Lewis
"My own position at the threshold of Christianity was exactly the opposite of yours. You wish it were true; I strongly hoped it was not. At least, that was my conscious wish...One never knows all one's wishes. What I think one can say with certainty is this: the notion that everyone would like Christianity to be true, and that therefore all atheists are brave men who have accepted the defeat of all their deepest desires, is simply impudent nonsense. Do you think people like Stalin, Hitler, Haldane, Stapledon (a corking good writer, by the way) would be pleased on waking up one morning to find that they were not their own masters, that they had a Master and a Judge, that there was nothing even in the deepest recesses of their thoughts about which they could say to Him `Keep out! Private. This is my business'? Do you? Rats! Their first reaction would be (as mine was) rage and terror."
- C.S. Lewis, Letter to Vanauken I
... the greatest joy of staying in East Belfast, near the shipping docks where the Titanic was built, is that I am lodging across the street from the birthplace and childhood home of C.S. Lewis and his brother Warnie. This was an amazingly pleasant surprise; the dear man raised me. There was nothing else to do upon discovering this wonderful fact of his nearness than to venture out on as many expeditions in his footsteps as possible: to dinner at the Old Inn in Crawfordsburne, where Lewis honeymooned with Joy Gresham, and then to the glorious Giant's Causeway Coast, where I am sure he trecked, and stumbled upon his lifelong love affair with bracing winds, northerliness, and holiness.
posted by MM at 3:25 AM
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