Gardener

C. S. Lewis writes the following in a letter to someone who had responded to his space trilogy, and especially That Hideous Strength: " When I've said that there is no allegory in it, and that there's nothing at all about the Second Coming in T.H.S., you may reply 'Well, that is what the books mean to an intelligent reader and what does it matter what you meant them to mean?--a point of view I wholly agree with." What startling words from an author, and especially one as opinionated and traditional as Lewis. Most authors, it seems to me, are far more critical of readers who don't see what they intended them to see or see what they did not intend to put into the novel. Yet here's Lewis saying he wholly agrees that it is the intelligent reader who creates the meaning from the text, and implying that the author surrenders any right to criticize the reader the moment he publishes the novel. I was just as surprised to hear my former colleague Jim Schaap ...

What is it? I don’t mean what do American corporations tells us it is, or politicians, for that matter. Nor do I mean what I in my most exalted or pious moments think it should be. But what is it when I take a deep hard look at what I most value in life. Well, here goes. It’s a spouse who loves you and shares her/himself with you, family—three and four generations, meaningful work, freedom from want, freedom to speak one’s opinions even when they conflict with these of fellow citizens, a church family and meaningful worship--especially preaching, a culture where justice and law make life more or less safe, a community where friendliness and courtesy happen as a matter of course, good books to read and movies to watch and music to hear and perform, good talks over good food and wine with good friends and family. That's it, off the top of my heart--and head. What would you say?

"Boys are now taught to regard Ambition as a virtue. I think we shall find that up to the XVIIth Century, and back into pagan times, all moralists regarded it as a vice and dealt with it accordingly." C. S. Lewis I have been reading The Collected Letters of C. S. Lewis, vol. 3, a book that goes to 1800 pages and provides, in addition to brilliant and startling statements, the opportunity for arobic exercise while lying on one's back in bed reading, holding the four pound volume in the air with both hands for about twenty minutes each night. The statement above made me sit up and take notice. Ambition a vice? It sounds positively unamerican. Have we turned morality upside down over the last two centuries? I checked what the Oxford English Dictionary says about ambition and found that every definition carried the notion of an ardent desire to rise to high position or attain rank, influence or preferment. W. R. Alger writes that "Aspiration is pure upward desire f...