Just wanted to update everyone on our upcoming events since we’ve just added some new information online:

Summer Seminars in Residence at The Kilns

Don’t miss this extraordinary opportunity to explore the life and works of C.S. Lewis with a small group of fellow travelers while residing in C.S. Lewis’ beloved home, The Kilns!

Join us for a week of learning, fellowship, and renewal in the world renowned “City of the Dreaming Spires”– Oxford, England.  Study with a noted Lewis scholar, who will lead you in an engaging exploration of the essential themes of Lewis’ writings and life. Experience the pleasures of new friendships, fine dining, and warm hospitality as you find respite from the hectic pace of modern day life. Whether enjoying the many cultural treasures of Oxford, venturing on a guided tour of the city of Cambridge, punting on the Cam, or having tea in the garden with your companions, you will find your stay at The Kilns to be one of life’s rare treasures.

For the Summer Seminars, we’ve just added a new program for Week III:

Week III ~ August 1-7, 2009:
Lewis Remembered: Visits with Friends of C.S. Lewis
With Walter Hooper, Laurence Harwood and Kim Gilnett

What was it like to know C.S. Lewis as a friend? A stepfather? A benefactor? Meet with those who knew him best as family and friends of Jack Lewis reminisce about a man of integrity, scholarship, and humor. Gain an insider’s glimpse into formative influences on Lewis’ life. Consider how he integrated his Christian faith with work and personal pursuits. Beginning with a biography of Lewis’ life and conversion, each day’s discussion will introduce you to another of Lewis’ closest contemporaries.

Special Guests: Aidan Mackey, Barbara Reynolds and Simon Barrington Ward *

* Speakers and special guests are subject to confirmation.

C.S. Lewis Southwest Regional Retreat - We’ve just launched the official website and added the schedule information.

From the early 1930s to the late 1940s, C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and a community of their friends and fellow writers met frequently to share good fellowship and their creative works-in-progress.  Members of this small writers group, the “Inklings,” came to produce some of the most beloved works of fiction and prose of the twentieth century.

But how did the Inklings, many of them Christians working in skeptical secular environments, come to create such lasting contributions to literature and Christianity?  And what can we learn about Christian creativity, community, and fellowship from such a diverse group of writers and thinkers?

Join Diana Pavlac Glyer, author of The Company They Keep: C.S. Lewis & J.R.R. Tolkien as Writers in Community, as she invites us to discover their friendship and the influence it had on their lives, their works, and their relationships with God.

In the intimate woodland setting of the Camp Allen Conference Center, be refreshed by Ad Deum Dance Company and the music of Kemper Crabb. Explore the theme in breakout sessions with Joel Heck, George Musacchio, Andrew Lazo and Don Wood. Worship with Rev. Skip Ryan and Rev. Scott Irwin. And engage in stimulating discussion and fellowship with other conferees.

The C.S. Lewis Southwest Regional Retreat will renew your spirit, challenge your mind, and refresh your body!

DON’T MISS THIS YEAR’S SPECIAL PROGRAMS!

Writer’s Workshop

In the spirit of Lewis & Tolkien, we are also offering a special preconference Writers Workshop that will continue throughout the retreat.  Featuring author Joy Jordan-Lake, agent Steve Laube, and editor Terry Glaspey, the workshop will center on the theme More Than a Hobby: Letting Community Take Your Creativity to a New Level. To meet the needs of writers of varying areas of interest, there will be two tracks – one for fiction writers led by Joy Jordan-Lake, and one for nonfiction writers (focusing on devotionals, journals, memoirs, family histories, and church projects) led by Frank Ball.

Children’s Track

This year will also see the return of our popular children’s program, “Sailing Aboard the Dawn Treader: Learning from Lucy, Edmund, and Eustace,” which offers kids (ages 7-12) the opportunity to connect with Lewis at their level through reading aloud, discussing, acting, singing, hiking, arts & crafts and much more.

Tags: Ad Deum Dance Company, Andrew Lazo, C.S. Lewis, Camp Allen, Chronicles of Narnia, Diana Glyer, Don Wood, Frank Ball, George Musacchio, Joel Heck, Joy Jordan-Lake, Kemper Crabb, Kim Gilnett, Laurence Harwood, Narnia, Navasota, Oxford, Scott Irwin, Skip Ryan, Southwest Regional Retreat, Steve Laube, Summer Seminars, Terry Glaspey, Texas, The Kilns, The Kilns Study Centre, Voyage of the Dawn Treader, Walter Hooper, Writers Workshop

Winter's Snow Touches "The Kilns," C.S. Lewis' Beloved Home in Oxford, England

Oxford has a way of getting under your skin-I’d been there for Oxbridge 2008, been there years earlier for conferences and such. Churches! Libraries! Bookstores! Spires! But every visit had been characterized by hurrying through Oxford: pushing along the crowded sidewalks, running from one conference session to another, busing en masse to see the sights, all good, so very good, but every trip was a little bit breathless, marked more than anything by being on-the-go.

What might happen if I took a seat and stayed a while?

The more I thought about it, the more I wanted to give it a try. I am currently on sabbatical from teaching English at Azusa Pacific University in California. Being on sabbatical gave me the flexibility to think about journeying across the sea and making a dream come true. That’s how I came to spend two weeks in February living and working at The Kilns.

It was an amazing visit, and, as it turned out, there was plenty to do. I took a red double-decker bus into the city most days, working in special collections at the Bodleian. Once I took the oath and got my reader’s card, I was granted access to their manuscript collection, including poems and stories handwritten by Lewis and his friend J. R. R. Tolkien. I spent most of my days sitting at a long library table, juggling three different kinds of magnifying glass, studying layers of scribbled pencil marks, deciphering marginal notes, working out the patterns of edits and corrections, and trying to untangle the complicated composing processes of these authors.

Diana Glyer writes in the Common Room at The Kilns

Three manuscript pages in particular posed a problem worthy of Sherlock Holmes: Was that little round burn in the corner of that yellowed paper caused from a bit of ash fallen from Lewis’s cigarette? Or could it have come straight from Tolkien’s pipe?

There were other happy adventures, too. I visited several places beloved by Lewis: the Eagle and Child Pub, the Trout, Addison’s Walk, the Eastgate Hotel. I attended Evensong at Magdalen. I presented a paper about Warren Lewis at the Lewis Society meeting at Pusey House. I had the special joy of connecting with dear friends (Donna, Malcolm, Doug, Walter, Michael, Theresa, Roger) and meeting new ones, too. Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: C.S. Lewis Study Centre, Diana Glyer, Donna McDaniel, J.R.R. Tolkien, Malcolm Guite, Michael Ward, Oxford, The Kilns, Walter Hooper

Mere Christians: Inspiring Stories of Encounters with C. S. Lewis

Andrew Lazo, a close friend and much valued contributor to the C.S. Lewis Foundation, and Marion E. Wade Center docent Mary Anne Phemister have gathered an amazing collection of stories of how C. S. Lewis continues to radically change people’s lives.  In their new book, Mere Christians: Inspiring Encounters with C. S. Lewis, (released 2/12/2009 ) they have collected fifty-five accounts from people from all walks of life who have witnessed the works of C. S. Lewis impacting them in the profoundest of ways.

Contributors include several notable friends of the C. S. Lewis Foundation, including Michael Ward, Phillip Yancey, Earl Palmer, John C. Lennox, Francis S. Collins, Joseph Pearce, Atessa Afshar, and Chuck Colson, Jerry Root, and Walter Hooper, who writes the Foreword.  Accounts also come from a number of important figures in the Lewis world such as Clyde S. Kilby, David C. Downing, Lyle Dorsett, Don W. King, Ronald Bresland, Joy Davidman, and, for the first time, Merrie Gresham (wife of Lewis’s stepson, Douglas Gresham), whose remarkable stories you’ll surely want to read.

Other contributions include accounts from such notables as singer-songwriter Pierce Pettis, Domino’s Pizza founder Thomas Monaghan, pollster George Gallup, Jr., and novelist Anne Rice.  Equally fascinating are the stories from people from many walks of life (Lewis would call them “no mere mortals”), dozens of whom first heard about the project while visiting the Marion E. Wade Center, the world’s greatest repository of materials related to C. S. Lewis and several other like-minded writers.  In fact, the whole book began on a quiet Saturday morning when co-editor Mary Anne Phemister began asking people what brought them to the Wade Center and, specifically, to C. S. Lewis.  And you will likely see some of the editor’s own story in the pages of Mere Christians.

Along with Walter Hooper’s engaging Foreword, Andrew Lazo has written a brief biography of Lewis, arranged by decade, compiled a categorical list of Lewis’s works, and assembled a short list of the most important resources for those interested in deepening their knowledge of the twentieth century’s most important Christian writer.  In addition, the co-editors have set up an email account, merechristians@gmail.com, in hopes of gathering enough interest to publish a second volume.  Stan Mattson, Phil Keaggy, Diana Glyer, and Bruce Edwards have all been approached and have expressed early interest in contributing their own stories to the next volume.

Millions have had life-changing encounters with C. S. Lewis.  Read Mere Christians to see how much you have in common with people from all over the world who have come to treasure the light from the pages of this most inspiring man.

If you’d like to order this book from Amazon.com, please make your order through the C.S. Lewis Foundation’s new and improved bookstore, by clicking here.  Every purchase from our online Amazon Affiliates bookstore earns us credit towards purchase of our own books for the Foundation library.  You can find the book on our main bookstore webpage as a feature title or under the side navigation bar category “Lewis’ Legacy”

Tags: amazon.com, Andrew Lazo, Anne Rice, C.S. Lewis, Chick Colson, Earl Palmer, Francis Collins, George Gallup, Jerry Root, John Lennox, Joseph Pearce, Jr., Marion E. Wade Center, Mary Anne Phemister, Mere Christians, Phillip Yancey, Thomas Monaghan, Walter Hooper