September 24, 2008

• Up the sunbeam to the sun

  One of the writers who has had the biggest impact on my life is a
  man who died on the same November day in 1963 that John F. Kennedy did,
  when I was in the second grade.
  He never traveled widely, but he
  thought widely, and his mind was one of the most respected of his day.
  He taught in one of the world's oldest and most revered universities.
  An eminent scholar, his specialty was medieval literature.
  Although
  he was brought up in a church-going home, he became an avowed atheist
  at about 15, and didn't come back “kicking and screaming” to
  Christianity until he was in his early thirties. He eventually became
  one of our faith's greatest defenders, with a rare ability to explain
  deep theology in a way the world can understand.
  His works, which
  have been translated into 30 languages and sold millions of copies,
  vary widely in subject matter. Along with his scholarly writings, his
  work includes a fascinating autobiography; imaginative novels,
  including a science-fiction trilogy; and stacks of wisdom-infused
  letters that have been compiled into various volumes. One of his
  best-known books, “Mere Christianity,” was compiled from a series of
  radio talks he gave about the faith during World War II. But this
  intellectual scholar is probably best-known for a series of remarkable
  children's books he first wrote for his stepsons.
  He was a close
  friend of the brilliant author of “The Lord of the Rings,” J. R. R.
  Tolkien, who, like most of his friends, called him “Jack.” We know him
  as C. S. Lewis, recognized in today's world as the author of the
  “Chronicles of Narnia.”
  

  
  

  Clive Staples Lewis was an Irishman by
  birth, but spent his adult life in England, where he, like Tolkien, was
  a professor of English at Oxford University. He spent most of his life
  as a bachelor, living with his older brother, and faithfully taking
  care of the widowed mother of an Army comrade of his who was killed in
  the first World War.
  In middle age, much to his surprise, Lewis fell
  deeply in love with an American woman, Joy Gresham, marrying for the
  first time when he was past 60, after she had been diagnosed with
  terminal cancer. The couple spent four happy years together before
  Joy’s death in 1960. After his wife’s death, the broken-hearted widower
  published “A Grief Observed,” which has since helped many others cope
  with tragic loss.
  I can't remember when I first discovered C.S.
  Lewis — maybe when someone gave a paperback set of the Narnia books to
  my little sister and brother when I was in high school. I devoured the
  magical books with delight, and have re-read them a number of times. I
  had fun reading them to my own boys, who loved them, too.
  

  
  

  
  

   “The
  Chronicles of Narnia” — which have sold more than 100 million copies —
  are not just books for children. In fact, Lewis believed a test of a
  good children's book is whether or not adults can read it with
  enjoyment, too. I learned much of what I know about our Lord Jesus by
  reading about Lewis' golden lion Aslan, “the son of the
  Emperor-Over-Sea,” and his descriptions of “Aslan’s country” have
  colored my own grasp of what eternity will be like, and helped inspire
  my own quest to “come farther up and farther in.”
  

  
  

  Later I read “Mere
  Christianity,” a thought-provoking book that explains the basic tenets
  of Christianity in fresh, un-churchy language, as well as a number of
  Lewis’ other books.
  This week I've been pondering a nugget of C. S. Lewis' wisdom, which always brings light.
   “I have tried ... to make every pleasure into a channel of adoration,” Lewis writes in “Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer.”
  I'm
  thinking about this in light of looking around at the natural beauties
  of the fall that I've written about — the leaves beginning to turn, the
  woods’ colorful fungi, the bright wildflowers, the slanting golden
  sunlight.
  Lewis went on to explain: “I don't mean simply by giving
  thanks for it. One must of course give thanks, but I mean something
  different. How shall I put it? We can't — or I can't — hear the song of
  a bird as simply a sound. Its meaning or message ... comes with it
  inevitably ... This heavenly fruit is instantly redolent of the orchard
  where it grew. This sweet air whispers of the country from whence it
  blows. It is a message. We know we are being touched by a finger of
  that right hand at which there are pleasures forevermore ... One's mind
  runs back up the sunbeam to the sun....”
  I've been pondering this,
  and what it means to me is this: When I see something that touches me
  with its beauty — like a burning red leaf floating gently on a puddle
  in the fall woods — I am not only thankful for it, but it turns my
  heart toward God — the maker of that leaf, the inventor of that color —
  in worship of Him. The beauty of that leaf is a reminder of “the
  orchard where it grew,” in God's country. The “sweet air” of the Ozarks
  breeze in the fall reminds me of the country “from whence it blows,”
  from God's country, from eternity, from the land for which my heart
  longs.
  Lewis helps me realize that when I admire something in
  Creation, my heart is turned worshipfully toward the Creator, my “mind
  runs back up the sunbeam to the sun,” and I am able to know a little
  bit more about what He is really like.
  I believe that dear old Jack
  Lewis himself is there today, in Aslan's Country, delighting in being
  near “that right hand at which there are pleasures forevermore.”
   I hope to join him one day.

  -------------
  By Celia DeWoody
  Copyright Harrison (Ark.) Daily Times 2008
  Published Sept. 24, 2008
  
  
  
  
   
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

  • 9:58 pm
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