Monday, May 10, 2004
I'm reading "Surprised by Joy" by C.S. Lewis which is about his journey to the Catholic Church. Lewis has an author's mind and seems to remember his youth very, very well. He looks back on events, like his mother's death when he was only seven, and is able to see the events of his life shaping his future. If only we all had such insight into ourselves... what a different world it would be. He says, for example, about some very hard times he want through when he was very young,
In all seriousness I think that the life of faith is easier to me because of these memories. To think, in sunny and confident times, that I shall die and rot, or to think that one day all this universe will slip away and become memory (as did the terrible things that happened to him) --this is easier to us if we have seen just that sort of thing happening before. We have learned not to take the present things at their face value.
I'm also reading Lewis' "Screwtape Letters" and "Mere Christianity" now, too. I tend to have a book for free time at work, a book by my chair in the evening, and a book for reading in the night.
Speaking of reading, I posted a note on The Summa Momma's web site (which is a wonderful place, by the way) about Philip Pullman's "His Dark Materials" trilogy. It's a series of children's books that I like very much. The Mommas pointed me toward several review of these books that make it clear how much Pullman really hates the Catholic Church. What I took to be very inventive alternate worlds and young children fighting for truth with great courage, Pullman really means (made clear in the reviews) as diatribes against the Church. It's interesting that Pullman, losing his Father at an early age has taken away from that pain a hate for Christianity, while Lewis, loosing his Mother at nearly the same age, finally turned his childhood loss into a love for the Church.
So I'll be rereading some Pullman with a new eye soon.
In all seriousness I think that the life of faith is easier to me because of these memories. To think, in sunny and confident times, that I shall die and rot, or to think that one day all this universe will slip away and become memory (as did the terrible things that happened to him) --this is easier to us if we have seen just that sort of thing happening before. We have learned not to take the present things at their face value.
I'm also reading Lewis' "Screwtape Letters" and "Mere Christianity" now, too. I tend to have a book for free time at work, a book by my chair in the evening, and a book for reading in the night.
Speaking of reading, I posted a note on The Summa Momma's web site (which is a wonderful place, by the way) about Philip Pullman's "His Dark Materials" trilogy. It's a series of children's books that I like very much. The Mommas pointed me toward several review of these books that make it clear how much Pullman really hates the Catholic Church. What I took to be very inventive alternate worlds and young children fighting for truth with great courage, Pullman really means (made clear in the reviews) as diatribes against the Church. It's interesting that Pullman, losing his Father at an early age has taken away from that pain a hate for Christianity, while Lewis, loosing his Mother at nearly the same age, finally turned his childhood loss into a love for the Church.
So I'll be rereading some Pullman with a new eye soon.
