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Ways of the World

Carol Stone, business economist & active Episcopalian, brings you "Ways of the World". Exploring business & consumers & stewardship, we'll discuss everyday issues: kids & finances, gas prices, & some larger issues: what if foreigners start dumping our debt? And so on. We can provide answers & seek out sources for others. We'll talk about current events & perhaps get different perspectives from what the media says. Write to Carol. Let her know what's important to you: carol@geraniumfarm.org

Saturday, November 23, 2013

About Someone Else Who Died November 22, 1963

Another major figure of the 20th Century also died on November 22, 1963.  His name is C.S. Lewis.  As yesterday's Christian Science Monitor noted, Lewis's passing was far overshadowed by JFK's assassination and few people paid attention.[1]  The Gospel Coalition website[2] explains that Lewis collapsed and died at his home in Oxford early that evening, apparently just an hour or so before Kennedy was shot.

The Episcopal Church does pay attention today, though, and since 2003 has remembered Lewis in its calendar of Lesser Feasts and Fasts.  The commentary there highlights the fact that Lewis did not come by his religion easily, but went through a long period of atheism from his adolescence in the 1910s until 1929.  The profile also notes that his reconversion, fulfilled in 1931, "inaugurated a wonderful outpouring of Christian apologetics in media as varied as popular theology, children’s literature, fantasy and science fiction, and correspondence on spiritual matters with friends and strangers alike."

Here are a few quotes from Lewis, taken from a variety of his writings and assorted websites:

"I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else."

As we copied-and-pasted those words a little while ago, we didn't know, but quickly learned, that they now appear on the plaque which just yesterday was dedicated to Lewis in Poet's Corner in Westminster Abbey.[3]

Some other of Lewis's words:

"Courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point."

"If you look for truth, you may find comfort in the end; if you look for comfort you will not get either comfort or truth only soft soap and wishful thinking to begin, and in the end, despair."

"Whatever men expect, they soon come to think they have a right to: the sense of disappointment can, with very little skill on (the devil's) part, be turned into a sense of injury."

"You cannot make men good by law: and without good men you cannot have a good society."

“Each new power won by man is a power over man as well. Each advance leaves him weaker as well as stronger.”

"Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another: What! You too? I thought I was the only one."

"Aim at heaven and you will get earth thrown in. Aim at earth and you get neither."

"The trouble about trying to make yourself stupider than you really are is that you very often succeed."

And here is the Collect for this Day in Lesser Feasts and Fasts, 2006 (page 465):
O God of searing truth and surpassing beauty, we give you thanks for Clive Staples Lewis, whose sanctified imagination lights fires of faith in young and old alike. Surprise us also with your joy and draw us into that new and abundant life which is ours in Christ Jesus, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

Finally, one other notable also passed away that day: Aldous Huxley, aged 69, died of cancer in Los Angeles at 5:20PM PST, seven hours after Kennedy's shooting and eight hours after Lewis's death in England.[4]

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[3] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/10452711/Does-CS-Lewis-deserve-a-place-in-Poets-Corner.html.  Also see an interview with Lewis's stepson Douglas Gresham (Joy Davidman's son), here: http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/features/cs-lewis-in-the-shadow-of-jfks-death-8955470.html.  Other Telegraph stories note that Rowan Williams, former Archbishop of Canterbury, officiated at the unveiling of the Poet's Corner plaque.


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