Screwtape Pipes Up

Here is a site, goodreads, with some of the memorable quotes from Under Secretary Screwtape in C.S. Lewis's The Screwtape Letters.

The kids and I listened to the book on our road trip this summer to Georgia, Virginia, and North Carolina. (Nothing like a captive audience. But they enjoyed it more than they thought they would.)

To begin with a little humor:

-- "She's the sort of woman who lives for others - you can tell the others by their hunted expression.” 

And moving on to the more serious:

-- “Courage is not simply one of the virtues but the form of every virtue at the testing point, which means at the point of highest reality.” 

-- "...thousands of humans have been brought to think that humility means pretty women trying to believe they are ugly and clever men trying to believe they are fools. And since what they are trying to believe may, in some cases, be manifest nonsense, they cannot succeed in believing it and we have the chance of keeping their minds endlessly revolving on themselves in an effort to achieve the the impossible.” 

-- "Whatever their bodies do affects their souls. It is funny how mortals always picture us as putting things into their minds: in reality our best work is done by keeping things out...” 

-- “[M]an has been accustomed, ever since he was a boy, to having a dozen incompatible philosophies dancing about together inside his head. He doesn't think of doctrines as primarily "true" or "false," but as "academic" or "practical," "outworn" or "contemporary," "conventional" or "ruthless." Jargon, not argument, is your best ally in keeping him from the Church. Don't waste time trying to make him think that materialism is true! Make him think it is strong or stark or courageous—that it is the philosophy of the future. That's the sort of thing he cares about.” 

-- "When He [God] talks of their losing their selves, He means only abandoning the clamour of self-will; once they have done that, He really gives them back all their personality, and boasts (I am afraid, sincerely) that when they are wholly His they will be more themselves than ever.” 

and many more

"Down to the Frozen Center:" CS Lewis on Grief and Death (physical and spiritual) and Rebirth

I. You think that we who do not shout and shake Our fist at God when youth or bravery die Have colder blood or hearts less apt to ache Than yours who rail. I know you do. Yet why? You have what sorrow always longs to find, Someone to blame, some enemy in chief; Anger's the anesthetic of the mind, It does men good, it fumes away their grief. We feel the stroke like you; so far our fate Is equal. After that, for us begin Half-hopeless labours, learning not to hate, And then to want, and then (perhaps) to win A high, unearthly comfort, angel's food, That seems at first mockery to flesh and blood. II. There's a repose, a safety (even a taste Of something like revenge?) in fixed despair Which we're forbidden. We have to rise with haste And start to climb what seems a crazy stair. Our Consolation (for we are consoled, So much of us, I mean, as may be left After the dreadful process has unrolled) For one bereavement makes us more bereft. It asks for all we have, to the last shred; Read Dante, who had known its best and worst – He was bereaved and he was comforted --- No one denies it, comforted – but first Down to the frozen center, up the vast Mountain of pain, from world to world, he passed. III. Of this we're certain; no one who dared knock At heaven's door for earthly comfort found Even a door – only smooth, endless rock, And save the echo of his cry no sound. It's dangerous to listen; you'll begin To fancy that those echoes (hope can play Pitiful tricks) are answers from within; Far better to turn, grimly sane, away. Heaven cannot thus, Earth cannot ever, give The thing we want. We ask what isn't there And by our asking water and make live That very part of love which must despair And die and go down cold into the earth Before there's talk of springtime and rebirth. IV. Pitch your demand heaven-high and they'll be met. Ask for the Morning Star and take (thrown in) Your earthly love. Why, yes; but how to set One's foot on the first rung, how to begin? The silence of one voice upon our ears Beats like the waves; the coloured morning seems A lying brag; the face we loved appears Fainter each night, or ghastlier, in our dreams. "that long way round which Dante trod was meant For mighty saints and mystics not for me," So Nature cried. Yet if we once assent To Nature's voice, we shall be like the bee That booms against the window-pane for hours Thinking that the way to reach the laden flowers. V. 'If we could speak to her,' my doctor said, 'And told her, "Not that way! All, all in vain You weary out wings and bruise your head," Might she not answer, buzzing at the pane, "Let queens and mystics and religious bees Talk of such inconceivables as glass; the blunt lay worker flies at what she sees, Look there – ahead, ahead – the flowers, the grass!" We catch her in a handkerchief (who knows What rage she feels, what terror, what despair?) And shake her out – and gaily out she goes Where quivering flowers and thick in summer air, To drink their hearts. But left to her own will She would have died upon the window-sill.

Grief Pondered

Teaching Us How to Grieve

A few weeks ago, our dear friends lost their adult son in a tragic car accident. The young man had a wife and a 2-year-old boy, who still doesn't understand why daddy does not come home. He also left behind a mother and father and sisters and brothers-- all people who loved him in this tight-knit family.

The manifest transparency and courage of these friends grieving deeply is something to behold. It is nothing short of an honor to be near. It is sacred, almost, like peeking in on a cataclysm and a glory.

There are many ways to grieve. We have watched our friends do it well. They grieve openly and frankly in a way that strips aside all conventions and flatly proclaims questions, faith, and courage. They cry during the stories, laugh between the tears, and say, "I believe, help my unbelief." They turn from their tears and encourage another. In the end -- whether they know it at this fresh point of their sorrow or not -- they are teaching us how to grieve and how to collapse onto God.

Not a Tame Lion

Watching a great sorrow up close puts all of my barely-quashed, dark fears on display -- a flickering picture newsreel. I want to look away from my own fears. But when I see someone suffer, I am turned inside out and my insides are revealed. The worst can happen, and does. It's true, and we can't pretend anymore: Here there be monsters.

I believe that this one of God's methods of forcing me to put feet to my faith. He is calling my bluff.

As Mr. Beaver says, "Aslan is not a tame lion." God himself is not safe. He is not a coddling God. This faith we have -- this never was the safe option. At least not now, not with respect to the flesh.

Faith -- believers know this -- is not an opiate, but a cold splash of water on the face. Faith does not allow you to muffle your fears in nice phrases and memories and that "The Circle of Life" song. Faith says, "All is as God has decreed," and "yet I will praise Him." Even a tiny mustard seed of faith is a gift, because we surely could not generate it ourselves.We only need that tiniest of gifts, and He gives it freely.

This faith is not safe, but it is real and true. And part of that realness and trueness is that Death does not have the last word.

Grief Pondered: At the Back of All the Stories

Good News is only really good when the first set of news is really bad.

I just finished "Til We Have Faces" by CS Lewis. I read it in college and missed its depth then. (I kept worrying over the mechanics of the metaphor.)

Expressly, it is a retelling of the myth of Cupid and Psyche. However, in the end it is about Psyche's sister, who is an aged monarch of an ancient kingdom.

Telling her strange story for posterity, an old queen seeks to make a water-tight case against the gods. She lays out her case against them -- their cruelty, their hidden-ness, and jealousy, and teasing trickery. But as she writes, something happens. We figure it out only slightly before she does. She realizes the case she is making is against herself.

Righteously indignant, she finds she was the cruel and unjust one, after all.

Coolly logical and academic, she finds that she was the liar and deceiver, after all. (The worst lies she tells are to herself.)

Pragmatic and effective as a ruler who has built a solid empire, she finds her kingdom will pass to a distant relative she hardly knows, after all.

Meanwhile, the One behind the stories was always drawing this withered queen to meet Him. To show her that truth never was found in shrines and magic, or book learning, or politics. It was always, only, and forever found in Him. The story was about Him. All the stories are about Him.

He wants to meet her. He will meet her. He comes to her. 

"You have seen the torches grow pale when men open the shutters and broad summer morning shines in?"

As she reflects on the events of her life and her grappling with the gods,

"I knew that all of this had been a preparation. Some far greater matter was upon us...'He is coming,' they said....The earth and stars and sun, all that was or will be, existed for His sake."

Our God is personal. He is intimate. He is far too much concerned with loving us to let us idle along forever in indolent accusations, or in the opiates of endless logical disputes or smoky mysticism or worldly pragmatics.

Christianity has laws, but it is not a religion of laws and rules. Christianity has miracles and mysteries, but it is not a religion of magic and smoke. Christianity is reasoned and wise, but it is not a religion for the proud academic and all-knowing logician. (The Greeks seeks wisdom, the Jews look for miracles. But we His people, both Jew and Gentile, seek something else. Him, crucified. It's a stumbling block.)

Christianity is a most intimate love story of a Groom for His bride, a Father for his child, a King for his subject, a Doctor for his patient.

Communion with Christ is a most uncomfortable and invasive surgery, a nakedness, a subjection, and a knowing.

We're sick and oozing sore, and He is our Doctor. We are weak and defenseless, and He is our protecting King. We are lost and crying out, and He is our shepherding Father.

We are ugly, unloved, wrinkled, bitter, barren, sour, and cast-off. We wear a hood to hide our ugliness. And He is our beloved Groom, making us radiant, smooth, strong, healthy, and whole. He removes our masks and shrouds, looks in our face, and clothes us in white.

"Let the bones you have crushed rejoice." Jesus, lover of my soul.

Just one last thing the old queen learns: He doesn't answer to her. She answers to Him.

Love

I have seen this attributed to CS Lewis. I seem to recall reading the source of this quote, but I have forgotten which book or essay it was. 

'The rule for all of us is perfectly simple.  Do not waste time bothering whether you “love” your neighbor; act as if you did.  As soon as we do this we find one of the great secrets.  When you are behaving as if you loved someone, you will presently come to love him.  If you injure someone you dislike, you will find yourself disliking him more.  If you do him a good turn, you will find yourself disliking him less.'

May I suggest two things to read in light of the Gosnell abortion trial in Philadelphia:

1. The short story, "A Good Man Is Hard to Find," by the great Flannery O'Connor.

2. This quote, attributed to CS Lewis, is a good reminder for those of us looking upon the revealed squalor and horror of an abortion clinic:

"The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid "dens of crime" that Dickens loved to paint. It is not done even in concentration camps and labour camps. In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered (moved, seconded, carried, and minuted) in clean, carpeted, warmed, and well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voice."