Note: the following blog post is a repost from our 2009 Southwest Regional Retreat Writers Workshop blog page. Click here for the main 2009 C.S. Lewis Southwest Regional Retreat page.

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Inklings & Intentness (the only “I” word I could find for passion)

A Passion for Books, By Terry Glaspey: Editor Harvest House

Book Review by Nan Rinella

Terry Glaspey is having an affair-with books. He has a passion for them.

“I came late to a love for books,” Glaspey writes. As a child, he was addicted to TV but it left him empty. What was missing was a sense of wonder that could best be met by books. This love, when it came, came with a passion.

They say that the most precious things are found in the smallest of boxes. This wee tome is a grand treasure in a tiny package-a sprinkling of gems from the Great Books. I savored every moment of my read. It was like indulging in a box of gourmet chocolates, tasting each morsel, letting it melt in my mouth, and wanting more.

I can only describe this book in terms of feasting on it-not devouring but relishing. Like a rich chocolate (can you tell I’m a chocoholic?) mousse sprinkled with luscious nuts and dried fruits, and presented like a work of art. It’s a beautiful gift book artfully designed with prints, portraits, and chuck full of delicious quotes from the greats.

C.S. Lewis: “No book is really worth reading at the age of ten which in not equally (and often far more) worth reading at the age of fifty and beyond.”

Glaspey refutes computers doing away with printed volumes. He cannot imagine climbing into bed with a computer or languishing in the tub with one. This is my type of person. I was very careful not to let his book fall into my bath.

Press release from Focus on the Family
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Colorado Springs, CO – The Devil is back in time for Halloween in C.S. Lewis’ The Screwtape Letters, an audio production from Peabody-award-winning Focus on the Family Radio Theatre®. The full-cast dramatization of the diabolical classic debuted worldwide today.

Hosted by C.S. Lewis’ stepson, Douglas Gresham, and starring Andy Serkis (Gollum, Lord of the Rings) as the voice of Screwtape, The Screwtape Letters was recorded in London by world-class actors with an original score and motion picture quality sound design, and includes a “making of” DVD that features footage from C.S. Lewis’ home, church and other frequented locations. Also included are a bonus CD of ten original songs and a collector’s booklet.

The Screwtape story centers around correspondence shared between Screwtape, a senior demon, and Wormwood, his apprentice, as Screwtape mentors Wormwood in the skills necessary to entrap, dominate and torture humans. Most of the 31 letters lead into dramatic scenes set either in Hell or World War II-era London. In writing this masterpiece, Lewis re-imagined Hell as a gruesome bureaucracy with demons laboring in a vast enterprise. Avoiding their own painful torment, as well as a desire for control, is what drives demons to persecute their “patients.”

Anticipation for the release of Screwtape has been building among audio enthusiasts as well as Lord of the Rings and C.S. Lewis fans. An entire website was built to support the production’s debut, providing downloadable ringtones, avatars and wallpaper. Guests can follow conversations between Screwtape and Wormwood on Twitter, and utilize available social media to join in the discussion. Read the rest of this entry »

Note: the following blog post is a repost from our 2009 Southwest Regional Retreat Writers Workshop blog page. Click here for the main 2009 C.S. Lewis Southwest Regional Retreat page.

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Review of Not a Tame Lion: The Spiritual Legacy of C.S. Lewis by Terry Glaspey, Editor, Harvest House

Review by Nan Rinella

NOT A TAME LION is a book about a hero. Not as the world sees, but as God sees, and men of God desire to learn from and emulate. A lion of a man with a voice heard round the world, turning men to God.

It’s a small book as books about Lewis go, but it’s brimming with Lewis’s wisdom and dramatized scenes of his life. Terry Glaspey uses elements of creative nonfiction with fleshed out scenes that touch the senses and transport you into Lewis’s life.

The book begins on a cold foggy morning with “Jack” Lewis sitting in the sidecar of his brother Warren’s motorcycle on a trip from Oxford to Whipsnade Zoo. “When we set out I did not believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God,” wrote Lewis in his autobiography, “and when we reached the zoo I did.”

As a boy of nine, Lewis lost his mother and turned from God. He would be a poet but went to war and was wounded. It is through his deep respect for logic that he returns to God via his intellect.

Terry met Lewis-not in person-but in the pages of his books. He was captivated by “the winsome, creative, intelligent personality that radiated between the lines of his writing. If such a man could wholeheartedly embrace Christianity, then perhaps it deserved a more careful look . . . Here was a God who did not fit into my comfortable preconceptions or a denominational box, a God upon whom I could not press my personal agendas. For as one of the characters [of Narnia] says of him, ‘He is not a tame lion.’ Neither was Lewis a ‘tame lion.’” Read the rest of this entry »

Note: the following blog post is a repost from our 2009 Southwest Regional Retreat Writers Workshop blog. Click here for the main 2009 C.S. Lewis Southwest Regional Retreat page.

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Review of The Company They Keep:
C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien as Writers in Community by Dr. Diana Pavlac Glyer

“No man is an island, entire of itself,” John Donne wrote in the 17^th century, “Every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main . . .”

Everyone needs others. If God had meant us to do this life solo, He would have stopped with Adam.

In The Company They Keep: C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien as Writers in Community, Dr. Diana Pavlac Glyer has written about the community shared by the Inklings and the influence it had on the lives and works of individual members - C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, Charles Williams, Owen Barfield, Hugo Dyson, R.E. Havard, David Cecil, Nevill Coghill, Warren Lewis, and others.

Charles Williams thought we should live by the principle that, everyone, all the time, owes his life to the lives and labor of others. He believed in co-inherence-the unity within the Trinity, of all Christian believers, and of divine and human in the Incarnation.

The story of the Inklings gives us an exceptional example of the elements of influence and encouragement. Read the rest of this entry »