Notes on Jack Lewis' Life

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Notes on Jack Lewis' Life

1eschator83
Muokkaaja: huhtikuu 14, 2021, 10:04 am

I think there are dozens of very striking events in Jack's life that have drawn millions to read and re-read his books and letters. I wish I had made a list of biographies to include here before I started this thread, but my initial intent was to make a brief comment of my own, and ask others to post about other events that struck them (such as CSL promising to support-offering housing- to the wife and mother of a soldier-friend who was killed in WWI, proposing marriage to an American correspondent who hoped to come to England for cancer treatment, being asked by the BBC radio to broadcast inspirational messages during WWII, capturing dozens of Germans singlehandedly in WWI and more).
My comment is that Jack was drafted for the war just weeks after he arrived at Oxford in summer 1917 to begin university studies and as he says he had the good fortune to be billeted at nearby Keble, commissioned as 2nd Lt in light infantry, on front lines in France by Nov, wounded and hospitalized in April 1918, when he first encountered GK Chesterton and his essays.
A few of Lewis' comments in Surprised by Joy:
A young man who wishes to remain a sound atheist cannot be too careful of his reading. (Remind anyone of Screwtape Letters?) There are traps everywhere-Bibles laid open, fine nets and strategems.
God is, if I may say, very unscrupulous.
I did not need to accept what Chesterton was saying to enjoy it. His humor was of the kind I like best...