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Seedbed

Could we write and talk about CS Lewis and Johnny Cash if they were still alive today?

I’m enjoying a lot of Lewis material now at the 50th anniversary of his death. We have a picture into the dark matter of Lewis’ life, Mrs. Moore, S&M, etc. Is this just lurid sensationalism, the dirty laundry of the saints?

In all fairness it is a tradition the Bible maintains. Tamar, Bathsheba, Esther.

Death allows the story of Jack to be told. We all judge but the worth of our judgments don’t travel far. It’s tough to fully appreciate Lewis the saint without seeing Lewis the sufferer.

Hermeneutics

I have heard arguments to the effect that the Target employee should be grateful to have a job in the first place. But as Marilynne Robinson has argued, observance has become an “aspect of privilege”—those of us in better circumstances can have our weekends and holidays “set apart” if we want; those whose conditions are such that they must work on Thanksgiving or face running short on cash at best—or unemployment at worst—have no such provision made for them.

This doesn’t sound to me like the “large increase of freedom” Lincoln imagined was in store for Americans in his Thanksgiving Proclamation. Nor does it sound like something that our God—who commanded his people to give even their servants and animals rest on the seventh day—smiles upon.

Hermeneutics

He was so gracious. I told him a sad, long story about writing an article for a newspaper and the editor thought it was too long and chopped off the ending where all was revealed. I complained to him and he wrote back, “I had the same experience. There’s nothing to be done. Editors do that to us writers.” I thought, “Us writers, he said ‘us writers,’ C.S. Lewis and me!”

The last letter I got from him was 11 days before he died. I didn’t know he had died until February because of course Kennedy took up all the headlines. I was saving up my money to go to England with my next-door neighbor. The idea is I would meet Lewis when I would go over there. Of course he had died.

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