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Dear Friends:
Thursday morning, I stopped by a friend’s office. He was preparing for an important meeting on institutional finances in less than two hours.
The times are stressful. The stacks of spreadsheets and financial statements on his desk tell the story of a community with entrenched, high unemployment. By nightfall the State of California, financially insolvent and in legislative paralysis, will cut off payments to our physicians and hospital for caring for state-insured patients. The specter of cut-backs, lay-offs and reorganization lurk in the muddy, roiling waters of uncertainty. My friend was visibly tense and frustrated with competing demands for data and information while preparing books for an annual audit.
I went on my way to another appointment, but my heart stayed with my friend in silent prayer. The Holy Spirit brought to my mind the opening stanza of my Grandmother Jenny’s favorite hymn:
Sweet hour of prayer! sweet hour of prayer!
That calls me from a world of care,
And bids me at my Father’s throne
Make all my wants and wishes known.
In seasons of distress and grief,
My soul has often found relief
And oft escaped the tempter’s snare
By thy return, sweet hour of prayer!
– William Walford, 1845
I text-paged those lines to my friend with this message: “You don’t have an hour, but take a minute. Close your door. Look out the window and breathe. He will receive it as a prayer and extend grace and mercy.”
Dr. Greg Bourgond just released A Rattling of Sabers, the book that he wrote while at The Kilns as a Scholar-in-Residence in 2009. If you would like to purchase it through Amazon.com, while helping the C.S. Lewis Foundation to earn a referral percentage, click here.
Here is the description of the book:
Men - it is finally ready - a labor of love by God’s grace representing 18 years in the making. I finished the manuscript at the Kilns, C.S. Lewis’ home in Headington England last September. It is now available for purchase at Amazon.com and iUniverse.
This book will help you become men of honor and integrity by aligning your heart with the heart of God. Our behavior, good or bad, is reflective of what’s in our heart. Let the scalpel of God’s word perform surgery on your heart so that your life will bring glory and honor instead of shame and dishonor. The objective of this book is to help you become a man after God’s heart. I encourage you to engage in a life-transforming journey that will teach you to live differently–to live victoriously, to live lives of integrity, courage, authenticity, and valor under God’s authority, Christ’s example, and the Holy Spirit’s empowerment. Read the rest of this entry »
Remember when you were a child and you would occasionally have dreams of walking into a room of yours and instead of finding a closet or a bedroom, it would instead be utterly filled with whatever your heart desired? I used to dream I had secret rooms like those that would change with my whims and
Bookshelf at The Kilns
desires.
Sometimes the rooms would be filled with magical woods, fantastic adventures, true lifelong friends, books like the library in “Beauty and the Beast,” dazzling things to eat, or rows upon rows of the prettiest clothes. These were just little passing fancies that would waft through my imagination sometimes.
Well, I seem to be living in the realistic version of one of those fancies. Here at The Kilns I am living for a short time in a place where there are rooms overflowing with wonderful books for me to read! It is almost overwhelming because I know that no matter how hard I will try, I won’t be able to read them all before my time is up. This makes choosing which books to read incredibly hard; the Sofie’s Choice of Book World!
Thankfully a new friend who comes to help me clean made my decision for me and pulled a book out for me from them all and thrust it into my hands saying that I absolutely must read this one: “Beyond Ourselves: a woman’s pilgrimage in faith” by Catherine Marshall. I am only a third of the way in so far, but already I know it is a jewel that I will treasure forever. Read the rest of this entry »
The first novel in the series, entitled Here, There Be Dragons
C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien are deservedly well known for their fiction. Tolkien’s mythology is almost unparalleled in level of detail and The Lord of the Rings set the standard for fantasy literature, while Lewis’s novels have inspired countless readers. We are very familiar with them as writers, but what about as action heroes?
This is the role that the two play (along with many other British authors, including fellow Inkling Charles Williams) in the fantasy series The Chronicles of the Imaginarium Geographica. These are a series of novels, written by James A. Owen, that depict the Inklings and a few of their countrymen (such as Rudyard Kipling and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle) taking part in mythological journeys–searching for the Holy Grail, fairy dust, and even Plato’s cave. The books are currently in the process of adaptation for at least two movies. Here is the original announcement of the project.
Naturally, this kind of use of famous authors as characters will upset some, though it might also please others. Here is a reaction from the National Catholic Register, addressing how (the author thinks) Lewis and Tolkien would have reacted to such a story.
Interestingly, this literary borrowing of people for fiction is not altogether uncommon. Lewis himself took part in it with his novel The Great Divorce–which features George Macdonald as the protagonist’s guide–and Till We Have Faces–which is Lewis’s retelling of the Cupid and Psyche myth. And then, of course, there are classical examples: such as Dante borrowing from Virgil (who in turn derived much from Homer).
Not to irreverently compare The Divine Comedy or The Aeneid to this fantasy series, but such things have been done before.
What do you think about using Lewis and Tolkien in novels like this? Do you think it’s harmless and all in good fun? Or is it simply exploitative? Please comment below!
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By offering a variety of programs and resources for scholars, faculty, administrators as well as seekers and lay readers of all Christian traditions, the Foundation seeks to advance the renewal of Christian thought and creative expression throughout the world of learning.
Men - it is finally ready - a labor of love by God’s grace representing 18 years in the making. I finished the manuscript at the Kilns, C.S. Lewis’ home in Headington England last September. It is now available for purchase at Amazon.com and iUniverse.
