Today Andrew Lazo returned to explain Part II of Till We Have Faces and review the book as a whole.
S3E29: “After Hours” with Andrew Lazo (Download)
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Time Stamps
00:00:52 – Drink-of-the-week
00:02:14 – Quote-of-the-week
00:04:06 – What TWHF is about and how Orual has lied about her love…
00:08:45 – Why we don’t like Orual...
00:11:45 – Does Ansit love her son with possessiveness? Is there possessiveness in love?
00:18:05 – Why does the peasant prefer the Ungit stone, rather than the statue?
00:22:00 – What does it mean to be Ungit? Is it bad?
00:36:37 – Who is the judge under the mountain?
00:44:09 – What is going on with Orual’s visions?
00:58:07 – What was Orual writing when she died?
01:07:10 – Why is the final line a question?
01:10:40 – Closing remarks
01:11:56 – Andrew joining PWJ
YouTube Version
Show Notes
• I shared an abbreviated biography of my guest, Andrew Lazo:
Andrew Lazo is an internationally-known speaker and writer specializing on C.S. Lewis and the Inklings. He’s preparing for ordination in the Episcopal Church and will one day finally release his study on Till We Have Faces
Brief biography of Andrew Lazo
• We were both drinking Lagavulin 16 and, at Andrews urging I tried it with a drop of water, but only because Ron Swanson considered it acceptable in emergencies:
• I read our quote-of-the-week:
“Till that word can be dug out of us [which you have, all that time, idiot-like, been saying over and over], why should they hear the babble that we think we mean? How can they meet us face to face till we have faces?”
C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces (Part II, Chapter 4)
• Andrew speaks about how Orual realizes that she has been lying about her love and how she has thwarted love. Over the course of the discussion he referred to Mere Christianity:
If we give that wish its head, later on we shall wish to see grey as black, and then to see white itself as black. Finally, we shall insist on seeing everything—God and our friends and ourselves included—as bad, and not be able to stop doing it: we shall be fixed for ever in a universe of pure hatred.
C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (Book III, Chapter 7)
• Andrew refers to his reading of Till We Have Faces on Facebook. I have created a blog post with links to all of these videos.
• Andrew explains how we are Orual.
• I asked Andrew whether Ansit loved her son with possessiveness. Andrew spoke about Orual’s own possessiveness:
What should I care for some horrible, new happiness which I hadn’t given her and which separated her from me? Do you think I wanted her to be happy, that way? It would have been better if I’d seen the Brute tear her in pieces before my eyes. You stole her to make her happy, did you? Why, every wheedling, smiling, cat-foot rogue who lures away another man’s wife or slave or dog might say the same. Dog, now. That’s very much to the purpose. I’ll thank you to let me feed my own; it needed no titbits from your table. Did you ever remember whose the girl was? She was mine. Mine. Do you not know what the word means? Mine! You’re thieves, seducers. That’s my wrong. I’ll not complain (not now) that you’re blood-drinkers and man-eaters.
C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces (Part II, Chapter 3)
• I asked why the peasant woman preferred to worship the Ungit stone rather than the beautiful statue. Andrew explained that it’s chthonic.
• I asked what it means to be Ungit, and whether or not that’s a bad thing. After commenting that Orual says that she never had a selfless thought of Psyche, Andrew connects it to one of Lewis’ poems, which he possibly wrote during Joy’s death:
All this is flashy rhetoric about loving you.
I never had a selfless thought since I was born.
I am mercenary and self-seeking through and through:
I want God, you, all friends, merely to serve my turn.Peace, re-assurance, pleasure, are the goals I seek,
I cannot crawl one inch outside my proper skin:
I talk of love –a scholar’s parrot may talk Greek–
But, self-imprisoned, always end where I begin.Only that now you have taught me (but how late) my lack.
I see the chasm. And everything you are was making
My heart into a bridge by which I might get back From exile, and grow man.
And now the bridge is breaking.For this I bless you as the ruin falls. The pains
C.S. Lewis, As The Ruin Falls
You give me are more precious than all other gains.
We compared Till We Have Faces to Lucy at the spell book and Eustace at the lake.
Andrew spoke about possessive love in relation to A Severe Mercy.
• I asked Andrew for the identity of the judge under the mountain:
I will accuse the gods, especially the god who lives on the Grey Mountain. That is, I will tell all he has done to me from the very beginning, as if I were making my complaint of him before a judge. But there is no judge between gods and men, and the god of the mountain will not answer me
C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces (Part I, Chapter 1)
We referred to Christ’s role as mediator
For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus,
1 Timothy 2:5
Therefore he is the mediator of a new covenant, so that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance, since a death has occurred which redeems them from the transgressions under the first covenant.
Hebrews 8:15
We discussed Lewis’ chapter on hope:
If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. If none of my earthly pleasures satisfy it, that does not prove that the universe is a fraud. Probably earthly pleasures were never meant to satisfy it, but only to arouse it, to suggest the real thing. If that is so, I must take care, on the one hand, never to despise, or be unthankful for, these earthly blessings, and on the other, never to mistake them for the something else of which they are only a kind of copy, or echo, or mirage.
C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (Book III, Chapter 10)
• I asked Andrew what he thinks Orual was writing when she died.
We love, because he first loved us.
1 John 4:19
There shall no more be anything accursed, but the throne of God and of the Lamb shall be in it, and his servants shall worship him; they shall see his face, and his name shall be on their foreheads. And night shall be no more; they need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light, and they shall reign for ever and ever.
Revelation 22:3-5
• Find Andrew at MythOfLove.net.
• I announced that Andrew will be joining the Pints With Jack team next Season.
