Thanksgiving Reading…
A long road trip gives one plenty of time for reading, especially when one’s husband doesn’t let one drive until the last two hours of the return trip. The book was C.S. Lewis and the Catholic Church by Joseph Pearce. I picked it up at a Barnes and Noble in Little Rock, AR.
It piqued my interest because reading C.S. Lewis’ Mere Christianity was a ‘speed bump’ of sorts for me as a protestant. Now as a (wannabe) Catholic I was interested to read this comparison of Lewis and the RC. It ended up being one of those rare books in which I wrote. I wore out every straight edge on two paper bookmarks and one pamphlet. Passages are underlined, boxed, and commented upon from the first page of the foreword to the last poem on the last page. It seems I am not alone in having Lewis point me toward the RC church… He is responsible for many conversions and yet, he never completed his journey into the RC Church. He was, for all intents and purposes, Catholic, yet was unable to overcome those prejudices instilled in him at such a young age by his ‘Ulster nurse’. What sorrow, to be held back by prejudice and bigotry from completion of your faith.
May nothing in my walk ever be ‘untouchable’, may every act, every thought, be available to God and godly friends to sharpen and challenge me to go ‘further up and further in’.
A few excerpts…
‘Beauty descends from God into nature: but there it would perish and does except when a Man appreciates it with worship and thus as it were sends it back to God” so that through his consciousness what descended ascends again and the perfect circle is made.’
-C.S. Lewis
Bibliolatry – the superstitious and idolatrous worship of the Bible which results from its being read without due deference and reference to theological tradition.
-Joseph Pearce
Pride and prejudice are always obstacles to sense and sensibility.
-Joseph Pearce
There are traps everywhere…. God is, if I may say it, very unscrupulous.
-C.S. Lewis
One did not learn humility; one gained humility by abandoning pride.
-Joseph Pearce
Eden is, and was always meant to be, a starting-place and not a stopping-place.
-Dorothy L. Sayers
Looks like yet another good book to add to my (seemingly bottomless) Amazon wish list! My sister surprised me with A Year with CS Lewis as an early Christmas present over Thanksgiving and I am trying to wait patiently for January to start reading it!