#Lewisian

[artist-issues]

Quick question. Have you read any of Brandon Sanderson's books before? If so, what books would you recommend?

Also, what books of C.S. Lewis, would you recommend and why.

I want to start reading them, but I'm uncertain what books I should pick out and try.

Hello my friend!

I've never read Brandon Sanderson, or heard of him! Do you hear good things about him? Should I look into him? Sorry to turn it back around on you.

C. S. Lewis is unlike any other author to me. What he has to say resonates with me and feels like he opened up my heart and put what was in there into order every time I read his stuff. Feels like going to the chiropractor—like my thoughts and emotions and vague ideas have been out of alignment, and he pops them back into place where I didn't even know I needed alignment.

That said, I love all his stuff. Fiction, non-fiction, essays, letters to friends, lectures, everything. So I'm almost...the wrong person to ask, because I would recommend ANYTHING he writes.

I'll try to give you a little recommendation-by-starting point?

If you're looking for fiction: Read the Chronicles of Narnia. If you've already read them, read them again 😅 I read them on loop. They're on my phone. I'm never not reading them.

If you're looking for deeper ("adult") fiction: Read Out of the Silent Planet, then Perelandra—but I don't recommend reading That Hideous Strength until you've tried to read...

3. If you're looking for commentary on fundamental worldviews: Read The Abolition of Man. It's an essay on what C.S. Lewis believed about the idea of "progressivism," but it has a lot to say about objectivity versus subjectivity, and where logic and emotion belong in the priority-list of a person...I just recommend that everybody read The Abolition of Man. Then read That Hideous Strength to finish the Ransom Trilogy, because it's kind of a modern-fairytale picture of what Lewis was trying to say in Abolition. Reading both will compliment his thoughts!

4. If you're still looking for more fiction: Read The Screwtape Letters and The Great Divorce, then Til We Have Faces and The Pilgrim's Regress.

5. If you're looking to set your mind on the things above with C.S. Lewis: Read Mere Christianity, and The Problem of Pain.

6. If you're looking to hear what C.S. Lewis had to say about stories or critical thinking: Read his essay in response to critics of the Lord of the Rings (I think it's called "The Dethronement of Power") and read An Experiment in Criticism. (He has so much good stuff to say about enjoyment, and how humans can use their critical thinking skills to actually get in their own way. C.S. Lewis really believed that people should enjoy what is good to enjoy, in the proper way, and that that was one of the most God-honoring things you could do. He also hated teetotaling along the same lines 😅)

Remember that everything C.S. Lewis writes is very "thematic." He wasn't exactly making allegories all the time, but he was making "supposals" all the time. For example, Narnia is "suppose God created other worlds; in those worlds there had to have been a Jesus; in a world of talking beasts, what would Jesus look like? A lion." Or, "suppose God created life on all the planets in our solar system, not just Earth, and suppose Satan was put in charge of ours while other angels were put in charge of other planets; then what would space travel look like?" And many thematic lessons are tied up in there.

Also, if you read his biography Surprised by Joy and Perelandra, you might come to realize something about C.S. Lewis' beliefs that I'm only just starting to grasp: he thought we make WAY too drastic and exclusive a distinction between "story" and "reality." He believed that there was something in every story which points back to the one great story God made up, which is reality. So he's not afraid to include pagan mythology in his own Christian stories because to him, knowing their history and the cultures they come from, some of those pagan myths and stories tie neatly into truths about God. It might be a hard thing to grasp depending on your Biblical upbringing, but the spirit of what he means is not unbiblical.

Another cool thing I'm learning from Lewis is that he didn't think of all mankind as monsters. Oh, he believed that the Bible was correct when it says "all have sinned; there is none righteous," etc. He certainly didn't believe there was anything good left in man. But what he did believe was that man was kind of like a broken mirror, I guess. Like, it's in pieces on the floor. Good for nothing but the trash. But you can still look hard at the shards and figure out what it should be doing, and in that way, you can see traces of the mirror's creator. So in his biography, there's this interesting part where C.S. Lewis actually says that heartlessness is a worse sin than, say, homosexuality—they're both sin, but at least one points to a twisted version of what we were made for, which is love. At least someone could look at those broken shards and maybe come to the conclusion that there is a God who made us creatures for love, and therefore learn something about Him, even if we mucked it up. But with a heartless person? Lewis seems to condemn that person as not human at all, because there's no trace, not even a broken trace, of what humans are meant to be in them.

I just thought that was interesting. Because it makes you realize that mankind's story isn't "bad to good." It's more like, "good, to bad, back to good." Which is why any of us recognizes the need for God at all.

Anyway! Sorry for the ramble, I know you didn't ask for it 😅 I hope that gets you started? I also hope you blog about what you think of any of Lewis' stuff; I can't wait to read it. He's near and dear to me, so I like the thought of "sharing" his writing with anyone. Thank you'

[eternaspacic]

lewisian - a nonbinary person who expresses their gender in a way that is best described as ‘princess futch and xenic,’ and that expression is very important to their identity.

please credit me if you use!

[raspberryzingaaa]

Conspiracy of Kings: "so anyways I had this awesome dream library that contained tons of books and scrolls and even some lost texts and I could read all of the languages bc it was a dream"

Me, nodding solemnly: this is what Heaven will be like.

[lakelewisia]

Buffet bread, they started calling it: so long they had to bring in another table to lay it out, stitched together with half a dozen doughs and twice as many fillings, it was a banquet of meats and cheeses and fruits around which the judges and the audience alike could crowd. The salamander, since apologized to and properly won over, had been critical in getting everything baked at once and now gnawed happily on a blackened length of crust. The little pockets of filling and secret layers to be pulled apart were akin to the poisoner’s art in so many ways, but Lennox found a new sort of satisfaction in watching it be blithely devoured.

[elephantbitterhead]

The geology of NW Scotland is also amazing.

[thesanamposts]

The Lewisian Gneiss is a geological formation that is found in the Outer Hebrides, Scotland. It is one of the oldest rock formations in the world, with an estimated age of between 2.7 and 3.0 billion years. The Lewisian Gneiss is composed of several different types of rock, including gneiss, granulite, and mica schist. These rocks were formed through a process of metamorphism, which involved intense heat and pressure over long periods of time.

[saltwaterandstars]

A few days ago I reblogged a post by @harrison-abbott from @oldshrewsburyian. The post contained a link to a recording of a Schubert string quintet - which was glorious. It got me thinking that I might actually have a recording of it on vinyl because when my dad died (many years ago) I inherited his classical records. I've played some favourites many times but it's years since I've gone looking through the whole lot. And on Friday, when I tried to look for the Schubert, it was impossible to find anything - the records weren't in any kind of order except for the few I play regularly. So, I decided to do something about that.

Here are all the records taken out of the sideboard where they live - a mixture of dad's classical, my classical, and mine and my husband's pop, rock, folk, jazz etc.

One of the things I found quite moving was that there were a few examples of where I'd bought a recording of a piece that I'd learned to love as a child by dad playing it, so now I have my copy and his copy. Smetana's Má Vlast is one example, and here's another:

It turns out that I don't have the Schubert string quintet, but I do have several other Schubert recordings including this one:

And here they all are, back in the sideboard - one side for classical, one side for all the other genres, both sides now in alphabetical order.

Oldshrewsburyian alluded to morseverse in her tags, and I have to say, spending the afternoon sorting through the 1970s records of someone I loved who has since died certainly made me feel a touch Lewisian!

[artist-issues]

And I triple-dog dare you to read The Ransom Trilogy by C.S. Lewis and then message me and tell me what you thought of it. Do it. You won’t. I dare you.

[greater-than-the-sword]

Question coming from your 'Athiests are bad at criticizing Christianity' post:

What is the Calvinist theodicy for the Problem of Evil, since you can't use the classic "Love must be given freely to be truly Love" argument?

A couple things

This does vary depending on which Calvinist you ask.

1. It's not that Calvinists believe that the love given to God isn't given freely, it's just that we believe the human will is not inherently autonomous. So, we were designed to love God and the fact that we don't is due to a brokenness in our nature, so in a Lewisian sense (though he wasn't a calvinist lol but I wish he was) we're more genuinely ourselves post-intervention/healing than before. God is fully in charge of whether this happens or not.

2. To your point. My preferred explanation is that it causes God to be glorified for evil to be given a chance to "make its case" as it were to try and prove that it is better than God, and events on Earth will prove God's case, and then he will return to judge evil. God is the only thing that is self-existent, and the only thing that could ever oppose God is a creation of his with a fall or corruption from his perfection&purpose for it. God will prove his superiority over the only thing that could ever oppose him and then the rest of eternity will happen.

To put it another way, God allows evil to exist so that he can have glorious victory over his enemies & put all things under his feet.

"The glory of God" is, according to the catechism, the ultimate reason for the creation of the universe itself and the existence of everything that exists, so I don't think this is too far fetched. (And not accusing anyone here but I think that if this doesn't seem worth it to you, you might have to look into your view of who you think God is.)

Ultimately though God's purpose is at least somewhat a mystery to us, but I believe some aspects of this mystery (like why suffering was allowed in the lives of individuals etc.) will one day be revealed.

[settledthingsstrange]

I have hesitated for a long time before writing about gender from a Lewisian perspective. It is perilous to bring a past thinker into discussion of a contemporary issue. As Lewis himself knew, these topics are best approached through the imagination. Rather than this essay, it would be more effective to write a poem or a song or a story about gender and the Christian imagination. That, after all, is what Lewis did. But elucidating an imaginative vision, as Michael Ward does for Lewis’ thought in Planet Narnia, can be helpful. For many of us, the landscape of the Christian imagination is so far away that we need guides to point even to the trailhead. I hope here to point the way to that trailhead, where Lewis himself is waiting to lead us into the foothills of a realm in which physical realities, like our bodies, are signs revealing the nature of God.

[steeb-stn]

There is something very C.S. Lewisian about Barbie’s journey to becoming human - it reminds me of his quote about how you’re satisfied with being a nice little cottage, but God plans to make you into a grand mansion, even if its messy and it hurts

and Barbies final conversation with Ruth, Barbie asking her if she can be human - can i be more than what i am? and God says, of course you can, that is what you are already becoming (the closer you move to me), that was what you were created FOR (to transform from mere mortal into something eternal which shares in God’s glory)

[fantasyview]

Magia and Goeteia: Shippey, Lewis, and Tolkien

A Phuulish Fellow Last December, I ran across an interesting essay by Tom Shippey on C.S. Lewis’ treatment of magic: Magia_Goeteia_and_the_Inklings I would recommend reading the thing in its entirety, but as a quick summation, Shippey constructs a tentative four-way Lewisian model: Religion: Literal and genialScientism: Literal and mechanicalMagia: Metaphorical and genialGoeteia: Metaphorical…

[lakelewisia]

The round of competition over, the contestants sat, sweaty and flour-dusted, on the rolling green outside the tent. “I could murder a cucumber salad, some tomatoes, anything so long as it’s cold and fresh,” Paz remarked to the enthusiastic agreement of the others. One thing led to another, as they do among new friends and old, and they had soon procured a picnic of fresh vegetables and cold drinks and, yes, maybe a little bread after all.

[sithe-they-demon]

Eye of the Storm Kelpie

Fused Stirling silver ring, with a Lewisian gneiss cabochon in a floating storling an fine silver setting

This was inspired buy Corry Vreckan and the legends of The Cailleach, the hag that pulls down the snows of winter to blanket the Scottish hills. We wanted to make something evocative of the power and fury of the whirlpool of Corry Vreckan, as well as the storms that herald the coming of winter in the highlands

This may eventually be up for sale, but for the time being we're going to wear it close to our heart

[argentumcor]

I guess the endgame of Starfield is you (if I'm generous, maybe a platonic ideal of yourself, that is at least interesting) judging yourself...or not judging yourself, really.

It's also another fucking multiverse. Not aliens, a multiverse. Can we not? Can we never ever do a multiverse again, in any medium? I hate them. I'm okay with other universes, but I say when the path not taken was never taken, then the story actually has stakes.

Say what you will about the, uh, philosophical underpinnings of The Elder Scrolls, at least "escaping and mastering the dichotomy of stasis and change" (more or less, kind of, ish, I think what CHIM is and the reason Tamriel exists) is something. It might be selfish but it isn't a mushy sort of selfishness.

The Egyptians held that souls were weighed against the Feather of Truth. The Ancient Greek judges of the dead- of which Minos was one- had a standard. I am of Lewisian mood on this...though a Kipling one goes with it. Maybe he's off, maybe his retelling is missing something- I think he and most are deeply off on Cyberpunk 2077- but ugh it would take so much time to play through to find out.

[libraryofbaxobab]

February 6, 2020:

Judge this book by its cover because look how cool it is! Big YA vibes, considering the coming of age story, (mostly) polite language, and frequent Lewisian narrator asides. Courtly intrigue, socialist undertones, and space fairies. Hell yeah 9/10 #WhatsKenyaReading