After reading the introductory sections in the previous episode, the gang dive into the letters of “Letters to Children”. They discuss the parts of the letters which surprised them, as well as Jack’s references to the United States and his spiritual advice.
S7E15: “Dear Children” (Download)
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Show Notes
Introduction
Quote-of-the-week
…though the letters in this book do not have your name on them, consider that they are yours. For surely, if he could have, C. S. Lewis would have written them to you.
Marjorie Lamp Mead, Letters to Children (A Note to Children)
Chit-Chat
- Matt is excited to do a new kind of book.
- Andrew has an Episcopal visit this week and also got to hang out with a listener who he toasts today.
- David reports that it is snowing in Wisconsin. Matt recommends he practise the art of Hygge.
Toast
- Matt: Coffee
- Andrew: Coffee, but he reminisced about a drink he had at The Magical Meat Boutique.
- David: Best Day Brewing: West Coast IPA
Andrew toasted listener, Paul Latino.
Discussion
Bucket #1: “Surprised by Jack”
01. “Correspondent Bios”
- Some of the correspondences continue through to adulthood.
- Jack appears to have kept an index on at least some of his correspondents.
02. “Infants at the Kilns”
- There was at least one six-month old child who stayed at the Kilns for a while during The Blitz.
03. “Animal Crazy”
“…One dog, one cat, four geese, [and] umpteen hens.”
C.S. Lewis, Letters to Children
04. “Home Dentistry”
–
05. “Humility”
Best love to you all. When you say your prayers sometimes ask God to bless me.
C.S. Lewis, Letters to Children
I’m so clumsy. I’m afraid if you had met me you find me very shy and dull. I am tall, fat, mostly bald…
C.S. Lewis, Letters to Children
06. “Horseplay”
- The Magician’s Nephew by C.S. Lewis
- The Great Divorce by C.S. Lewis
- At the Back of the North Wind by George MacDonald
07. “The Bedder”
- Lewis had a Bedder:
“A little old man” brought Lewis his breakfast every morning!
C.S. Lewis, Letters to Children
08. “Zoroastrianism”
Zoroastrianism is one of the finest of the Pagan religions. Do you depend entirely on Nietzsche for your idea of it? I expect you would find it well worth time to look at the old sources.
C.S. Lewis, Letters to Children
- Bohemian Rhapsody by Freddie Mercury
- S7E21: Jack’s Bookshelf: Plato – Dr. Louis Markos
- The Abolition of Man and Till We Have Faces by C.S. Lewis were mentioned
09. “The Christmas rush”
- Bonus – Fantastical Truth – Interview with Lorehaven on “How Did Lewis and Tolkien Celebrate and Critique Christmas?”
- Bonus – The C. S. Lewis Podcast – Interview with Ruth Jackson on “What did Christmas mean to Lewis?”
10. “Hard subjects”
Last year I married, at her bedside in hospital, a woman who seemed to be dying: so you can imagine it was a sad wedding. But Aslan has done great things for us and she is now walking about again, showing the doctors how wrong they were, and making me very happy.
C.S. Lewis, Letters to Children
I couldn’t come to the wedding, my dear. I haven’t the pluck. Any wedding, for the reason you know, would turn me inside out now. I send a little present.
C.S. Lewis, Letter to his goddaughter
11. “Patchy beard”
I had [chicken pox] long after I was grown up and it’s much worse if you are a man for of course you can’t shave with the spots on your face. So I grew a beard and though my hair is black the beard was half yellow and half red! You should have seen me.
C.S. Lewis, Letters to Children
Bucket #2: “U.S.A. is OK”
12. “Speaking American”
13. “An American guest”
- Timothy Keller’s wife, Kathy, wrote to Lewis. David interviewed her in S5E24 – AH – Kathy Keller.
[Joy Davidman is]…A very nice one but one can’t feel quite free.
C.S. Lewis, Letter to his goddaughter
I am completely circumvented by American guest. Invited for one week and staying for three. She talks from morning till night. I feel slightly concussed.
Letter to Lawrence Harwood (December 19th, 1952)
14. “The Gresham boys”
Very nice. They seem to use much longer words than English boys of that age would… But they haven’t as good table manners as English boys of the same sort would.
C.S. Lewis, Letters to Children
- Lenten Lands: My Childhood with Joy Davidman and C.S. Lewis by Douglas Gresham
15. “Kilmer family”
- We read in Letters to an American Lady about the connection between the “American Lady” and the Kilmer family. Matt and David have both met one of their descendants, Meg Hunter-Kilmer.
- Lewis asked them for help with Mary from the Kilmer family, but later realised that they were already knew her.
An appeal for your charity. [Living near you is a “lonely” and sometimes “disagreeable woman”] with whom I have corresponded for many years. She is a Roman Catholic… I have done, and am doing what I can for her with advice and a little money. But a little help and friendship from co-religionists on the spot is badly needed. Could you, or anyone in your circle – perhaps a really nice Nun – get in touch with her and lend a hand?
C.S. Lewis, Letters to an American Lady
- As in Letters to an American Lady , Jack mentioned how his surgical belt made him look thin:
[Lewis’ surgical belt is] really like your grandmother’s corsets. It gives me a wonderful schoolboy figure!
C.S. Lewis, Letters to an American Lady
Yes – the Christian Herald is pretty frightful, and so apparently are its readers. I have had the stupidest letters about that article.
C.S. Lewis, Letter to Martin Kilmer
16. “Attendance”
What a drole idea in Florida, to give credits not for what you know but for hours spent in a classroom! Rather like judging the condition of an animal not by its weight or shape but by the amount of food that had been offered it!
C.S. Lewis, Letters to Children
Bucket #3: “Spiritual Advice”
17. “More than a feeling…”
I thought you’d better vet it before passing it on. I’m so clumsy.
C.S. Lewis, Cover letter for Sarah’s mother
Blessings on all three – and I’m sorry I can’t come. But I’d only have behaved like an ass if I had!… As regards [to being your fairy godfather] I enclose a bit of the only kind of magic (a very dull kind) which I can work. I think it will mean one or two, or even five, pounds for you now, to get things you want, and the rest in the Bank for future use… it is the best an old bachelor can think of, and it is with my love.
…Don’t expect (I mean, don’t count on and don’t demand) that when you are confirmed, or when you make your first Communion, you will have all the feelings you would like to have. You may, of course: but also you may not. But don’t worry if you don’t get them. They aren’t what matter. The things that are happening to you are quite real things whether you feel as you would wish or not, just as a meal will do a hungry person good even if he has a cold in the head which will rather spoil the taste. Our Lord will give us right feelings if He wishes – and then we must say Thank you. If He doesn’t, then we must say to ourselves (and Him) that He knows us best. This, by the way, is one of the
C.S. Lewis, Letter to his goddaughter, Sarah
very few subjects on which I feel I do know something. For years after I had become a regular communicant I can’t tell you how dull my feelings were and how my attention wandered at the most important moments. It is only in the last year or two that things have begun to come right – which just shows how important it is to keep on doing what you are told.
Andrew referenced both of these passages from St. Paul:
And I am sure that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.
Philippians 1:6
And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.
2 Corinthians 3:18
18. “Three things you need to do”
Remember that there are only three kinds of things anyone need ever do. (1) Things we ought to do (2) Things we’ve got to do (3) Things we like doing. I say this because some people seem to spend so much of their time doing things for none of the three reasons, things like reading books they don’t like because other people read them.
C.S. Lewis, Letter to his goddaughter, Sarah
As one of my own patients said on his arrival down here, “I now see that I spent most of my life in doing neither what I ought nor what I liked”. The Christians describe the Enemy as one “without whom Nothing is strong”. And Nothing is very strong…
C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters
Giving up fun for no reason except that you think it’s “good” to give it up, is all nonsense”.
C.S. Lewis, Letters To Children
19. “Critical feedback”
Beware of the Maths Master who over-marks the work. Generous marking is nice for the moment, but it can lead to disappointments when, later, one comes up against the real thing….
C.S. Lewis, Letters to Children
Everything I need is in my soul? The Heck it is! Or if so, it must contain a great many virtues and a great deal of wisdom which neither I nor anyone else could ever find there.
C.S. Lewis, Letters to Children
David quoted Paul’s letter to Timothy about fostering the gifts we have received:
Hence I remind you to rekindle the gift of God that is within you through the laying on of my hands…
2 Timothy 1:6
20. “Dense subject matter”
This is an extension of what St. Paul says about the body and the members. A good toe-nail is not an unsuccessful attempt at a hair; and if it wsere conscious it would delight in being simply a good toe-nail…
A creature can never be a perfect being, but may be a perfect creature.
C.S. Lewis, Letter to Hugh Kilmer
I am not at all sure that blessed souls have a strictly timeless being like God. Don’t some theologians interpose aevum as a half-way house between temporal and eternal? In general, I incline to think that tho’ the blessed will participate in the Divine Nature, they will do so always in a mode which does not simply annihilate their humanity. Otherwise it is difficult to see why the species was created at all.
C.S. Lewis, Letters to Children
I don’t know whether Lucifer and Gabriel could really find much ground for reconciliation in the mere fact that they both exist. I suppose the reconciliation of dark and light would be fog? Don’t like fog much myself. Health and disease both exist in me and are now reconciled in mild invalidism. But really, I’d rather that Health had fought and slain his antagonist!
C.S. Lewis, Letters to Children
“Do you mean then that Hell – all that infinite empty town – is down in some little crack like this?”
“Yes. All Hell is smaller than one pebble of your earthly world: but it is smaller than one atom of this world, the Real World. Look at yon butterfly. If it swallowed all Hell, Hell would not be big enough to do it any harm or to have any taste.”
C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce
Wrap-Up
Concluding Thoughts
If you continue to love Jesus, nothing much can go wrong with you, and I hope you may always do so.
C.S. Lewis, Letters to Children (Ruth, 26th October 1963)
