Feelings

It is easy to explain a thought, but to explain a feeling is very hard. - C. S. Lewis (in a letter to Arthur Greeves, 1914)

As Well as We Can

It doesn't matter what we write (at least this is my view) at our age, so long as we write continually as well as we can. I feel that every time I write a page either of prose or of verse, with real effort, even if it's thrown into the fire next minute, I am so much further on. And you too who have been so disappointed at the technical difficulties of composing, won't you find it a relief to turn to writing where you can splash about, so to speak, as you like, and gradually get better and better by experience?

- C. S. Lewis (1916, age 17, in a letter to his friend Arthur Greeves)

Writing as Curative

However, cheer up, and whenever you are fed up with life, start writing: ink is the great cure for all human ills, as I have found out long ago.

- C. S. Lewis (1916 in a letter to his friend Arthur Greeves)

Lewis on the Apostle Paul's Writing

Descending lower we find a somewhat similar difficulty [as we do with the elusive quality of the sayings of Christ in the Gospels] with St. Paul. I cannot be the only reader who has wondered why God, having given him so many gifts, withheld from him what would to us seem so necessary for the first Christian theologian: that of lucidity and orderly exposition.

- C. S. Lewis Reflections on the Psalms

The Rewards of Reading the Old Testament

I shall never forget my surprise when I first discovered that St. Paul's "If thine enemy hunger, give him bread", etc., is a direct quotation from... (Proverbs 25, 21). But this is one of the rewards of reading the Old Testament regularly. You keep on discovering more and more what a tissue of quotations from it the New Testament is; how constantly Our Lord repeated, reinforced, continued, refined, and sublimated, the Judaic ethics, how very seldom He introduced a novelty. - C. S. Lewis Reflections on the Psalms

When Bad Things Happen to Good People

 “In the fallen and partially redeemed universe we may distinguish (1) the simple good descending from God, (2) the simple evil produced by rebellious creatures, and (3) the exploitation of that evil by God for His redemptive purpose, which produces (4) the complex good to which accepted suffering and repented sin contribute. Now the fact that God can make complex good out of simple evil does not excuse—though by mercy it may save—those who do the simple evil. And this distinction is central. Offences must come, but woe to those by whom they come; sins do cause grace to abound, but we must not make that an excuse for continuing to sin. The crucifixion itself is the best, as well as the worst, of all historical events, but the role of Judas remains simply evil. We may apply this first to the problem of other people’s suffering. A merciful man aims at his neighbour’s good and so does ‘God’s will’, consciously co-operating with ‘the simple good’. A cruel man oppresses his neighbour, and so does simple evil. But in doing such evil, he is used by God, without his own knowledge or consent, to produce the complex good—so that the first man serves God as a son, and the second as a tool. For you will certainly carry out God’s purpose, however you act, but it makes a difference to you whether you serve like Judas or like John.”

The Problem of Pain

C. S. Lewis

What’s New?

 You don’t need to read the news.

If anything important happens far too many people are sure to tell you about it.

- C.S. Lewis

(Attributed to Lewis by George Sayer in the biography Jack: C. S. Lewis and His Times)

Fiction

 The job of fiction is to find the truth inside the story’s web of lies...

Stephen King

There Seems No Plan

All that is made seems planless to the darkened mind, because there are more plans than it looked for. In these seas there are islands where the hairs of the turf are so fine and so closely woven together that unless a man looked long at them he would see neither hairs nor weaving at all, but only the same and the flat. So with the Great Dance. Set your eyes on one movement and it will lead you through all patterns and it will seem to you the master movement. But the seeming will be true. Let no mouth open to gainsay it. There seems no plan because it is all plan: there seems no center because it is all center.

C. S. Lewis

Perelandra