Like many of you, I am a C. S. Lewis junkie. I believe Mere Christianity to be the sole training necessary in apologetics. I am Ungit and Redival and Psyche and I too want to wander away and see strange and wonderful things. I think Surprised by Joy is the most detailed and long autobiography but the most honest. And I find his articulation of grief extraordinary in my own mourning processes.
That said, I am re-reading the Chronicles with the book set that belonged to my schoolteacher grandmother when she read the entire series to her fifth-graders every year. I came across this letter to Lewis' goddaughter Lucy and I think it warrants attention. I often fear that I am in the span where I am too old and too young for fairytales. Then again, I am swept away by my imagination when I let myself be. And that is good.
--
My Dear Lucy,
I wrote this story for you, but when I began it I had not realized that girls grow quicker than books. As a result you are already too old for fairy tales, and by the time it is printed and bound you will be older still. But some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again. You can then take it down from some upper shelf, dust it, and tell me what you think of it. I shall probably be too deaf to hear, and too old to understand, a word you say, but I shall still be
your affectionate Godfather,
C.S. Lewis
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4 comments:
I've always loved this letter from C.S Lewis.
As we get older, we get so distracted..our imaginations wilter like a plant not watered.
I received the Chronicles from a friend of my parents when I was 10 years old. I am also planning to re-read the whole set.
it is amazing how differently i am seeing it as an adult... but it still possesses the same amount of wonder.
The difference from when I was a child and now is the "story behind the story" As an adult, I see all of the relationships to our walk with God. As a child, I imagined being Peter or Eustace; being inside their story. Now I see the story of the children in my own life.
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