What I Learned from C.S. Lewis

A burst of inspiration

As One Devil to Another was written sixteen months later, in a white-hot burst of inspiration, though there were moments in the writing when I was beset by both doubt and fear. I was attempting to write a book that, in however modest a way, would follow in the steps of my Master, the man I revere above all others, and I was attempting further to copy his narrative voice. Who was I to do this? It was then I recalled – Lewis again, my ever-present companion and guide - that faith is not antithetical to reason, but the thing that buttresses reason in the face of fear. I had been given a task. The important thing was to obey, and leave something for God to do.

More advice

Here’s another excerpt from my book:

Everything on the earthly side of existence is palimpsest, remembrance, whisper, and echo: Music, Love, Laughter, Sex, Knowledge, Art, Revelation, Friendship, Family, Rest, Food and Drink, and Beauty and Pleasure of every kind are only facets of His brilliance. They are separated on Earth into elements that the five human senses can begin to absorb, as white light is separated through a prism into a spectrum of colour that the eye can absorb. To relinquish their earthly existence through death is not to relinquish these pleasures, as we have taught them, but to unite them, and through this unity to enhance their brilliance as colour is reunited into white light. The Light of Grace which He offers them each day is not a light that they can see, but a light that they can see with.

Another tidbit

More devilish advice:

Provided only that they come to Him, He is cynically indifferent to their motivations. If they are brought up in a household where thoughts of Him are ever present and His existence is never questioned, where He is mindlessly obeyed out of simple inertia, He welcomes them. If they are totally devoid of the joy of going back to Him and make their pilgrimage purely on intellectual pathways, through reason, He welcomes them. If they return to Him purely through Grace, engulfed in the joyful knowledge of His Presence but without two real thoughts to rub together, He welcomes them. And if they come to Him resisting to the last, only because every other attempt they have made at happiness and fulfillment has failed them, as surely in the long run it must, He welcomes them still. It is all so unfair.

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