S7E7 – LAL 5 – “Yours, Jack”

This is our last episode going through ‘Letters to an American Lady”, picking up today at the start of 1961 and concluding with Lewis’ death in 1963.

S7E7: “Yours, Jack” (Download)

Show Notes

Introduction

Quote-of-the-week

Pain is terrible, but surely you need not have fear as well? Can you not see death as the friend and deliverer? … What is there to be afraid of? … Your sins are confessed and absolved. Has this world been so kind to you that you should leave it with regret? There are better things ahead than any we leave behind.”

C. S. Lewis, Letters to an American Lady

Chit-Chat

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Toast

• Matt: Bushmills and coke
• Andrew: Offerman lagavulin
• David: Vat 69

Discussion

01. “Imperfect penitence”

Try not to think – much less, speak – of their sins. One’s own are a much more profitable theme! And if, on consideration, one can find no faults on one’s own side, then cry for mercy: for this must be a most dangerous delusion…

Remember that He has promised to forgive you as and only as you forgive them

C. S. Lewis, Letters to an American Lady

• “We have no right to happiness” essay by C. S. Lewis

02. “Keep it shut!”

Blessed are they that expect little for they shall not be disappointed

C. S. Lewis, Letters to an American Lady

When in doubt what to do or say, do or say nothing… I do so easily meddle and gas: when all the time what will really influence them [my step sons], for good or ill, is not anything I do or say but what I am.

C. S. Lewis, Letters to an American Lady

“There can be no surer proof of a confirmed pride than a belief that one is sufficiently humble”

“I earnestly beseech all who conceive they have suffered an affront to believe that it is very much less than they suppose”

William Law, A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Lif

• Fr. D’Arcy (“Philosopher of love”)

I have a great respect for cats – they are very shrewd people and would probably see through the analyst a good deal better than he’d see through them

C. S. Lewis, Letters to an American Lady

• On Golden Pond movie

03. “Mixed motivation”

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04. “Letting go of the past”

I have a great respect for cats – they are very shrewd people and would probably see through the analyst a good deal better than he’d see through them

C. S. Lewis, Letters to an American Lady

We must beware of the Past… any fixing of the mind on old evils beyond what is absolutely necessary for repenting our own sins and forgiving those of others is certainly useless and usually bad for us

C. S. Lewis, Letters to an American Lady

• Inferno by Dante Ahligari

05. “A hospital stay”

• No Man Is an Island by Thomas Merton
• The Seven Storey Mountain by Thomas Merton

06. “Major alcoholism”

…dipsomaniac [alcoholic] retired major…who refused to … try A.A. on the ground that ‘it would be full of retired majors’

C. S. Lewis, Letters to an American Lady

07. “Living in the present, even in suffering”

The actual present is usually pretty tolerable, I think, if only we refrain from adding to its burden that of the past and the future. How right Our Lord is about “sufficient to the day”.

C. S. Lewis, Letters to an American Lady

For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”

Matthew 11:30

For the Lord disciplines him whom he loves, and chastises every son whom he receives.”

Hebrews 12:6

08. “Same Purgatory, different lessons”

Yes, it is strange that anyone should dislike cats. But cats themselves are the worst offenders in this respect. They very seldom seem to like one another.

C. S. Lewis, Letters to an American Lady

I have a notion that, apart form actual pain, men and women are quite diversely afflicted by illness. To a woman one of the great evils about it is that she can’t do things. To a man (or anyway a man like me) the great consolation is the reflection “Well, anyway, no one can now demand that I should do anything”. I have often had the fancy that one stage in Purgatory might be a great big kitchen in which things are always going wrong – milk boiling over, crockery getting smashed, toast burning, animals stealing. The women have to learn to sit still and mind their own business: the men have to learn to jump up and do something about it. When both sexes have mastered this exercise, they go on to the next…

C. S. Lewis, Letters to an American Lady

…both sexes must be told ‘Mind your own business’, but in two different senses

C. S. Lewis, Letters to an American Lady

09. “Nausea, regret, and guilt”

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10. “Snubbing Cats”

I can’t understand the people who say cats are not affectionate. Our Siamese… is almost suffocatingly so. True, our ginger Tom (a great Don Juan and a mighty hunter before the Lord) will take no notice of me, but he will of others. He thinks I’m not quite socially up to his standards, and makes this very clear. No creature can give such a crushing ‘snub’ as a cat!

C. S. Lewis, Letters to an American Lady

If they [Seventh Day Adventists] have so much charity there must be something very right about them…

C. S. Lewis, Letters to an American Lady

11. “Being had for a sucker”

It will not bother me in the hour of death to reflect that I have been “had for a sucker” by any number of imposters; but it would be a torment to know that one had refused even one person in need. After all, the parable of the sheep and goats makes our duty perfectly plain, doesn’t it. Another thing that annoys me is when people say “Why did you give that man money? He’ll probably go and drink it”. My reply is “But if I’d kept [it] I should probably have drunk it”.

C. S. Lewis, Letters to an American Lady

And what is a “wall can opener”? It suggests either opening a tin by means of a wall or opening a wall by means of a time, and both sound very strange operations

C. S. Lewis, Letters to an American Lady

12. “Living alone and in community”

[Living alone] (with all its miseries and dangers, both moral and physical)… [and living in community] all the rubs and frustrations of a joint life… I hope one is rewarded for all the stunning replies one thinks of one does not utter!”

C. S. Lewis, Letters to an American Lady

It is not only Episcopalians who behave as if they have never read St. James

C. S. Lewis, Letters to an American Lady

• The Problem of Pain

13. “Members of one another”

Poverty merely reveals the helpless dependence which has all the time been our real condition. We are members of one another whether we choose to recognise the fact or not.

C. S. Lewis, Letters to an American Lady

I get on fairly well. My chief trouble is a difficulty in sleeping at night and keeping awake by day. Perhaps I am turning into a nocturnal animal. Bat? Wolf? Owl? Let’s hope it will be owl, the bird of wisdom (And I always was attracted by mice!)

C. S. Lewis, Letters to an American Lady

14. “First half of 1963”

I don’t mind betting that the things which “had to be done” in your room didn’t really have to be done at all. Very few things really do… What worse than inconvenience would have resulted if you had left those “things” undone? Do take more care of yourself and less of “things”

C. S. Lewis, Letters to an American Lady

I find the best sedative if one is wakeful in the middle of the night is – simply FOOD.

C. S. Lewis, Letters to an American Lady

•  Pope St. John XXIII

15. “Death the deliverer”

Pain is terrible, but surely you need not have fear as well? Can you not see death as the friend and deliverer? It means stripping off that body which is tormenting you: like taking off a hairshirt or getting out of a dungeon. What is there to be afraid of? You have long attempted (and none of us does more) a Christian life. Your sins are confessed and absolved. Has this world been so kind to you that you should leave it with regret? There are better things ahead than any we leave behind.

C. S. Lewis, Letters to an American Lady

• Catholic view of assurance

This is how one should regard us, as servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God. Moreover it is required of stewards that they be found trustworthy. But with me it is a very small thing that I should be judged by you or by any human court. I do not even judge myself. I am not aware of anything against myself, but I am not thereby acquitted. It is the Lord who judges me. Therefore do not pronounce judgment before the time, before the Lord comes, who will bring to light the things now hidden in darkness and will disclose the purposes of the heart. Then every man will receive his commendation from God

1 Corinthians 4:1-5

Die before you die. There is no chance after.

Till We Have Faces (Part II, Chapter 2)

I am overjoyed at the blessed change in your attitude to death. This is a bigger stride forward than perhaps you yourself yet Know. For you were rather badly wrong on that subject. Only a few months ago when I said that we old people hadn’t much more to do than to make a good exit, you were almost angry with me for what you called such a ‘bitter’ remark. Thank God, you now see it wasn’t bitter; only plain common sense. Yes: I do wonder why the doctors inflict such torture to delay what cannot in any case be very long delayed. Or why God does! Unless there is still something for you to do as far as weakness allows.

C. S. Lewis, Letters to an American Lady

I hope, now that you know you are forgiven you will spend most of your remaining strength in forgiving. Lay all the old resentments down at the wounded feet of Christ

C. S. Lewis, Letters to an American Lady

But oh, I do pity you for waking up and finding yourself still on the wrong side of the door! How awful it must have been for poor Lazarus who had actually died, got it all over, and then was brought back to go through it all again I suppose a few years later. I think he, not St. Stephen, ought rally to be celebrated as the first martyr

C. S. Lewis, Letters to an American Lady

You say too much of the very little I have been able to do for you. Perhaps you will very soon be able to repay me a thousandfold. For if this is Good-bye, I am sure you will not forget me when you are in a better place. You’ll put in a good word for me now and then, won’t you? It will be fun when we at last meet

C. S. Lewis, Letters to an American Lady

Yes, I want to spend my heaven in doing good on earth

St. Therese of Liseaux

• “Stephen to Lazarus” poem

Think of yourself just as a seed patiently waiting in the earth; waiting to come up a flower in the Gardener’s good time, up into the real world, the real waking. I suppose that our whole present life, looked back on from there, will seem only a drowsy half-waking. We are here in the land of dreams. But cockcrow is coming. It is nearer than when I began the letter

C. S. Lewis, Letters to an American Lady

Do you know, only a few weeks ago I realised suddenly that I at last had forgiven the cruel schoolmaster who so darkened my childhood…this time I feel it is the real thing. And the moment it does happen it seems so easy and you wonder why on earth you didn’t do it years ago. So the parable of the unjust judge comes true, and what has been vainly asked for years can suddenly be granted. I also get a quite new feeling about ‘if you forgive you will be forgiven’. I don’t believe it is, as it sounds, a bargain. The forgiving and the being forgiven are really the very same thing. But one is safe as long as one keep trying.

C. S. Lewis, Letters to an American Lady

16. “Death be not proud”

Our friends might really get up a sweepstake as to whose train really will go first!

C. S. Lewis, Letters to an American Lady

• Dr. R. E. Havard

Don’t expect to hear much from me. You might as well expect a Lecture on Hegel from a drunk man.

C. S. Lewis, Letters to an American Lady

His physical crisis has greatly disordered his intelligence and he is vividly aware of living in a world of hallucinations.

C. S. Lewis, Letters to an American Lady

Professor Lewis regrets that he is unable at this time (and probably for a long time) to answer your letters. He is much concerned for you and prays that you may have courage for whatever may be yours both in the present and future

C. S. Lewis, Letters to an American Lady

Joy had left us, and once again—as in the earliest days—we could turn for comfort only to each other. The wheel had come full circle: once again we were together in the little end room at home, shutting out from our talk the ever-present knowledge that the holidays were ending, that a new term fraught with unknown possibilities awaited us both. Jack faced the prospect bravely and calmly. “I have done all I wanted to do, and I’m ready to go,” he said to me one evening…

Friday, the 22nd of November 1963, began much as other days: there was breakfast, then letters and the crossword puzzle. After lunch he fell asleep in his chair: I suggested that he would be more comfortable in bed, and he went there. At four I took in his tea and found him drowsy but comfortable. Our few words then were the last: at five-thirty I heard a crash and ran in, to find him lying unconscious at the foot of his bed. He ceased to breathe some three or four minutes later.

W. H. Lewis (Editor), Letters of C. S. Lewis

The term is over: the holidays have begun. The dream is ended: this is the morning.”

C. S. Lewis, The Last Battle (Chapter 16)

Wrap-Up

Concluding Thoughts

They come in stately caravan
from distant places of the earth
journeying to Bethlehem
in search of One whose star-told birth
has brought these Eastern Kings, to see
the King of Kings on Mary’s knee.

Their wisdom rives the curtain spread
by simplicity around
the baby and His Mother; led
of God, true royalty they found,
and bending low, their gifts they bring
to honor Christ, the new-born King.

Mary Willis Shelburne, Splendor in Bethlehem

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