C.S. Lewis in the Milieu: A First Reading of Mere Christianity

    

        While reading Kierkegaard’s dialectics about Christian life gets difficult relatively quickly, it is still worthwhile.  The close reading that many texts demand entails rereading, and reading again, perhaps with a view towards a particular literary theory.  In the way one might explore a modernist text for its organic unity, one might also trace any number of Kierkegaard’s parabolic writings.  There is a particular symmetry in coming back to original questions, to understand their import after gaining a new perspective.  But arguments about cohesiveness, about needing to adhere to a singular theme, and that to stray distracts from the paradigm, apply less to C. S. Lewis’ Mere Christianity, which is transcribed from the spoken word, a series of radio addresses given during World War II.  I have not heard the recordings – they might shake the faith that we’ve already propped up.  Imagine being suspended in the awful wait of war, loved ones abroad, and looking forward to that radio show about belief.  That show, and those talks collectively, place Lewis as part, if not as progenitor, of a multi-tendrilled plant, tenuous but perennial, and at times even strident, which grows only because it has found, and continues to find, fertile ground, and appropriate nutrients for sustenance.  It requires pruning, and supplication, intercession, and petitioning by one whose garden it grows in. 

     We stray when we do not return to those original forms, spoken or written, or simply daydreamed in cycles.  We intuit that something is awry.  We are in wartime now, but it seems to be one of our own design.  We maneuver to gain political or economic advantage, or else control the damage we’ve done.  If we ever had any good intentions, something went bad; many, many people have been killed or hurt, and will be so, going back and forward in time along an axis, and we wonder how it will ever be assuaged. 

     There is a war in our homeland.  There is an onslaught against our liberty right here, not just to those abroad.  The strength of Lewis’ book lies in its philosophical simplicity, and whether I agree with him or not, it has been my pleasure to find respite in this book.  I have sought and found this before, in other writers, and I add C. S. Lewis to that list of thinkers who courageously outline a philosophy they know will cut against the grain of what is popular here, now, and in the future.  I know that this is a direct appeal to our sensibility, not in his narrative forms which can be found elsewhere, but in the way of posing difficult questions.  And this is part of the progression – the refining of questions – and to this Lewis goes a long way towards helping us, like it or not. 

     The words Lewis uses to portray natural man and his spirit, which he says move towards God, nevertheless must be arbitrary, as are the paradigms used to portray and inadvertently define them.  Where Cleanth Brooks might site a lack of paradox in Lewis’ language here, he might find it in Kierkegaard, who elucidates the ironies of Christianity in most of his later works.  He may well find it in Lewis’ non-fiction.  Apologetics in the guise of the Narnia books, and shades of that in J. R. R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy, Stephen R. Donaldson’s The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever, and even George R. R. Martin’s Game of Thrones, is fraught with dialectic paradox.  Those texts will be much more heavily read due to their story form.  A close reading will reveal the philosophical problems that each bears, reflecting the historical context that each writes in, which, we must remember, repeats itself.

     Writers have been profoundly influenced by Lewis, as they have been by the literati theorists.  Wendell Berry writes poetry and essays which raise at their fundamental center the spectre of spirituality, in a way that warns of any endeavor that lacks it, or doesn’t require it, and the deception and destruction which occur in its absence.  Farming, for example, is a spiritual endeavor, and practices which sap the fertility of our land and require artificial chemicals for it to remain viable likely reflect a lack of spiritual rootedness, a reduction of tending the land to a business, not of caretaking, growing the soil, and nurturing the steward in turn.  Samuel Taylor Coleridge, deeply involved with the Dissenters in England when the Anglican Church, the Church, was firmly entrenched, encouraged a depoliticizing of religion.  Spiritual endeavors cannot be about the acquisition of power, nor glory.  That discussion has been taken up by Vernard Eller, and, more eloquently, Jacques Ellul.  Coleridge travelled the motherland, speaking in churches and taverns, eviscerating the church’s rhetoric in support of war with France, writing poetry as he went.  There may be great similarity in his sensibilities and those of Lewis.  Coleridge wrote:

     He prayeth best, who loveth best

     All things both great and small.

     There is a simple truth in learning to love, and Lewis might argue that God propels us towards that, but he gets at why.  That is important, regardless of whether or not we write, or care about writers and their body of work, or, truly, whether or not we are Christians. 

Quadriplegic

My other vehicle is powered by tostadas fried in coconut oil.  That's the bumper the sticker I need on the Veggie Bus.  Peddling south from the Fort Collins northern city limits, where my family and I have lived since 2001, I nearly decide to skip gathering signatures for the 5-year fracking moratorium.  One right turn onto the dirt road would place me within a few minutes in front of that beauteous tree swing arcing over the Poudre at Legacy Park.  One can drop about 15 feet if you let go right at the apex.  But I am on a mission.  A gentleman, a long greyhair, standing against the bridge railing over the river, calls out to me as I cruise by, "Sir I'm a quadriplegic I don't have a cell phone Do you have a cell phone I can use?"  he calls out furtively, a gravelly crescendo plea. "No, sorry,"  I call out, riding past, noting his arm braces.  Sometimes I just don't want to deal with people.  I do not have a golden heart, only sometimes.  The last time I gave it was a pie and $5 to a homeless man at the corner of Hwy 1 and N College, last winter.  Now they have a little camp under a tree near that intersection.  I've seen him and his buddies, blasted at the end of the day, probably after spending their day's loot.  I felt burned when I saw that.  Homeless, anything helps, said the sign.  Anything will help ease the pain, I think.  I have needed such numbing.

I arrive at Old Town and consider catching the early Foodie Walk crowd.  I had decided to ride out to Harmony Library, where I've never been, to try my luck.  Emails suggested it to be an untapped location for signatures.  At Laporte and Whedbee I spy some free boxes with rain-soaked clothes.  I pick out a patched-up black jacket, a pair of canvas flats, and a child's-sized pair of snow pants, and throw them on my rack.

On southbound Shields leading up to campus, one has the option of guerrilla biking without a lane, or taking some of the scenic side streets.  I like to check out the work going on in frontyards.  I see new porches and walking paths going in.  A woman reclined beneath a massive arbor of grapes.  Is that a Long Island Ice Tea she's sipping?  Some of these yards are suitable for getting gussied up and playing croquet to the tune of gypsy jazz.  Back on Shields, it feels like the weekend has begun in earnest, and there is that hustle-and-flow feel of Friday.  I ride a long, unhurried line south, noting the handiwork on the new Spring Creek bridge, the manicured playing fields of Rocky Mt. HS, the quietude of my old neighborhood, when our girls were small and frolicking, and life was a hazy dream.  From Horsetooth on, someone is building a pipeline.  More infrastructure to bring tar sands gas down from Alberta?  I think of those National Geographic spreads of inky black landscapes where tundra forest once stood, around the Edmonton play - huge swaths of land and its people in the midst of an apocalypse of our own accord. 

And finally, Harmony Library.  I sit on a bench outside the back entrance, writing.  After a while a woman calls out to me from the door, "Is your name Danny?"  Yes, I say.  "Your wife is on the phone.  She says you left your phone, and you took the car keys."  She seems upset.  Can I use your phone?  I ask.  "Yeah, hurry, we close in 3 minutes."  I make my apologies, saying I'll head home.  I check my backpack after hanging up, discover I don't have the keys, then cantor back to call again.  The librarian is incredulous that I want to use the phone.  "None of us get paid to be here past 6:00."  She stares about, wide eyed, looking for some understanding.  It will only take 30 seconds, I offer.  "I could get in trouble.  I wasn't even supposed to let you use the phone in the first place."

On the ride back, it occurs to me that this was justice for not stopping for the Quadriplegic.  It didn't matter that I really didn't have my phone.  It only mattered that I stop and look.  There are people, like the librarian, like me, that will go a mile, but not the extra mile.  And yet that's what people need in order to be helped sometimes - that 2nd mile.  It is a long ride home, but the overall ride is worth the lesson.  The more I put myself out there, the more I will learn.  And so I think an overnight sojourn approaches.

WVO Spiritual Intake

Transcribed from notes taken this Spring, with afterthought inspired on the front porch of the Crown Pub...

Riding home from campus, I spy a car stopped up ahead at Mulberry and Howes.  Deciding not to wait - traffic backed up from the train - they drive on through the red light.  One block later, I come to a stop, and watch the car behind me cruise on through the red, nonchalantly, not hurriedly. 
What is wrong with these people?

The same thing that is wrong with me.  Impatience.  It is a material thing, like the world around me, ubiquitous and coursing through veins, now hindering, now motivating, now hindering.  Not having ridden my bike this week, I opt again for the veggie bus.  I think the fuel filter or the veggie oil filter needs changing.  When attempting to run on Waste Veggie Oil, the engine begins to conk out like a fat crawdad in its boiling pot after about 5 minutes.  The pressure gage on the internal oil filter is nowhere near red/yellow, but I've heard they are notorious for lying.  We are driving in the infancy of the greasel engine years, of veggie and diesel hybridization, so this is forgivable.  So the Veggie Bus, or as Mike the Mechanic calls it, the Danny Bus, is currently just a Diesel Bus.  10 mi/gal of either WVO or diesel petrol, weighing in at 3 tons.  1984 manufacture with a 2002 engine transplant, and it is often the interface between old and new, or veggie and diesel components, where breakdown occurs.  It has required time with a true grease monkey every year, usually in binges.  I have burned incense in her in an attempt to bless-a-da-bus, but her irritability goes unassuaged.  Real, earnest prayer has not been answered, or else it has.  Impatience is a virtue that has indeed taken me so far, but I have found myself going down the wrong path time enough.  There's that feeling of being tired after hiking back from the summit, legs tired enough that they fall effortlessly into a barely controlled cantor, hop-skipping over some of the rocks, and falling when I apparently needed to fall.

The bus is a going concern whose internal maintenance is indeed as foggy as that which I myself may require.  I waylay those needs for a better day, which brings consequences.  No time like the present, so clearly foretold in the past.  I want to drive up the canyon a bit, peddle the road's edge, dip my heals in the Holy Poudre, then glide back down and start her up again.  There were plenty of times when the engine ran like butter, and I never question what makes it so.

It finally occurred to me that the problem lies within, where, according to Cat Stevens, the answer also lies.  I merely needed to adjust my attitude to see what may well be fate.  The bus is for sale, but I will continue to admire and be vexed by her, fix what I can and be cajoled by her, all, this time, with patience.  Tremulous wisps of impatience simply reflect an impatience about something larger, something uncontrollable, I remind myself.  I need perhaps a simpler machine to bring about a simpler mindset, else the other way around.  I need the free form of peddling to prune the excess offshoots, unproductive and self-serving.  I will take in the impatience of others mindfully, and find new paths, or use the frustration productively.  I will learn to weld.  If I can't ever sell her, if she is not meant to be passed on to the next, then maybe I can weld a VW bus to the top of her, away on some mountain plot, then slowly, slowly build my home around her.  She will occupy my earthen living room space, a nice conversation piece, and privately I can look upon her and continue to ponder the inner trappings.  I will bring her flowers, paste novel beer labels to her walls after carefully steaming them off the bottles, and perhaps even brew beer on one of her propane burners, her 55 gallon veggie tank now a fine fermenter.  In the winter I will kill the heat, save for her diesel-drip marine heater.  I'll make fajitas by candelabra - REAL fajitas - drink a bottle of tart Chilean red to her marvelous complexity and temperament, and read William Blake, aloud, or else Wendell Berry.