Finding Gold in Lewis's Letters
I'm still reading the third volume of C. S. Lewis's Collected Letters (on page 300 with about 1100 pages to go.) Many of the letters are thoughtful responses to his readers--but not necessarily interesting to me. But occasionally one comes upon a letter that is sheer poetry, as this one to a Nell Berners-Price:
Dear Nell,
I am sorry to hear about your Mother. In a way you were most fortunate to have had her so long (mine died when I was a little boy), yet in another way it probably makes it worse, for you have lived into the period when the relationship is really really reversed and you were mothering her: and of course, the more we have had to do for people the more we miss them--loving goes deeper than being loved. But it must be nice for her. Getting our of an old body into a new life--like stripping off tiresome clothers and getting into a bath--must be a most wonderful experience.
And here's another Lewis quote I ran into reading a book on imigration by Soerens and Hwang. Lewis says that each human being you encounter is "the holiest object presented to your senses." Well, of course, once he says it, one knows immediately that it is true. We are, after all, created in his image--and no other creature is that. Further, we are created to live forever with a "destiny much greater than this life alone." That means that the immigrant, the starving child, the condemned rapist, the unwanted pre-born baby, each one, when it is presented to my senses has a quality of holiness. Which is one reason, I suppose, Jesus says whatever you have done to one of the least of these, you have done to me.
Dear Nell,
I am sorry to hear about your Mother. In a way you were most fortunate to have had her so long (mine died when I was a little boy), yet in another way it probably makes it worse, for you have lived into the period when the relationship is really really reversed and you were mothering her: and of course, the more we have had to do for people the more we miss them--loving goes deeper than being loved. But it must be nice for her. Getting our of an old body into a new life--like stripping off tiresome clothers and getting into a bath--must be a most wonderful experience.
And here's another Lewis quote I ran into reading a book on imigration by Soerens and Hwang. Lewis says that each human being you encounter is "the holiest object presented to your senses." Well, of course, once he says it, one knows immediately that it is true. We are, after all, created in his image--and no other creature is that. Further, we are created to live forever with a "destiny much greater than this life alone." That means that the immigrant, the starving child, the condemned rapist, the unwanted pre-born baby, each one, when it is presented to my senses has a quality of holiness. Which is one reason, I suppose, Jesus says whatever you have done to one of the least of these, you have done to me.
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