeavored to describe it with more consideration for the reader’s difficulties.
It’s an interesting and vital conundrum: articulating the particular in a way that speaks well to a general audience. Much of the remainder of the afterword concerns Lewis’s approach to Romanticism and how it differs from the many other ways the term had been used by others. He continues:
What I meant [by Romanticism] was a particular recurrent experience which dominated my childhood and adolescence and which I hastily called ‘Romantic’ because inanimate nature and marvelous literature were among the things that evoked it. I still believe that the experience is common, commonly misunderstood, and of immense importance: but I know now that in others minds it arises under other stimuli and is entangled with other irrelevancies and that to bring it into the forefront of consciousness is not so easy as I once supposed.
It’s almost a sorry/not sorry moment for Lewis. He understands the significance of the thing while also acknowledging that the thing itself isn’t quite as accessible or understandable as he had hoped (and for many reasons, probably).
The question of how each of us was might have been brought to the Christian faith is important and too easily understated. Part of that is the result of “safeguards” in regards to language and experience rooted in the need for things line up well with the narratives and truths of the New Testament. It’s part of why conversion is such a vital part of the Christian experience for many throughout church history.
Two things come to mind as I reflect on this. The first is our willingness to articulate the particulars of how God drew (and draws us still) to Himself, particularly if certain parts of the narrative aren’t as clear-cut as a Damascus Road experience. The second is our unwillingness to draw these stories out of one another, to sit (or walk) and listen and ask good questions to better understand just how the “springs of living water” bubble up in our own lives. (Which is why John’s lengthy conversation with the hermit History is of vital importance, particular in his articulation of the Rules and the pictures.) I’m beginning to see such conversations as a sign of spiritual maturity, of learning to walk the Road well with one another.
My first week of spring break is quietly and quickly coming to an end. And while I haven’t gotten as much done as I’d hoped, I have been able to do some quality reading. This afternoon, I finished Justin Whitmel Earley’s The Common Rule. And while I hope to write more about it later, there was one thing that I wanted to get down before the week comes to an end.
A few weeks ago, a dear friend who also happens to oversee our student publications, recommended the work of Benjamin Dreyer. The recommendation probably came up as she was working on a piece and we were talking about proofreading, something I’ve had the chance to do many times over the last few years (you have to use that English degree every chance you get). She mentioned the humor of Dreyer’s Twitter feed. And she pointed out that he had a writing style book out. The next day, I snatched up the only copy that Barnes and Noble had at the time. I read as much of it as I could before passing it on to the one who suggested it (and ordered my own copy as soon as I realized what a treasure the book was).
What follows in the essay is a nice distilling of some aspects of the Christian journey that seasons like Lent can help clarify for us. Beyond that, props to the writer for bringing in Tolkien and Lewis. I like the essay’s first point quite a bit:
For some time now I’ve been meaning to post this quote from the beginning of Leah Libresco’s Building the Benedict Option:
The season of Lent begins this week. It’s also one of the craziest weeks of the school year for me, which is a way of saying that there’s a good chance my mind won’t be too much on Lent. Beyond that, my recent readings in Boersma have me thinking in good ways about my own faith tradition and the broader Christian tradition, but that’s a tale for a later post or two. Either way, this entry will post on Mardi Gras, which is an interesting concept in every way. And then tomorrow is Ash Wednesday, when many Christians will attend a service to be reminded of their mortality through the imposition of ashes. (Already I’ve seen people on Twitter asking people NOT to post #ashtag selfies from the day’s events.)
Space Enough, and Time 