1953
TO DON GIOVANNI CALABRIA: On the need for a book on prayer for beginners.
5 JANUARY 1953
I invite your prayers about a work which I now have in hand. I am trying to write a book about private prayers for the use of the laity, especially for those who have been recently converted to the Christian faith and so far are without any sustained and regular habit of prayer. I tackled the job because I saw many no doubt very beautiful books written on this subject of prayer for the religious but few which instruct tyros and those still babes (so to say) in the Faith. I find many difficulties nor do I definitely know whether God wishes me to complete this task or not.
Pray for me, my Father, that I neither persist, through over-boldness, in what is not permitted to me nor withdraw, through too great timidity, from due effort: for he who touches the Ark without authorization and he who, having once put his hand to the plough, draws it back are both lost.
Both you and your Congregation are in my daily prayers. While we are in the Way, this is our only intercourse: be it granted to us, I pray, hereafter, to meet in our True Country face to face.
TO DON GIOVANNI CALABRIA: On Lewis’s “problem with petitionary prayer” (see the letter above to his brother, 3 March 1940).
14 JANUARY 1953
I send you many heartfelt thanks for your charity in being willing to meditate on my proposed little book and pray for it. I take your opinion as a good sign.
And now, my dearest friend, hear what difficulty leaves me in most doubt. Two models of prayer seem to be put before us in the New Testament which are not easy to reconcile with each other.
One is the actual prayer of the Lord in the Garden of Gethsemane (‘if it be possible…nevertheless, not as I will but as Thou wilt’).
The other, though, is in Mark XI 24. ‘Whatsoever you ask believing that you shall receive you shall obtain’ (and observe that in the place where the version has, in Latin, accipietis— and our vernacular translation, similarly, has the future tense, ‘shall receive’—the Greek text has the past tense 
= accepistis— which is very difficult).
Now the question: How is it possible for a man, at one and the same moment of time, both to believe most fully that he will receive and to submit himself to the Will of God—Who perhaps is refusing him?
How is it possible to say, simultaneously, ‘I firmly believe that Thou wilt give me this’, and, ‘If Thou shalt deny me it, Thy will be done’? How can one mental act both exclude possible refusal and consider it? I find this discussed by none of the Doctors.
Please note: it creates no difficulty for me that God sometimes does not will to do what the faithful request. This is necessary because He is wise and we are foolish: but why in Mark XI 24, does He promise to do everything (whatsoever) we ask in full faith? Both statements are the Lord’s; both are among what we are required to believe. What should I do?
TO MARY VAN DEUSEN, who had asked Lewis to advise her about becoming a member of the Associates of Holy Cross, the lay group attached to the Order of the Holy Cross, a Benedictine Anglican monastic order: On not joining a group unless God clearly inspires such as the only or best way to do or receive good; and on the optional but helpful practice of private confession of sins to a priest.
26 JANUARY 1953
Thank you for your letter of the 17th and the wholly delightful photographs. I am glad things are still Fine. I’ve never thought of becoming an Associate of anything myself and feel difficulty about advising. You mention externals—what Associates have to do and that they have asked you to become one—but say nothing about the motives in your own mind either for or against it. They are the real point, aren’t they? I don’t think one ought to join an Order, however much one might like it or however nice the people who have asked you—unless one thinks that God especially presses one to do so as the only, or the best, way of doing some good to others or receiving some good oneself. And if one does think that, then I suppose one must join however much one disliked it and however nasty the particular inviters were! It is not as if it were a club! Why not try living according to their Rule for a bit without joining them and seeing what it is like for a person such as you in circumstances such as yours?
Confession, of course, you can have without joining anything. I think it is a good thing for most of us and use it myself.
That is very good news about really good people beginning to go into government jobs, and at a sacrifice. I have always thought of how that the greatest of all dangers to your country is the fear that politics were not in the hands of your best types and that this, in the long run, might prove ruinous. A change in that, the beginning of what might be called a volunteer aristocracy, might have incalculable effects. More power to your myriad elbows!
TO RHONA BODLE: On the need to read/present the Gospels with some commentary/teaching; and on learning/teaching how to love people one doesn’t like.
9 FEBRUARY 1953
Thanks for your interesting letter of February 1st which arrived to-day. It is difficult to one, who, like me, has no experience, to give an opinion of these problems, which, I see, are very intricate. The story about the girl who had reached the age of 16 under Christian teachers without hearing of the Incarnation is an eye-opener. For ordinary children (I don’t know about the Deaf) I don’t see any advantage in presenting the Gospels without some doctrinal comment. After all, they weren’t written for people who did not know the doctrine, but for converts, already instructed, who now wanted to know a bit more about the life and saying of the Master. No ancient sacred books were intended to be read without a teacher: hence the Ethiopian comment in the Acts says to St. Philip, ‘How can I understand unless someone tells me?’
Could the bit—and I think there must be something—about people I don’t like come in as a comment on the Forgive clause in the Lord’s Prayer?
TO DON GIOVANNI CALABRIA: On the way a good Christian friendship transcends so many differences and reveals how all human beings are related in the old Adam and the new Adam; on Lewis’s daily prayer for Christian unity; on the difference between “Post-Christian man” and “pre-Christian man”; and on Lewis’s continuing question about petitionary prayer (see the letter above to Don Giovanni Calabria, 14 January 1953).
17 MARCH 1953
I was delighted, as always, by your letter.
It is a wonderful thing and a strengthening of faith that two souls differing from each other in place, nationality, language, obedience and age should have been thus led into a delightful friendship; so far does the order of spiritual beings transcend the material order.
It makes easier that necessary doctrine that we are most closely joined together alike with the sinner Adam and with the Just One, Jesus, even though as to body, time and place we have lived so differently from both. This unity of the whole human race exists: would that there existed that nobler union of which you write. No day do I let pass without my praying for that longed-for consummation.
What you say about the present state of mankind is true: indeed, it is even worse than you say.
For they neglect not only the law of Christ but even the Law of Nature as known by the Pagans. For now they do not blush at adultery, treachery, perjury, theft and the other crimes which I will not say Christian Doctors, but the Pagans and the Barbarians have themselves denounced.
They err who say ‘the world is turning pagan again’. Would that it were! The truth is that we are falling into a much worse state.
‘ Post-Christian man’ is not the same as ‘ pre-Christian man’. He is as far removed as virgin is from widow: there is nothing in common except want of a spouse: but there is a great difference between a spouse-to-come and a spouse lost.
I am still working on my book on Prayer.
About this question which I submitted to you, I am asking all theologians: so far in vain.
Let us ever pray for each other, my Father.
TO VERA GEBBERT, who had told Lewis of her pregnancy and of her having read Isaiah 66:9 from the Bible she kept open on her dining table: On not wishing to be pregnant.
23 MARCH 1953
Your first story (about mistaking [your pregnancy] for sea-sickness) is one of the funniest I ever heard. In our country there are usually alterations of shape which would throw grave doubts on the sea-sick hypothesis!…but no doubt you manage things better in America. Any way, congratulations and encouragements. As to wishing it had not happened, one can’t help momentary wishes: guilt begins only when one embraces them. You can’t help their knocking at the door, but one mustn’t ask them in to lunch. And no doubt you have many feelings on the other side. I am sure you felt as I did when I heard my first bullet, ‘This is War: this is what Homer wrote about.’ For, all said and done, a woman who has never had a baby and a man who has never been either in a battle or a storm at sea, are, in a sense, rather outside—haven’t really ‘seen life’—haven’t served. We will indeed have you in our prayers.
Now as to your other story, about Isaiah 66? It doesn’t really matter whether the Bible was open at that page thru’ a miracle or through some (unobserved) natural cause. We think it matters because we tend to call the second alternative ‘ chance.’ But when you come to think of it, there can be no such thing as chance from God’s point of view. Since He is omniscient His acts have no consequences which He has not foreseen and taken into account and intended. Suppose it was the draught from the window that blew your Bible open at Isaiah 66. Well, that current of air was linked up with the whole history of weather from the beginning of the world and you may be quite sure that the result it had for you at that moment (like all its other results) was intended and allowed for in the act of creation. ‘Not one sparrow,’ you know the rest. So of course the message was addressed to you. To suggest that your eye fell on it without this intention, is to suggest that you could take Him by surprise. Fiddle-de-dee! This is not Predestination: your will is perfectly free: but all physical events are adapted to fit in as God sees best with the free actions He knows we are going to do. There’s something about this in Screwtape.
Meanwhile, courage! Your moments of nervousness are not your real self, only medical phenomena. All blessings.
TO CORBIN SCOTT CARNELL, who had asked for further explanation of the first note Lewis had written in Miracles, Chapter 15, about the historicity of various books of the Bible: On the kinds of inspired literature in the Bible.
5 APRIL 1953
I am myself a little uneasy about the question you raise: there seems to be almost equal objection to the position taken up in my footnote and to the alternative of attributing the same kind and degree of historicity to all the books of the Bible. You see, the question about Jonah and the great fish does not turn simply on intrinsic probability. The point is that the whole Book of Jonah has to me the air of being a moral romance, a quite different kind of thing from, say, the account of King David or the New Testament narratives, not pegged, like them, into any historical situation.
In what sense does the Bible ‘present’ this story ‘as historical’? Of course it doesn’t say ‘This is fiction’: but then neither does Our Lord say that His Unjust Judge, Good Samaritan, or Prodigal Son are fiction. (I would put Esther in the same category as Jonah for the same reason.) How does a denial, or doubt, of their historicity lead logically to a similar denial of New Testament miracles?
Supposing (as I think is the case) that sound critical reading reveals different kinds of narrative in the Bible, surely it would be illogical to conclude that these different kinds should all be read in the same way? This is not a ‘rationalistic approach’ to miracles. Where I doubt the historicity of an Old Testament narrative I never do so on the ground that the miraculous as such is incredible. Nor does it deny ‘a unique sort of inspiration’: allegory, parable, romance, and lyric might be inspired as well as chronicle. I wish I would direct you to a good book on the subject, but I don’t know one. With all good wishes.
TO MARY VAN DEUSEN: On the confession of sins to a priest—its optionality and its usefulness in feeling forgiven and in growing in self-knowledge.
6 APRIL 1953
I think our official view of confession can be seen in the form for the Visitation of the Sick where it says ‘Then shall the sick person be moved (i.e., advised, prompted) to make a…Confession…if he feel his conscience troubled with any weighty matter.’ That is, where Rome makes Confession compulsory for all, we make it permissible for any: not ‘generally necessary’ but profitable. We do not doubt that there can be forgiveness without it. But, as your own experience shows, many people do not feel forgiven, i.e., do not effectively ‘believe in the forgiveness of sins’, without it. The quite enormous advantage of coming really to believe in forgiveness is well worth the horrors (I agree, they are horrors) of a first confession.
Also, there is the gain in self-knowledge: most of [us] have never really faced the facts about ourselves until we uttered them aloud in plain words, calling a spade a spade. I certainly feel I have profited enormously by the practice. At the same time I think we are quite right not to make it generally obligatory, which would force it on some who are not ready for it and might do harm.
As for conduct of services, surely a wide latitude is reasonable. Has not each kind—the very ‘low’ and the very ‘high’—its own value?
I don’t think I owe Genia a letter, and I think advice is best kept till it is asked for. Of course she, and you, are always in my prayers. I think she is of the impulsive type, but one must beware of meddling.
TO MARY VAN DEUSEN: More on the question of her joining a religious order (see the letter above to Mary Van Deusen, 26 January 1953); and on discerning when, whom, and how to evangelize.
7 APRIL 1953
I don’t think gratitude is a relevant motive for joining an Order. Gratitude might create a state of mind in which one became aware of a vocation: but the vocation would be the proper reason for joining. They themselves would surely not wish you to join without it? You can show your gratitude in lots of other ways.
Is there in this Order, even for lay members such as you would be, not something like a noviciate or experimental period? If so, that would be the thing, wouldn’t it? If not, I think I can only repeat my previous suggestion of undergoing a sort of unofficial noviciate by living according to the Rule for 6 months or so and seeing how it works. Most of it is the things you probably do anyway and are things we ought to do. (The only one I’m doubtful about is the ‘special intention’ clause in No. 3. I’m not quite sure what the theological implications are.) The question is whether the fact of being compelled to it by a vow would act as a useful support or be a snare and a source of scruples: I don’t think I can tell you the answer to that. Is the vow irrevocable or can you contract out again?
About putting one’s Christian point of view to doctors and other unpromising subjects I’m in great doubt myself. All I’m clear about is that one sins if one’s real reason for silence is simply the fear of looking a fool. I suppose one is right if one’s reason is the probability that the other party will be repelled still further and only confirmed in his belief that Christians are troublesome and embarrassing people to be avoided whenever possible. But I find it a dreadfully worrying problem. (I am quite sure that an importunate bit of evangelisation from a comparative stranger would not have done me any good when I was an unbeliever.)
TO MARY WILLIS SHELBURNE: On the difficulty of thinking and talking about the doctrine of Trinity, especially the Holy Spirit.
17 APRIL 1953
I’m not quite so shocked as you by the story of Charles and Mary. If even adult and educated Christians in trying to think of the Blessed Trinity have to guard constantly against falling to the heresy of Tritheism, what can we expect of children. And ‘another of whom he was not quite sure’ is perhaps no bad beginning for a knowledge about the Holy Ghost….
I’d sooner pray for God’s mercy than for His justice on my friends, my enemies, and myself.
TO ELSIE SNICKERS: On the origin of sin, not in the reason but in the will; on forgiving and excusing; on the difference between psychotherapy and spiritual direction; and on the suitability and timing of the study of psychology.
18 MAY 1953
No. I don’t think sin is completely accounted for by faulty reasoning nor that it can be completely cured by re-education. That view…overlook[s] the (to me) obviously central fact that our will is not necessarily determined by our reason. If it were, then, as you say, what are called ‘ sins’ would not be sins at all but only mistakes, and would require not repentances but merely correction.
But surely daily experience shows that it is just not so. A man’s reason sees perfectly clearly that the resulting discomfort and inconvenience will far outweigh the pleasure of the ten minutes in bed. Yet he stays in bed: not at all because his reason is deceived but because desire is stronger than reason. A woman knows that the sharp ‘last word’ in an argument will produce a serious quarrel which was the very thing she had intended to avoid when that argument began and which may permanently destroy her happiness. Yet she says it: not at all because her reason is deceived but because the desire to score a point is at the moment stronger than her reason. People—you and I among them—constantly choose between two courses of action the one which we know to be the worse: because, at the moment, we prefer the gratification of our anger, lust, sloth, greed, vanity, curiosity or cowardice, not only to the known will of God but even to what we know will make for our own real comfort and security. If you don’t recognise this, then I must solemnly assure you that either [you] are an angel, or else are still living in ‘a fool’s paradise’: a world of illusion.
Of course it is true that many people are so mis-educated or so psychopathic that their freedom of action is very much curtailed and their responsibility therefore very small. We cannot remember that too much when we are tempted to judge harshly the acts of other people whose difficulties we don’t know. But we know that some of our own acts have sprung from evil will (proud, resentful, cowardly, envious, lascivious or spiteful will) although we knew better, and that what we need is not—or not only—re-education but repentance, God’s forgiveness, and His Grace to help us to do better next time. Until one has faced this fact one is a child.
And it is not the function of psychotherapy to make us face this. Its work is the non-moral aspects of conduct. You must not go to the psychologists for spiritual guidance. (One goes to the dentist to cure one’s toothache, not to teach one in what spirit to bear it if it cannot be cured: for that you must go to God and God’s spokesmen.)
For this reason I am rather sorry that you have taken Psychology as a subject for your academic course. A continued interest in it on the part of those who have had psychotherapeutic treatment is usually, I think, not a good thing. At least, not until a long interval has elapsed and their personal interest in it, the interest connected with their own case, has quite died away. At least that is how it seems to me. All blessings.
TO RHONA BODLE, who had written to Lewis of her frustration over being forbidden to teach religion in New Zealand schools: On the vocation of being a Christian teacher in a secular school.
20 MAY 1953
The restraints imposed on you by ‘secular education’ are, no doubt, very galling. But I wonder whether secular education will do us all the harm the secularists hope. Secular teachers will. But Christian teachers in secular schools may, I sometimes think, do more good precisely because they are not allowed to give religious instruction in class. At least I think that, as a child, I should have been very allured and impressed by the discovery—which must be made when questions are asked—that the teacher believed firmly in a whole mass of things he wasn’t allowed to teach! Let them give us the charm of mystery if they please.
It was very nice to hear from you again. All blessings on you and your work.
TO MARY WILLIS SHELBURNE: On the need for the laity to focus on the faults of the laity and not of the clergy.
30 MAY 1953
Yes, we are always told that the present wide-spread apostasy must be the fault of the clergy, not of the laity. If I were a parson I should always try to dwell on the faults of the clergy: being a layman, I think it more wholesome to concentrate on those of the laity. I am rather sick of the modern assumption that, for all events, ‘WE’, the people, are never responsible: it is always our rulers, or ancestors, or parents, or education, or anybody but precious ‘US’, WE are apparently perfect and blameless. Don’t you believe it. Nor do I think the Church of England holds out many attractions to the worldly. There is more real poverty, even actual want, in English vicarages than there is in the homes of casual labourers.
TO HILA NEWMAN, an eleven-year-old girl who had sent Lewis her drawings and a letter of appreciation for the first three Chronicles of Narnia: On Lewis’s care not to decode the Chronicles of Narnia.
3 JUNE 1953
Thank you so much for your lovely letter and pictures. I realised at once that the coloured one was not a particular scene but a sort of line-up like what you would have at the very end if it was a play instead of stories. The [Voyage of the] DAWN TREADER is not to be the last: There are to be 4 more, 7 in all. Didn’t you notice that Aslan said nothing about Eustace not going back? I thought the best of your pictures was the one of Mr. Tumnus at the bottom of the letter.
As to Aslan’s other name, well I want you to guess. Has there never been anyone in this world who (1.) Arrived at the same time as Father Christmas. (2.) Said he was the son of the Great Emperor. (3.) Gave himself up for someone else’s fault to be jeered at and killed by wicked people. (4.) Came to life again. (5.) Is sometimes spoken of as a Lamb (see the end of the Dawn Treader). Don’t you really know His name in this world? Think it over and let me know your answer!
Reepicheep in your coloured picture has just the right perky, cheeky expression. I love real mice. There are lots in my rooms in College but I have never set a trap. When I sit up late working they poke their heads out from behind the curtains just as if they were saying, ‘Hi! Time for you to go to bed. We want to come out and play.’
Reepicheep in your coloured picture has just the right perky, cheeky expression. I love real mice. There are lots in my rooms in College but I have never set a trap. When I sit up late working they poke their heads out from behind the curtains just as if they were saying, ‘Hi! Time for you to go to bed. We want to come out and play.’
TO MARY VAN DEUSEN: On minding one’s own business except when asked; and on St. Paul’s teaching on the strong and the weak in the Letter to the Romans, Chapter 14.
8 JUNE 1953
Yes, I think your position is the right one. If one is asked for advice, then, and then only, one has to have an opinion about the exact rule of life which would suit some other Christian. Otherwise, I think the rule is to mind one’s own business.
St. Paul goes further than this: it may even be proper at times to adopt practices which you yourself think unnecessary, and which are unnecessary to you, if your difference on such points is a stumbling-block to the Christians you find yourself among. Hence, you see, other Christians’ practices concern us, when at all, as a ground for concessions on our part, not for interference or complacent assertion that our way is best. This is in Romans chap XIV: read the chapter and meditate on it. I am very glad you have seen the real point.
TO MARY VAN DEUSEN: On the need to trust that God has reasons for answering prayers for healing with an apparent “no”; and on the safety, ease, and beauty that religious practices provide on the obedient climb up the staircase of grace.
29 JUNE 1953
I never know what to say in cases like that of the sick child’s mother whom you mention. There seems plenty of evidence that God does sometimes, in answer to prayer, heal in miraculous fashion: sometimes, it would appear, not. No doubt there are very good reasons for both.
I wouldn’t quite say that ‘ religious Practices help the search for truth’ for that might imply that they have no further use when the Truth has been found. I think about the practices what a wise old priest said to me about a ‘rule of life’ in general—‘It is not a stair but a bannister’ (or rail or balustrade—I don’t know what you call it in America), i.e., it is, not the thing you ascend by but it is a protective against falling off and a help-up. I think thus we ascend. The stair is God’s grace. One’s climb from step to step is obedience. Many different kinds of bannisters exist, all legitimate. It is possible to get up without any bannisters, if need be: but no one would willingly build a staircase without them because it would be less safe, more laborious, and a little lacking in beauty.
TO MARY WILLIS SHELBURNE: A reflection on the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II—on the tragic splendor of being human.
10 JULY 1953
You know, over here people did not get that fairy-tale feeling about the coronation. What impressed most who saw it was the fact that the Queen herself appeared to be quite overwhelmed by the sacramental side of it. Hence, in the spectators, a feeling of (one hardly knows how to describe it)—awe—pity—pathos—mystery. The pressing of that huge, heavy crown on that small, young head becomes a sort of symbol of the situation of humanity itself: humanity called by God to be His vice-gerent and high priest on earth, yet feeling so inadequate. As if He said ‘In my inexorable love I shall lay upon the dust that you are glories and dangers and responsibilities beyond your understanding’. Do you see what I mean? One has missed the whole point unless one feels that we have all been crowned and that coronation is somehow, if splendid, a tragic splendour.
TO MRS. JOHNSON: On the hardness and tenderness of the Christian life; on the consolation of Jesus’ human fearfulness in Gethsemane; on anxiety about future evils; on living and receiving one day and grace at a time; on when we become our real selves; on believing in God when God doesn’t feel real; on ignoring visions (the saints Lewis refers to are likely to be Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross); and on faith healing.
17 JULY 1953
There are many interesting points in your letter of June 8. I’m very glad you’ve seen that Christianity is as hard as nails: i.e., hard and tender at the same time. It’s the blend that does it: neither quality would be any good without the other. You needn’t worry about not feeling brave. Our Lord didn’t—see the scene in Gethsemane.
How thankful I am that when God became Man He did not choose to become a man of iron nerves: that would not have helped weaklings like you and me nearly so much. Especially don’t worry (you may of course pray) about being brave over merely possible evils in the future. In the old battles it was usually the reserve, who had to watch the carnage, not the troops who were in it, whose nerve broke first. Similarly I think you in America feel much more anxiety about atomic bombs than we do: because you are further from the danger. If and when a horror turns up, you will then be given Grace to help you. I don’t think one is usually given it in advance. ‘ Give us our daily bread’ ( not an annuity for life) applies to spiritual gifts too: the little daily support for the daily trial. Life has to be taken day by day and hour by hour.
The writer you quote (‘in all those turning lights’) was very good at the stage at which you met him: now, as is plain, you’ve got beyond him. Poor boob!—he thought his mind was his own! Never his own until he makes it Christ’s: up till then merely a result of heredity, environment, and the state of his digestion. I become my own only when I gave myself to Another.
‘Does God seem real to me?’ It varies: just as lots of other things I firmly believe in (my own death, the solar system) feel more or less real at different times. I have dreamed dreams but not seen visions: but don’t think all that matters a hoot. And the saints say that visions are unimportant. If Our Lord did seem to appear to you at your prayer (bodily) what, after all, could you do but go on with your prayers? How could you know that it was not an hallucination?
You’ve got the Coronation right too: especially a sacrificial, even a tragic rite. And a symbol: for we (Man) have had laid on us the heavy crown of being lords of this planet, and the same contract between the frail, tiny person—the huge ritual goes for us all….
…Of course I believe that people are still healed by faith: whether this has happened in any particular case, one can’t of course say without getting a real-Doctor-who-is-also-a-real-Christian to go through the whole case-history.
TO MARY VAN DEUSEN: On the resolution to her question about joining a religious order; on the impermanence of feelings, good and bad; and on the need for the natural love in marriage to die into divine love.
23 JULY 1953
I think your decision ‘a rule of life, without membership’ is a good one. It is a great joy to be able to ‘feel’ God’s love as a reality, and one must give thanks for it and use it. But you must be prepared for the feeling dying away again, for feelings are by nature impermanent. The great thing is to continue to believe when the feeling is absent: and these periods do quite as much for one as those when the feeling is present.
It sounds to me as if Genia had a pretty good husband on the whole. So much matrimonial misery comes to me in my mail that I feel those whose partner has no worse fault than being stupider than themselves may be said to have drawn a prize! It hardly amounts to a Problem. I take it that in every marriage natural love sooner or later, in a high or a low degree, comes up against difficulties (if only the difficulty that the original state of ‘ being in love’ dies a natural death) which force it either to turn into dislike or else to turn into Christian charity. For all our natural feelings are, not resting places, but points d’appui, springboards. One has to go on from there, or fall back from there. The merely human pleasure in being loved must either go bad or become the divine joy of loving. But no doubt Genia knows all this. It’s all quite in the ordinary run of Christian life. See I Peter iv, 12 ‘Think it not strange et cetera.’
TO MARY WILLIS SHELBURNE: On the attractiveness of real holiness (Lewis mentions his spiritual director, Father Adams); and on the follies, miseries, and temptations of being a young, single adult.
1 AUGUST 1953
I am so glad you gave me an account of the lovely priest. How little people know who think that holiness is dull. When one meets the real thing (and perhaps, like you, I have met it only once), it is irresistible. If even 10% of the world’s population had it, would not the whole world be converted and happy before a year’s end?
Yes, I too think there is lots to be said for being no longer young: and I do most heartily agree that it is just as well to be past the age when one expects or desires to attract the other sex. It’s natural enough in our species, as in others, that the young birds should show off their plumage—in the mating season. But the trouble in the modern world is that there’s a tendency to rush all the birds on to that age as soon as possible and then keep them there as late as possible, thus losing all the real value of the other parts of life in a senseless, pitiful attempt to prolong what, after all, is neither its wisest, its happiest, or most innocent period. I suspect merely commercial motives are behind it all: for it is at the showing-off age that birds of both sexes have least sales-resistance!
TO LAURENCE HARWOOD, Lewis’s twenty-year-old godson, who has just failed his qualifying examinations: On the need to move through and beyond great setbacks; on the poison of indulged resentment; on how hopeless the future may look and yet not be; and on how much of “life is rather like a lumpy bed in a bad hotel.”
2 AUGUST 1953
I was sorry to hear from Owen Barfield that you have taken a nasty knock over History Prelim. Sorry, because I know it can’t be much fun for you: not because I think the thing is necessarily a major disaster. We are now so used to the examination system that we hardly remember how very recent it is and how hotly it was opposed by some quite sincere people. Trollope (no fool) was utterly sceptical about its value: and I myself, though a don, sometimes wonder how many of the useful, or even the great, men of the past would have survived it. It doesn’t test all qualities by any means: not even all qualities needed in an academic life. And anyway, what a small part of life that is. And if you are not suited for that, it is well to have been pushed forcibly out of it at an earlier rather than a later stage. It is much worse to waste three or more years getting a Fourth or a Pass. You can now cut your losses and start on something else.
At the moment, I can well imagine, everything seems in ruins. That is an illusion. The world is full of capable and useful people who began life by ploughing in exams. You will laugh at this contre temps some day. Of course it would be disastrous to go to the other extreme and conclude that one was a genius because one had failed in a prelim—as if a horse imagined it must be a Derby winner because it couldn’t be taught to pull a four-wheeler!—but I don’t expect that is the extreme to which you are temperamentally inclined.
Are you in any danger of seeking consolation in Resentment? I have no reason to suppose you are, but it is a favourite desire of the human mind (certainly of my mind!) and one wants to be on one’s guard against it. And that is about the only way in which an early failure like this can become a real permanent injury. A belief that one has been misused, a tendency ever after to snap and snarl at ‘the system’—that, I think, makes a man always a bore, usually an ass, sometimes a villain. So don’t think either that you are no good or that you are a Victim. Write the whole thing off and get on.
You may reply ‘It’s easy talking’. I shan’t blame you if you do. I remember only too well what a hopeless oyster to be opened the world seemed at your age. I would have given a good deal to anyone who could have assured me that I ever would be able to persuade anyone to pay me a living wage for anything I could do. Life consisted of applying for jobs which other people got, writing books that no one would publish, and giving lectures which no one attended. It all looks perfectly hopeless. Yet the vast majority of us manage to get in somewhere and shake down somehow in the end.
You are now going through what most people (at any rate most of the people I know) find in retrospect to have been the most unpleasant period of their lives. But it won’t last: the road usually improves later. I think life is rather like a lumpy bed in a bad hotel. At first you can’t imagine how you can lie on it, much less sleep in it. But presently one finds the right position and finally one is snoring away. By the time one is called it seems a very good bed and one is loth to leave it.
This is a devilish stodgy letter. There’s no need to bother answering it.
TO MRS. EMILY MCLAY, who had asked Lewis about the doctrine of predestination: On the first rule of biblical interpretation; on avoiding generalizations based on one’s own experience; and on anxiety about one’s own salvation.
8 AUGUST 1953
I take it as a first principle that we must not interpret any one part of Scripture so that it contradicts other parts: and specially we must not use an Apostle’s teaching to contradict that of Our Lord. Whatever St. Paul may have meant, we must not reject the parable of the sheep and the goats ( Matt. XXV. 30–46). There, you see there is nothing about Predestination or even about Faith—all depends on works. But how this is to be reconciled with St. Paul’s teaching, or with other sayings of Our Lord, I frankly confess I don’t know. Even St. Peter you know admits that he was stumped by the Pauline epistles ( II Peter III. 16–17).
What I think is this. Everyone looking back on his own conversion must feel—and I am sure the feeling is in some sense true—‘It is not I who have done this. I did not choose Christ: He chose me. It is all free grace, which I have done nothing to earn.’ That is the Pauline account: and I am sure it is the only true account of every conversion from the inside. Very well. It then seems to us logical and natural to turn this personal experience into a general rule ‘All conversions depend on God’s choice’.
But this I believe is exactly what we must not do: for generalisations are legitimate only when we are dealing with matters to which our faculties are adequate. Here, we are not. How our individual experiences are in reality consistent with (a) our idea of divine justice, (b) the parable I’ve just quoted and lots of other passages, we don’t and can’t know: what is clear is that we can’t find a consistent formula. I think we must take a leaf out of the scientists’ book. They are quite familiar with the fact that, for example, light has to be regarded both as a wave in the ether and as a stream of particles. No one can make these two views consistent. Of course reality must be self-consistent: but till (if ever) we can see the consistency it is better to hold two inconsistent views than to ignore one side of the evidence.
The real interrelation between God’s omnipotence and Man’s freedom is something we can’t find out. Looking at the Sheep and the Goats every man can be quite sure that every kind act he does will be accepted by Christ. Yet, equally, we all do feel sure that all the good in us comes from Grace. We have to leave it at that. I find the best plan is to take the Calvinist view of my own virtues and other people’s vices: and the other view of my own vices and other people’s virtues. But though there is much to be puzzled about, there is nothing to be worried about. It is plain from Scripture that, in whatever sense the Pauline doctrine is true, it is not true in any sense which excludes its (apparent) opposite.
You know what Luther said: ‘Do you doubt if you are chosen? Then say your prayers and you may conclude that you are.’
TO MRS. EMILY MCLAY: More on biblical interpretation; and on why the meaning of the Bible is not obvious.
8 AUGUST 1953
Your experience in listening to those philosophers gives you the technique one needs for dealing with the dark places in the Bible. When one of the philosophers, one whom you know on other grounds to be a sane and decent man, said something you didn’t understand, you did not at once conclude that he had gone off his head. You assumed you’d missed the point.
Same here. The two things one must not do are (a) to believe, on the strength of Scripture or on any other evidence, that God is in any way evil. (In Him is no darkness at all.) (b) to wipe off the slate any passage which seems to show that He is. Behind that apparently shocking passage, be sure, there lurks some great truth which you don’t understand. If one ever does come to understand it, one will see that [He] is good and just and gracious in ways we never dreamed of. Till then, it must be just left on one side.
But why are baffling passages left in at all? Oh, because God speaks not only for us little ones but for the great sages and mystics who experience what we only read about, and to whom all the words have therefore different (richer) contents. Would not a revelation which contained nothing that you and I did not understand, be for that very reason rather suspect? To a child it would seem a contradiction to say both that his parents made him and that God made him, yet we see both can be true.
TO DON GIOVANNI CALABRIA: A lament over religious hatred in Northern Ireland; and on the danger of confusing religion and politics.
10 AUGUST 1953
I have received your letter dated the 5th August. I await with gratitude the pamphlets—a specimen of your people’s printing skill: which however I shall not see for 5 weeks because tomorrow I am crossing over (if God so have pleased) to Ireland: my birthplace and dearest refuge so far as charm of landscape goes, and temperate climate, although most dreadful because of the strife, hatred and often civil war between dissenting faiths.
There indeed both yours and ours ‘know not by what Spirit they are led’. They take lack of charity for zeal and mutual ignorance for orthodoxy.
I think almost all the crimes which Christians have perpetrated against each other arise from this, that religion is confused with politics. For, above all other spheres of human life, the Devil claims politics for his own, as almost the citadel of his power. Let us, however, with mutual prayers pray with all our power for that charity which ‘ covers a multitude of sins’.
TO MARY WILLIS SHELBURNE: On offering her joblessness and insecurity as voluntary suffering for Christ’s sake ( Colossians 1:24); on the illusion of independence; and on his own confession of anxiety about poverty, in violation of Matthew 6:25–34.
10 AUGUST 1953
I have just got your letter of the 6th. Oh I do so sympathise with you: job-hunting, even in youth, is a heartbreaking affair and to have to go back to it now must be simply ______ I was going to say ‘simply Hell’, but no one who is engaged in prayer and humility, as you are, can be there, so I’d better say ‘ Purgatory’. (We have as a matter of fact good authorities for calling it something other than Purgatory. We are told that even those tribulations which fall upon us by necessity, if embraced for Christ’s sake, become as meritorious as voluntary sufferings and every missed meal can be converted into a fast if taken in the right way.)
I suppose—though the person who is not suffering feels shy about saying it to the person who is—that it is good for us to be cured of the illusion of ‘ independence’. For of course independence, the state of being indebted to no one, is eternally impossible. Who, after all, is more totally dependent than what we call the man ‘of independent means’. Every shirt he wears is made by other people out of other organisms and the only difference between him and us is that even the money whereby he pays for it was earned by other people. Of course you ought to be dependent on your daughter and son-in-law. Support of parents is a most ancient and universally acknowledged duty. And if you come to find yourself dependent on anyone else you mustn’t mind. But I am very, very sorry. I’m a panic-y person about money myself (which is a most shameful confession and a thing dead against Our Lord’s words) and poverty frightens me more than anything else except large spiders and the tops of cliffs: one is sometimes even tempted to say that if God wanted us to live like the lilies of the field He might have given us an organism more like theirs! But of course He is right. And when you meet anyone who does live like the lilies, one sees that He is.
God keep you and encourage you. I am just about to go off to Ireland where I shall be moving about, so I shan’t hear from you for several weeks. All blessings and deepest sympathy.
TO MARY VAN DEUSEN: A letter of correction: On spouses marrying to improve or manage one another; and on mothers-in-law interfering in the marriages of their children.
14 SEPTEMBER 1953
I am just back from Donegal (which was heavenly) and find as usual a ghastly pile of unanswered letters, so I must be brief. The important idea of a Christian sanatorium is worth a whole letter, but I want to use this one for another subject. I hope you won’t be angry at what I’m going to say—
I think that idea of Genia’s job being to concentrate on ‘bringing out the best of Eddie’ is really rather dangerous. Wouldn’t you yourself think it sounded—well, to put it bluntly, a bit priggish, if applied to any other couple? It sounds as if the poor chap were somehow infinitely inferior.
Are you giving full weight to the very raw deal he has had in marrying a girl who has nearly always been ill? Men haven’t got your maternal instinct, you know. To find a patient where one hoped for a helpmeet is much more frustrating for the husband than for the wife. And by all I hear he has come through the test very well. But if just as she is ceasing to be a patient she were to become the self-appointed Governess or Improver—well, would any camel’s back stand that last straw? I don’t think Genia is at present inclined (or not much) to start ‘educating’ her husband. I am sure you will take care not to influence her in that direction. Because, really, you know, it would be so easy, without in the least intending it, to glide into the rôle (I shudder to write it) of the traditional home-breaking mother-in-law. All those old jokes have something behind them.
I do hope I haven’t made you an enemy for life. If I have taken too great a liberty, you have rather led me into it. And I did feel signs of danger. And don’t you think in general that a girl who has a faithful, kind, sober husband (there are so many of the other kind) whom she has promised to love, honour, and obey, had better just get on with the job? Do forgive me if I misunderstand and put the point too crudely. At any rate, my prayers will not cease.
TO RHONA BODLE: On not forcing books on others; and on the providence of reading.
14 SEPTEMBER 1953
I have had ‘Miss Bodle’s colleague’ in my daily prayers for a long time now: is that the same young man you mention in your letter of July 3rd, or do I now say ‘colleagues’? Yes: don’t bother him with my books if an aunt (it somehow would be an aunt—though I must add that most of my aunts were delightful) has been ramming them down his throat.
You know, The Pilgrim’s Progress is not, I find (to my surprise) everyone’s book. I know several people who are both Christians and lovers of literature who can’t bear it. I doubt if they were made to read it as children. Indeed, I rather wonder whether that ‘being made to read it’ has spoiled so many books as is supposed. I suspect that all the people who tell me they were ‘put off’ Scott by having Ivanhoe as a holiday task are people who would never have liked Scott anyway.
I don’t believe anything will keep the right reader and the right book apart. But our literary loves are as diverse as our human! You couldn’t make me like Henry James or dislike Jane Austen whatever you did. By the bye did Chesterton’s Everlasting Man (I’m sure I advised you to read it) succeed or fail with you?
TO DON GIOVANNI CALABRIA: On remedies for the apostasy of Europe, especially a new preparation for the Gospel in the form of teaching on the law of nature.
15 SEPTEMBER 1953
Regarding the moral condition of our times (since you bid me prattle on) I think this. Older people, as we both are, are always ‘praisers of times past’. They always think the world is worse than it was in their young days. Therefore we ought to take care lest we go wrong. But, with this proviso, certainly I feel that very grave dangers hang over us. This results from the apostasy of the great part of Europe from the Christian faith. Hence a worse state than the one we were in before we received the Faith. For no one returns from Christianity to the same state he was in before Christianity but into a worse state: the difference between a pagan and an apostate is the difference between an unmarried woman and an adulteress. For faith perfects nature but faith lost corrupts nature. Therefore many men of our time have lost not only the supernatural light but also the natural light which pagans possessed.
But God, who is the God of mercies, even now has not altogether cast off the human race. In younger people, although we may see much cruelty and lust, yet at the same time do we not see very many sparks of virtues which perhaps our own generation lacked? How much courage, how much concern for the poor do we see! We must not despair. And (among us) a not inconsiderable number are now returning to the Faith.
So much for the present situation. About remedies the question is more difficult. For my part I believe we ought to work not only at spreading the Gospel (that certainly) but also at a certain preparation for the Gospel. It is necessary to recall many to the law of nature before we talk about God. For Christ promises forgiveness of sins: but what is that to those who, since they do not know the law of nature, do not know that they have sinned? Who will take medicine unless he knows he is in the grip of disease? Moral relativity is the enemy we have to overcome before we tackle Atheism. I would almost dare to say ‘ First let us make the younger generation good pagans and afterwards let us make them Christians.’
TO MARY VAN DEUSEN: On finding helpers for a ministry; and on interpreting the meaning of difficulties in ministry.
3 OCTOBER 1953
I was extremely glad to get your letter. I was beginning to feel that my own had been presumptuous and intolerable and had been praying not that it might do good but that it might not do harm. Whether I was right or wrong, you came out of it with flying colours: if few can give good advice, fewer still can hear with patience advice either good or bad.
About your Project (it was, wasn’t it, for the founding of a sort of rest-home where people in psychological difficulties could get Christian advice, sympathy, and, if necessary, treatment?), the whole thing—as with most conceptions either practical or literary—turns on the execution. All depends on the quality of the individual helpers. I suspect you will find them only by what seems chance but is really an answer to prayer. No ‘machinery’ of committees and selection and references, however well devised, will do it, I imagine. And perhaps it is just by your discovering, or failing to discover, the right people, that God will show you whether He wishes you to do this or not (Beware here of my unsanguine temper, more tempted to sloth than to precipitance, and ready to despond: take my advice always with a grain of salt).
It is hard, when difficulties arise to know whether one is meant to overcome them or whether they are signs that one is on the wrong tract. I suppose the deeper one’s own life of prayer and sacraments the more trustworthy one’s judgement will be.
You ‘get me where I live’ about Van’s Aunt. I have been in very close contact with a case like that. It is harrowing. My doctor (a very serious Christian) kept on reminding me that so much of an old person’s speech and behaviour must really be treated as a medical not a spiritual fact: that, as the organism decays, the true state of the soul can less and less express itself through it. So that things may be neither so miserable (nor so wicked, we must sometimes add) as they seem. I sometimes wonder whether the incarnation of the soul is not gradual at both ends?—i.e., not fully there yet in infancy and no longer fully there in old age.
Yours (MOST relieved)
C. S. Lewis
TO MARY WILLIS SHELBURNE: On rejoicing over answered prayer; and on our prayers being God’s prayers.
6 NOVEMBER 1953
Oh I am glad, I am glad. And here’s a thing worth recording. Of course I have been praying for you daily, as always, but latterly have found myself doing so with much more concern and especially about 2 nights ago, with such a strong feeling how very nice it would be, if God willed, to get a letter from you with good news. And then, as if by magic (indeed it is the whitest magic in the world) the letter comes to-day. Not (lest I should indulge in folly) that your relief had not in fact occurred before my prayer, but as if, in tenderness for my puny faith, God moved me to pray with especial earnestness just before He was going to give me the thing. How true that our prayers are really His prayers: He speaks to Himself through us.
I am also most moved at hearing how you were supported through the period of anxiety. For one is sometimes tempted to think that if He wanted us to be as un-anxious as the lilies of the field He really might have given us a constitution more like theirs! But then when the need comes He carries out in us His otherwise impossible instructions. In fact He always has to do all the things—all the prayers, all the virtues. No new doctrine, but newly come home to me.
TO MARY WILLIS SHELBURNE: On sleep; and on anxiety as an affliction and as a moral weakness.
27 NOVEMBER 1953
About sleep: do you find that the great secret (if one can do it) is not to care whether you sleep? Sleep is a jade who scorns her suitors but woos her scorners….
It is fun to see you agreeing with what you believe to be my views on prayer: well you may, for they are not mine but scriptural. ‘Our prayers are God talking to Himself’ is only Romans, VIII, 26–27. And ‘praying to the end’ is of course our old acquaintance, the parable of the Unjust Judge.
I am sure you will be glad to hear that your recent adventures have been a great support and ‘corroboration’ to me. I am also very conscious (and was especially so while praying for you during your workless time) that anxiety is not only a pain which we must ask God to assuage but also a weakness we must ask Him to pardon—for He’s told us take no care for the morrow. The news that you had been almost miraculously guarded from that sin and spared that pain and hence the good hope that we shall all find the like mercy when our bad times come, has strengthened me much. God bless you.
TO MARY VAN DEUSEN: On Lewis’s problem with petitionary prayer as described in the New Testament; on the sense in which God wills suffering; on not being too ready to think oneself personally addressed/condemned in a sermon; and on finding peace amidst parish turmoil.
28 NOVEMBER 1953
Your letter links onto something I’ve been thinking of lately. There are two patterns of prayer in the New Testament (a) That in Gethsemane, ‘Not my will but thine’ (b) That in Mark xi, 24.
In the one the pray-er sees that what is asked may not be God’s will: in the other he has complete faith not only ‘in God’ but in God’s giving him the particular thing asked for. If both are taken as universal rules we get a contradiction, for no one (so far as I can see) could follow both in the same prayer.
I can only suppose that neither is a universal rule, that each has its place, and that when-and-if-God demands faith of the B type, He also gives it, and we shall know that we have to pray in the B manner, and that this is what happens to miracle workers.
If your Rector is such a person then he is right in praying that way himself, though presumably wrong in demanding that everyone should do the same. If he is a presumptuous person who thinks he is in the A class and isn’t—well, that is not for us to judge.
As to whether God ever wills suffering, I think he is confused. We must distinguish in God, and even in ourselves, absolute will from relative will. No one absolutely wills to have a tooth out, but many will to have a tooth out rather than to go on with toothache. Surely in the same way God never absolutely wills the least suffering for any creature, but may will it rather than some alternative: e.g., He willed the crucifixion rather than that Man should go unredeemed (and so it was not, in all senses, His will that the cup should pass from His Son).
That’s how I see the theoretical side of the thing. As for the practical—oh dear, oh dear! I certainly can’t conceive any less suitable preparation for Holy Communion than a discussion or any grosser abuse of language than to call a discussion a ‘meditation’. I think you and you only can decide whether it’s your job to ‘lead’ a study group or not.
As for the ‘blasting’ sermon no doubt the type blasted is an evil one. Is there good evidence that the preacher meant you to be included in that type? It does sometimes happen that utterances intended to be general are given particular application by the hearers. If it really was addressed to you, then no doubt you must just try to forgive it (as you have done) and otherwise do nothing about it.
The Bishop sounds a good one and I don’t see how you can go wrong in following his orders. He will know much better than I could at what point the frustrations and the risk of loss of charity (in oneself or others) occasioned by your parochial activities begin to outweigh the probabilities of usefulness. What a coil it all is: so much so that (as the graver matters) only by putting the will of God first and other considerations nowhere can one have peace.
TO MRS. D. JESSUP: On the meanings of the “world” in Lewis’s writings and in the writings of Charles Williams, Evelyn Underhill, and George MacDonald; on the two basic vocations of Christians; and on the proper use of amusements.
1 DECEMBER 1953
I am so glad to hear that certain mountains have shrunk to molehills. As to the problem of Thomas Merton versus C.W., E.U., G.M., and C.S.L.: A. There are two meanings of World in New Testament (i) In ‘God so loved the World’ it means the Creation—stars, trees, beasts, men, and angels. (ii) In ‘Love not the World’ it means the ‘worldly’ life, i.e., the life built up by men in disregard of God, the life of money-making, ambition, snobbery, social success and ‘greatness’.
B. Most spiritual writers distinguish two vocations for Christians (i.) The monastic or contemplative life. (ii) The secular or active life. All Christians are called to abandon the ‘World’ (sense ii) in spirit, i.e., to reject as strongly as they possibly can its standards, motives, and prizes. But some are called to ‘ come out of it’ as far as possible by renouncing private property, marriage, their professions, et cetera; others have to remain ‘in it’ but not ‘of it’.
I of course am in the second class and write for those who are also in it. This isn’t to say that I may not be (you may be sure I am) far too much ‘of it’. You, and your friend, must help me against that with your prayers. In so far as she accuses me of ‘worldliness’ she is right: but if by ‘earthiness’ she means my tendency to ‘come down to brass tacks’ and try to deal with the ordinary petty sins and virtues of secular and domestic life, she is wrong. That is a thing that ought to be done and has not yet been done enough.
About avoiding amusements and noise, it depends a bit who one is. Is the temptation to be absorbed by them? Then avoid. Is the temptation to avoid them through distaste when charity bids one to participate? Then participate. At least that’s how I see it.
TO PHYLLIS ELINOR SANDEMAN: A letter of condolence—on the pain of bereavement, its uses and misuses; on continuing to pray for her husband; on the need to love God first and foremost; on the way all human loves must die in order to rise; and on ignoring religious doubts in seasons of grief.
22 DECEMBER 1953
First, you may be quite sure that I realise (I’d be a fool if I didn’t) that there is something in a loss like yours which no unmarried person can understand. Secondly, that nothing I or anyone can say will remove the pain. There are no anaesthetics. About the bewilderment and about the right and wrong ways of using the pain, something may perhaps be done; but one can’t stop it hurting. The worst way of using the pain, you have already avoided: i.e., resentment.
Now about not wanting to pray, surely there is one person you very much want to pray for: your husband himself. You ask, can he help you, but isn’t this probably the time for you to help him? In one way, you see, you are further on than he: you had begun to know God. He couldn’t help you in that way: it seems to me quite possible that you can now help more than while he was alive. So get on with that right away. Our Lord said that man and wife were one flesh and forbade any man to put them asunder; and we may be sure He doesn’t do Himself what He forbade us to do. Your present prayers for your husband are still part of the married life.
Then as for your own shock in discovering that you hadn’t got nearly as far as you thought towards loving the God who made your husband and gave him to you more than the gift. Well, no. One keeps on thinking one has crossed that bridge before one has. And God knows that it has to be crossed sooner or later, in this life or in another. And the first step is to discover that one has not crossed it yet. I wonder could He have really shown you this in any other way? Or even if we can’t answer that, can’t we trust Him to know when and how best the terrible operation can be done? Of course it is easy (I know) for the person who isn’t feeling the pain to say all these things. You yourself would have been able to say them of anyone else’s loss. Whatever rational grounds there are for doubt, you knew them all before: can it be rational (of course, it is natural) to weight them so differently simply because, this time, oneself is the sufferer? Doesn’t that make it obvious that the doubts come not from the reason but from the shrinking nerves? Any any rate, don’t try to argue with them: not now, while you are crippled. Ignore them; go on. Be regular in all your religious duties. Remember it is not being loved but loving which is the high and holy thing. You are now practising the second without the full comfort of the first. It was certain from the beginning that you would some day have to do this, for no human love passes onto the eternal level in any other way. God knows, many wives have had to learn it by a path harder than even bereavement: having to love unfaithful, drunken, or childish husbands. And have succeeded too; as God succeeds in loving us. May He help you.
TO MARY VAN DEUSEN: On one advantage and one disadvantage of being a sickly child; on Christian life under a bad pastor; on the obedience due even a bad pastor; and on the beauty of obedience. Lewis’s own parish priest had switched the time for morning prayer and holy communion.
28 DECEMBER 1953
Thanks for your letter of the 20th; my congratulations to your husband on his interesting work. About Paul, I believe (having been a sickly child myself) that there are compensations. I think that from many minor illnesses in the first 12 years one develops sometimes a certain amount of immunity later on; one’s system has had so much practice in dealing with bacilli. It also probably helps to make one a reader: not that there isn’t a danger of falling or sinking too far into the life of the imagination, but a habit of reading is a great source of happiness.
I think someone ought to write a book on ‘Christian life for Laymen under a bad Parish Priest’ for the problem is bound to occur in the best churches. The motto would be of course Herbert’s lines about the sermon, ‘If all lack sense, God takes a text and preaches patience’.
Like you, we suffer (but under a very good priest) from the virtual extinction of Morning Prayer in favour of an 11 o’clock Celebration. But I suppose there is something to be said for it. This is the only ritual act Our Lord commanded Himself. It is the one we can have only through a priest, whereas we can all read Matins to ourselves or our families at home whenever we please. So here I have no difficulty in submission.
Is there not something especially good (and even, in the end, joyful) about mere obedience (in lawful things) to him who bears our Master’s authority, however unworthy he be—perhaps all the more, if he is unworthy? Perhaps we are put under tiresome priests chiefly to give us the opportunity of learning this beautiful and happy virtue: so that if we use the situation well we can profit more, perhaps, than we should have done under a better man. I have seen lovely children under not very nice parents, and good troops under bad officers: and a good dog with a bad master is a lesson to us all. I mean, of course, as long as the bad orders are not in themselves wrong: and attendance at Holy Communion can’t be that!
Yes, we must both go on thinking about the two kinds of prayer. I think the one in Mark xi is for very advanced people: and you point out it was said to the disciples, not to the crowds. All blessings.
TO PHYLLIS ELINOR SANDEMAN: More on the feelings attendant on bereavement and on the unprotectedness and hopelessness of grieving; and on being “promoted” to a higher grade with harder homework in the school of Christianity. The four heroines Lewis mentions are characters in Shakespeare’s Cymbeline, The Merchant of Venice, The Tempest, and The Winter’s Tale, respectively.
31 DECEMBER 1953
You have of course been much in my prayers since your first letter and to-day’s seems like an answer to them. I was afraid of some real crack in the structure! Now it is clear that you have to deal only with what we may call a ‘clean pain’.
I can well understand how in addition to, and mingling with, the void and loneliness, there is a great feeling of unprotectedness and a horror of coping with all the things—the harsh, outer world—from which you have hitherto been shielded. I first met this ‘cold blast on the naked heath’ at about 9, when my mother died, and there has never really been any sense of security and snugness since. That is, I’ve not quite succeeded in growing up on that point: there is still too much of ‘Mammy’s little lost boy’ about me. Your position is of course very different, both because dependence on a husband is more legitimate than dependence (after a certain age) on one’s mother, and also because, at your age, though it will feel just as bad, it is not so likely to go down into the unconscious and produce a trauma. And one sees too (though it sounds brutal to say it) how this miserable necessity of fending for oneself might be an essential part of your spiritual education. I suppose God wants a bit of Imogen and Portia in you, having worked in Miranda and Perdita part enough (it is sometimes helpful to think of oneself as a picture which He is painting).
By the way, I share to the full—no words can say how strongly I share—that distaste for everything communal and collective which you describe in your husband. I really believe I would have come to Christianity much less reluctantly if it had not involved the Church. And I don’t wonder you failed to convince him that that community is perfectly right. It is holy and commanded: not at present (I think) perfect! No doubt he is learning ‘ togetherness’ now as you, alas, are learning ‘ aloneness’. Both painful lessons: it can so seldom happen that what we need is what we like (for if we liked it we’d have helped ourselves to it already and wouldn’t need it—aren’t children made to eat fat which they hate?). You will be all right, Mrs. Sandeman. All will be well in the end, though by hard ways. All earthly loves go through some fire before they can inherit the Kingdom. If it weren’t this, it would be some other fire. God bless you. Let us pray for one another.
P. S. Of course, I’m not obeying your request, ‘Help me to find some comfort in faith again.’ We shan’t find faith by looking for comfort. That’s why, even brutally, I can’t help talking in terms of a work to be done. You are, on my view, being moved into a higher form of the great school and set harder work to do. Comfort will come as you master that work, as you learn more and more to be a channel of God’s grace to your husband (and perhaps to others): not for trying to get back the conditions you had in the lower form.
Keep clear of Psychical Researchers.