Ever since my research and writing focus changed to C. S. Lewis during my university sabbatical in 2014-2015, I was hoping for opportunities to teach about this man who has impacted my thinking and life goals so directly. Beginning in 2018, that desire found an outlet at the church where I now worship–All Saints’ Episcopal in Lakeland, Florida. The church has a robust educational ministry [known as Parish Academy], and I have found my place in that ministry. While my… Read more »
I look back to where I was one year ago this week and fondly recall some truly precious days in Romania attending a C. S. Lewis conference. It was a blessing to spend time with kindred spirits who love the Lord and who appreciate writers like Lewis, Tolkien, MacDonald, and others who point readers to the ancient truths that are actually timeless. I was asked to speak at the very first panel of the conference, a distinct pleasure and a… Read more »
This is will be my third and final look at connections I see between C. S. Lewis’s thoughts and what Dorothy L. Sayers wrote in her valuable work, The Mind of the Maker. Chapter eight is appropriately entitled “Pentecost,” as it focuses on the power of words to move men. Lewis was a dedicated wordsmith who knew that the right words used at the right time in just the right way, could spark the imagination and jumpstart the mind. Sayers… Read more »
In a previous post, I showed how C. S. Lewis praised Dorothy L. Sayers’s book, The Mind of the Maker, and offered one example. I would like to add to that today with some similarities I see between what Lewis wrote in some of his works and what Sayers wrote in her book. Chapter three, “Idea, Energy, and Power,” develops Sayers’s thesis by showing how any completed work in life starts with an idea in the mind. This correlates nicely… Read more »
I’m constantly re-reading C. S. Lewis books. It had been a while since I read his Reflections on the Psalms, so I took it down from the shelf and gave it another go. This time, as is always the case, something stood out to me that didn’t, to the same extent, in my previous reading. The chapter title “Connivance” leaped off the pages into my world—at least, the world I constantly experience around me, particularly with respect to government and… Read more »
In my last post, I showed how C. S. Lewis and Dorothy L. Sayers first made a connection. I mentioned in passing his reading of her book, The Mind of the Maker. He read it shortly after it was published in 1941 and then wrote a review of it in the journal Theology. He introduces the theme immediately: “The purpose of this book is to throw light both on the doctrine of the Blessed Trinity and on the process whereby… Read more »
Dorothy Sayers was never present at an Inklings meeting. She was never considered as a member of that weekly sharing of readings and thoughts. Yet she is often seen in conjunction with the Inklings because she graduated from Oxford herself and was friends with two of its leading members: Charles Williams and C. S. Lewis. Sayers knew Williams first, then initiated a correspondence with Lewis that grew over time and resulted in, first, a collegial relationship, and then a more… Read more »