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XXIX

Don December 8th, 2008

XXIX Wordsworth wrote an endless poem in blank verse on” the growth of a poet’s mind.”  I shall attempt a more modest feat for a more distracted age: a blog, “Things which a Lifetime of Trying to Be a Poet has Taught Me.” 

By now I have made good progress as an English Major in discovering something of the range of what poetry can do.  The English Romantics—Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley, Keats—teach us how effectively Nature can mirror our own moods back to us and help us to explore them, and they showed how poetry could mirror that mirror.  They thought (see Wordsworth in “Expostulation and Reply” and “The Tables Turned”) that Nature could do more than that, that it had positive content, and so an impulse from a vernal wood could teach us more of moral evil and of good than all the sages can.  From this critical distance it is easy to see that they imported their own propositional content into those experiences, content they got somewhere else.  So must we all do, and find other ways of testing the validity those beliefs than how well they fit Nature’s moods.  What Nature—and nature poetry—can do is to help us find the perfect language for expressing them.

 MEDITATION XIV 

The music of the dripping leaves,

A booming frog, a cricket’s song,

The night-owl’s call to one who grieves

Remind me of that of which I’m bereaved

And that I don’t belong.

 

And often when the brittle stars

Flame out in Midnight’s deep, dark dome,

Their pristine light, remote, unmarred,

Reminds me of how small men are

And that I’m not at home.

 

But when I turn, Lord, to your Book

And read the things that you have done:

How although Man your law forsook

You pity on your creatures took

And gave your only Son

 

To die for an undeserving race,

My stubborn heart’s bowed down

To think of how you took my place

That my weak eyes might see your face

And I, your sheep, be found.

 

Then Nature has different things to say:

Your handiwork in wood and stone,

In starlit night and rainy day

Remind me of the price you paid,

And that I’m not alone. 

Donald T. Williams, PhD

XXV

Don October 10th, 2008

XXV Wordsworth wrote an endless poem in blank verse on” the growth of a poet’s mind.”  I shall attempt a more modest feat for a more distracted age: a blog, “Things which a Lifetime of Trying to Be a Poet has Taught Me.” 

            Finally by my junior year I was starting to hit my stride in the sonnet.  Here’s the first one with no blatant cheating, no use of archaisms to make the rhyme and meter work.  Not that I would not descend to such expedients again.  They are OK if one has some excuse for them justified by the topic.  But merely using Shakespeare’s form does not give one carte blanche to use his language when one is not addressing his contemporaries.

 SONNET IV 

A new-born leaf and an ancient, lofty star

                                                Converge in space and time before my eye;

                                                The one as near as is the other far,

                                                And both are wondrous things—but both will die.

The leaf will wither in the summer sun

                                                Or else be blasted by chill winter air

                                                And wither just the same—it all is one;

                                                But while it lives, it lives, and it is fair.

Before man woke to see, this star was bright,

                                                And when the last man sleeps it will remain.

                                                But someday there will be a starless night,

                                                And nothing, ever again, will be the same.

And yet we pray to Him who outlives all

                                                And know that He will hear us when we call!

Donald T. Williams, PhD

 

XXIV

Don October 7th, 2008

XXIV Wordsworth wrote an endless poem in blank verse on” the growth of a poet’s mind.”  I shall attempt a more modest feat for a more distracted age: a blog, “Things which a Lifetime of Trying to Be a Poet has Taught Me.” 

            Just to prove that I did eventually learn to write real alliterative meter, we have the following paraphrase of the first Psalm.  Metrical paraphrases of the Psalms is a venerable poetic habit that has attracted talents as diverse as Sternhold and Hopkins or Sir Philip Sidney and the Countess of Pembroke.  I was ambitious enough to conceive this at the time as a project to do the whole Psalter in alliterative meter—but since that form is not terribly useful for modern hymnody, I never got any further with it.  Still, it was a useful exercise.

 PSALM I 

Happy is he    who has not walked

In godless roads    nor gone to stand

In stile of sinners,    seeking evil.

Sit he hath not    in scorner’s seat

Beguiling the witless.    But his delight

Is in his liege-Lord,    the Law, moreover,

The words of his mouth.    Whatsoever

Words Lord speaketh    will thane heed:

These thoughts he thinketh    than all others more,

By sunlight and moonlight    searching their meanings,

Adding to word-hoard    and to his stature.

A tree shall he be,    towering, strong,

Watered by rivers     of water sweet.

Fruit shall he bring    forth in his season,

Precious produce,    pleasing his master.

His leaf shall be green,    his life shall not wither,

And all that he doeth    ever shall prosper,

Blessed by his Lord.    But the ungodly

So shall not be.    Sifted are they

Like chaff in the wind;    chastisement just

Is then their lot.    Thus in the judgment

Down shall they fall,    nor dare they approach

The chosen people,    church of fair jesu.

The brightness of glory    would blind their eyes,

So long used to darkness.    The Lord doth know

The Way of the righteous,    and walketh himself

Therein with his servants,    than all lords ever

The noblest of noble,    knowing his thanes

As if they were sons.     But in the way

Where tread the ungodly    He turns not his face;

They will not receive him    and thus walk in darkness,

Servants of serpents     and sick to the death,

Forever they perish.    Forsake not these words!

Donald T. Williams, PhD

XX

Don September 16th, 2008

XX Wordsworth wrote an endless poem in blank verse on” the growth of a poet’s mind.”  I shall attempt a more modest feat for a more distracted age: a blog, “Things which a Lifetime of Trying to Be a Poet has Taught Me.”   

            Our base of operations in Cartagena, Colombia, on that South American tour, was a hotel from which we could walk straight out onto the beach and gaze North across the Gulf of Mexico toward home, which lay over the horizon.  There is nothing better than the rhythm of the surf to get one in the right frame of mind for practicing the rhythms of poetry, and capturing the spirit of poetry too.

Choir of stars and the sea

To the rhythm of my feet on the sand:

This is the music that follows me

And calls me away from the land.

I hear the waves and feel the spray;

The horizon’s lost in shadows of night.

But there lies a maid who’s as fair as the day,

As fair as the sweet morning light.

            The maid turned out not to be so permanent a part of life as I then thought.  But the far horizon and the promise of something beckoning from beyond it has turned out to be more so than I could then have imagined. 

Donald T. Williams, PhD

XIX

Don September 13th, 2008

XIX Wordsworth wrote an endless poem in blank verse on” the growth of a poet’s mind.”  I shall attempt a more modest feat for a more distracted age: a blog, “Things which a Lifetime of Trying to Be a Poet has Taught Me.”   

            The summer after my sophomore year I traveled with an ensemble from the Taylor University Band on a tour of South America, visiting Honduras, Colombia, and Ecuador.  It was my first significant cross-cultural experience, and also introduced me to Pinchincha, the mountain that towers over the 10,000 foot high bowl in which rests the city of Quito.  I made it up to First Peak, about 13,000 feet, and learned something new about majesty and transcendence.

 PINCHINCHA 

I have walked and talked intimately with the clouds

On the slopes of Pinchincha,

And I have left the clouds behind and gone

Where they did not care to follow.

And there I stood alone with the universe and sang

Songs of praise to its Creator.

And there I learned wisdom that cannot be made in to poems,

But this I can tell you:

It is difficult to doubt Him when he thunders at you

With such silence. 

Donald T. Williams, PhD

Uganda

Don August 2nd, 2008

 UGANDA 2008: REPORT 

Note:  We pause from our poetic history for a report on my recent trip to Uganda.  For pictures of this mission trip, go to

 http://www.kodakgallery.com/I.jsp?c=fxd5bee.4t6gbpfe&x=0&h=1&y=mb86mx&localeid=en_US

From July 14-25, 2008, I had the privilege of teaching a theology course on Pneumatology (the doctrine of the Holy Spirit) to thirty pastors and church leaders from Uganda and Kenya in Nakaloke, near Mbale, Uganda. We used my world famous (i.e., known to about thirteen people in the U.S. and now thirty in Uganda) textbook on the subject, The Person and Work of the Holy Spirit, which you can order online from Wipf and Stock or my website if you want to see what we studied.  My students were rural pastors who do not have access to higher education. They can’t go to Bible College or Seminary, so my role is to take a little Bible College to them.

My basic thesis in the course was that both Charismatics and non-Charismatics have missed the boat, sending each other screaming in opposite directions away from the actual teaching of Scripture. If you want to know more, if I have piqued your curiosity, buy the book!  What I try to do is to develop a Christocentric Pneumatology. If that phrase turns you on, you would actually enjoy the book. Since most Protestants in this area are Pentecostals either officially or without knowing it, we were destined to have some interesting discussions before we were done. Over all they seemed very receptive.  But we had to tread on some very sensitive ground when we got to the topics of the Second Blessing, Baptism and Fullness of the Spirit, and the Spiritual Gifts.

 Africans are not used to discussion– they expect to be lectured to and to write down every word the Muzungu (white man) says–and it took them a while to get used to the idea that I actually wanted them to respond and participate. I was with them about six hours a day so that we could get a full course done in two weeks, and Socratic method doesn’t work very well there until about the end of the second day–unless you just give up before then, in which case it never does. But I am, as some of you know, incredibly stubborn. About the last thirty minutes on the second day I felt we had a breakthrough and things started flowing better. One of the most important things I do for the Africans is encouragement–I think empowerment is not actually too pretentious a word. So success in getting them talking is even more important than with American students. I still did plenty of spouting; don’t worry about that! (Not making this admission will cost me some credibility with my former students back home. Go ahead and laugh!)  By the third day I had gained their confidence and the questions and answers flowed freely.

One of the most interesting and stretching aspects of teaching in Africa is the questions you get to try to answer. Here are some of the new ones I got this time, with the (highly condensed) answers I tried to give.
1. If John the Baptist was filled with the Holy Spirit from his mother’s womb, how could he have come to doubt the Lord (”Are you the one who is coming or do we wait for another?”)?  DW: Let that be a warning to us. Being “filled” with the Spirit may give us power for service, but it does not make us infallible.
2. If Satan is not divided against himself (according to the Lord’s argument against the Pharisees), how is it that Witch Doctors can cast out demons?  DW: Are we sure that they can? Do their “exorcisms” have permanent results like the Lord’s did? [Much uncertainty here from the Africans.] Conclusion: we do not seem to be in a position to draw any conclusion from these alleged exorcisms. But we do know that the Lord spoke truly.

3. Why is the Holy Spirit less forgiving than Jesus? For Jesus said a word against the Son of Man could be forgiven, but not blasphemy against the Holy Spirit.  DW: This question illustrates what I have been saying about the importance of context. What happened right before Jesus’ words about blasphemy against the Holy Spirit? The Pharisees had attributed Jesus’ exorcisms to the power of Beelzebub. Confronted with undeniable evidence of his Messiahship, they still stubbornly refused to believe. Therefore the only unforgiveable sin is refusal to receive Christ. Since Christ is the ground of the atonement, that sin is by definition unforgiveable, because by its very nature it shuts us out from God’s forgiveness.  Here this sin is called “blasphemy against the Holy Spirit” because it had taken the particular form of attributing the Spirit’s work to Beelzebub. It has nothing to do with which member of the Trinity is more forgiving.


4. I named my son after my father, who had died. Then my son died in infancy. Did I curse him by giving him my father’s name? DW: Dear sister, there is nothing in Scripture to support the idea that you could curse your son simply by trying to honor your father, which is itself something Scripture commands us to do. Please be free from any guilt or fear that you somehow caused this by the name you gave him. The sadness of his death is enough. Do not add any further burden to that, which Scripture does not lay on you. That last question is enough to break your heart. But I wish you could have seen the joy on Betty’s face when she heard the answer. Truly (as if they needed it) the words of the Lord were being confirmed daily in our class: “You shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free.” Never was the old saw proved more true since man first spoke with mouth.

Monday and Tuesday of the second week were in some ways the most difficult days, because I have a very different perspective on things like The Baptism and Fullness of the Spirit and Tongues than most of my pastor students, who, as I have mentioned before, are mainly Pentecostals. They went from very receptive (the first week), to somewhat skeptical and resistant, to having to admit that there is no biblical basis for saying that, for example, Tongues are the definitive sign of the baptism of the Holy Spirit. And here we came to a very dangerous moment. What would they do when they got back to their churches and their denominations? If I was not very careful, I would only sow dissension there without doing any real good.

I snuck up on this issue from the side. “Whenever we have received teaching that others do not have, we are tempted to become proud,” I began. “Knowledge [alone] puffeth up, but love edifieth. So when we go back to our churches,” I continued, “what shall we do? Shall we start attacking other preachers or our denominational leaders as teachers of false doctrine? If we do that, we will only make them angry and defensive and we will do no good. No, we will just start positively teaching–and living–the larger, more whole, and more wholesome vision of the truth we have been given. In love we will teach our people to be open to a fuller version of the work of the Holy Spirit [nice irony there, by the way, given the name of the ‘Full Gospel’ movement!] than they have known: not focused on tongues and ecstatic experiences as ends in themselves but on conviction and calling and regeneration and sanctification and glorifying Jesus by being conformed to his image and giving him and his personal Agent, the Spirit, all the glory for our salvation. And we will pray that God will use this to glorify his Son and that as Jesus is glorified others will also be drawn to a better understanding. Otherwise, we may go back with the truth, but it will be with the wrong spirit.” They enthusiastically agreed with this, but some said to me privately afterward that if I had not said it their first instinct would have been to do just what I had warned against.

This is the kind of victory that has to be won in ministry here if we are to do more good than harm–which is probably not so much different from anywhere else after all. On Friday the 25th we concluded with a comprehensive examination.  Those who passed were given “certificates of completion”; the few who did not got “certificates of attendance.”

On the three weekends that sandwiched our two weeks of class, I preached six times in four different churches: twice at Kachumbala Reformed Bible Fellowship and Kalonyi Assembly of God, and also at Christ’s Coworkers Church in Kalonyi and and Sidimbire Church of God..  In two of them I prayed with an individual who had come forward to accept Christ as personal savior.  One afternoon after our class I spoke to an assembly at Evaross Secondary School, a Christian high school in Mbale, on a Christian view of learning. 

A hearty thanks to all who supported this mission with prayer and finances.  Please continue to pray for the pastors in my class.  As I said to Rev. John Robert Opio, the director of Christian Life Teachings International, the local training ministry that had invited me, “They left more reformed than they came.”  Some of them have some rethinking to do, and they all need wisdom as to how to apply what they have learned.  Pray that they will “commit what they have learned to faithful men who will able to teach others also” (2 Tim. 2:2).  If that happens, we can consider the mission a resounding success.     

Yours for His glory, 

Donald T. Williams, PhD, Pastoral TrainerChurch Planting International

Oxford, 6/20/08

Don June 20th, 2008

Our revels now are ended.

This was our last day of class, and the students are dispersing across the British Isles and the Continent for Grand Tours before heading home. I more modestly will hang around Oxford for a few more days before “going down,” as Oxonians call the trip back home. But there are a few more items to report first.

“The Taming of the Shrew” at the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford last night was the best performance technically, and the worst in interpretation, that I have ever seen. All the irony and ambiguity in Petruchio’s character was lost: he was just a male chauvinist jerk who broke Katherine’s spirit with unrelenting cruelty. The audience was not left to make out the meaning of Kate’s final speach. The formerly spunky and fiery lady delivered it in a flat, lifeless manner as one who feared for her life if she didn’t say it. Petruchio’s “There’s a wench! Come, kiss me, Kate” led to her hanging limply in his arms and “submitting” to his embrace in a manner most chilling. Then in a surreal sequel added to the text, it turned out that Petruchio is really Christofero Sly raping the servant who had played his wife in the introduction when they were trying to convince the derelict wino that he was a lord. He is caught in the act, stipped naked, and
turned back out humiliated into the street.

We did some debriefing this morning in class, as the students found the production, not surprisingly, quite disturbing. What genre is “Shrew” supposed to be? I asked them. It is supposed to be a comedy. Every editor for 400 years has thought so. A comedy is a play with a happy ending. But what we saw was a tragedy. Kate and Petruchio both end up being destroyed and humiliated, and no good of any kind comes to anyone.

So the evidence of genre is that Shakespeare thought Kate’s submission was a happy ending and really did bode peace and love and quiet life. And even most secular–even most feminist–directors have not seen her losing her spunkiness at the end of the play, but rather redirecting it: she realizes that playing Petruchio’s game, letting him lead in the dance, can be a lot of fun. Some see her truly submitting, while others see irony in the last speech as if she has merely learned that a different set of techniques work better for manipulating Petruchio than other men. Either of these interpretations is legitimate in the sense that you can make a case for it and it preserves the play as a comedy. What we saw on the other hand was not an interpretation of Shakespeare’ s play but a rejection of it, a substitution of a different vision altogether. You may not like Shakespeare’ s vision, or what you think it is, but at least the audience deserve a chance to evaluate it and make up their own minds. Students who had not read or seen the play before were astonished (but releaved) to learn that the last scene was not part of the original play and that there were more positive ways of playing it–that it really could be a comedy! Let the reader and theatre goer beware.

Then I finished up Tolkien by talking about the way the themes of Providence and “Not by might” come to their climax at Sammath Naur, and how Peter Jackson’s scene, in which Frodo actually pushes Gollum off the cliff instead of his falling by accident, obscures what Tolkien was trying to say. Not by might, and not even by Frodo’s goodness, which also proves insufficient, is the Quest acheived, but ironically by Gollum’s treachery and by chance–if chance you call it. Tolkien’s habit of adding that last phrase speaks volumes.

Finally, Dr. Bauman summarized Lewis’s “‘Til we Have Faces” and then led a discussion on what kind of faces we are developing: Have we realized with Orual that we are Ungit? Are we becoming more like Ungit/Orual, one who demands the sacrifice of others, or like Psyche, one who is ready to sacrifice herself? On that note, the first Summit Summer Oxford Program came to an end. I had the last word: “And so we come to our final parting on the shores of Middle Earth. I will not say, ‘Do not weep,’ for not all tears are an evil.”

From the Dreaming Spires,

Don

Donald T. Williams, PhD, Co-Director
Summit Oxford Summer Studies Program

Oxford, 6/19/08

Don June 20th, 2008

Today Dr. Bauman finished his discussion of Reflections on the Psalms and I started talking about Tolkien and The Lord of the Rings. Though the word God never appears in the entire trilogy, the Christian worldview permeates it, though in a more subtle and deeply buried way than it does in the Narnia books. This is especially evident if you have read the creation story for Middle Earth in The Silmarillion, but it is there even without that.

Tolkien embeds the Christian worldview in his world by making innocent-sounding statements that raise unavoidable questions for those who think about what they are reading. Gandalf or other characters are constantly making statements like, “We must deal with the time we were given,” or “Another power was at work,” or “Bilbo was meant to find the Ring . . . and that is an encouraging thought.” The time we were “given,” not the time in which we find ourselves: so who “gave” it to us? If Bilbo was “meant” to find the Ring, who “meant” it? And why is this an encouraging thought? Elrond says that the Fellowship was “called” to his Council, though he did not call them. Then who did? A secular worldview, the belief that only atoms exist, will not let you say such things meaningfully. You cannot write this way without being either a Christian, confused, or dishonest; and Tolkien was neither confused nor dishonest. Living in Middle Earth raises questions to which only the Christian worldview has answers.

I also talked about Lewis as a poet. His chief ambition was to be a great poet. He was not a great poet, but he was a very good one, a careful craftsman who creates narratives full of longing and hope.

In a few minutes we leave for Stratford on Avon to visit Shakespeare’ s home town and see “The Taming of the Shrew” at the National Shakespeare Company. So I must away. More tomorrow, Deo volente.

From the Dreaming Spires,

Don

Donald T. Williams, PhD, Co-Director
Summit Oxford Summer Studies Program

Oxford, 6/18/08

Don June 20th, 2008

Today I talked about the Chronicles of Narnia. We had a wide-ranging two-hour discussion that touched on all of them but focused on two questions: the preferable order for reading them and how they relate to the new movie versions.

HarperCollins has reordered the series into chronological order, starting with The Magician’s Nephew instead of The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe, because Lewis’s stepson Doug Gresham says that Lewis told him that was the way to read them. I offered four reasons why the original order is better the first time you read the series.

First, Lewis understood the way an epic works: you start in medias res [in the middle of things]. Then you fill in the background to that situation in a flashback, and finally finish up the story. This plunges you into the action and allows for suspense and surprises that are not possible with a straight chronological narrative. Second, starting with TMN ruins a number of passages in LWW that simply cannot have the effect on the reader that they were designed to have. When Mr. Beaver first tells the children that ‘Aslan is on the move,’ the narrater says, ‘Now, they did not know who Aslan is any more than you do.’ Not only does this comment make no sense if you have already read TMN, but it hinders the sense of mystery about Aslan that Lewis is trying to build up in that passage. Third, when Professor Kirk gives his reasons for believing Lucy, it is more effective if you do not know that he himself has already been to Narnia as Digory. This forces you to attend to the reasons and puts the burden on Lucy’s character and whether you really know in advance that such things can not happen. The impact is lessened if you know that Kirk knows, and is not himself believing and depending on the reasons for that belief that he gives. Fourth, you are deprived of several delightful surprises that come your way as the stories unfold–like finding out who Professor Kirk is and how the Lamp Post got there.

Therefore, while all serious students of Narnia should read the books chronologically at some point, it is better for us, our children, and any students we are able to influence, if we read the books in original publication order the first time. I have no reason to think Doug is lying. Therefore, either Doug misunderstood Lewis, or read more into his statement than was there, or Lewis actually did say it but was wrong. Based on my reading of Lewis as a literary critic, on my knowledge of his knowledge of literature, I think the last option the least likely.

My review of the Prince Caspian film appeared here earlier. We talked about my theory that the changes to the character of Peter are not accidental but parallel to the changes Peter Jackson made to Aragorn and Faramir in his LOTR. We live in a cynical age, and such directors fear that an unambiguous hero who does not waver in his commitment to the right will be unbelievable to their audience. But this misses the point that Lewis and Tolkien were trying to make: that it is precisely in a cynical age that we need literature to give us better role models than nature herself can. They represent a tradition that goes back to Sir Philip Sidney’s Defense of Poesy. Their directors and screenwriters unfortunately do not get that, and so their works get distorted in the translation to screen in ways that are not demanded by the new medium as such, but are more related to a failure of moral imagination in society.

Then Dr. Bauman spent an hour on Lewis’s less well known book Reflections on the Psalms. [See my website, doulomen.tripod. com, under topics for my own take on that work.] Lewis deals among other things with challenges like the imprecatory psalms, such as the one saying that the man would be happy who dashes the head of Babylonian babies against a stone. Ever the Advocatus Diaboli, Bauman started channelling Hitchens and Dawkins and the other new atheists with their belief that the Old Testament God is simply evil, a supporter of ethnic cleansing [the Amorites] and infanticide. The students had to try to defend against these attacks and to evaluate the accuracy and effectiveness of Lewis’s defense. At the end of the hour they had more questions than answers–a state in which Dr. B. loves to leave them. They’ll spend the evening shoring up the answers and come back tomorrow ready for more.

Then this afternoon we visited The Kilns, Lewis’s house, which has been restored by the C. S. Lewis Foundation to the form it was in when Lewis lived there. Behind the house is a pond where Lewis swam and a nature preserve where he loved to walk. We got a ways into the woods to a lovely clearing next to a very English looking paddock with two horses that we immediately christened Bree and Whin. ‘We’ve got to Narnia,’ the students cried. Wish you were here.

From the Dreaming Spires,

Don

Donald T. Williams, PhD, Co-Director
Summit Oxford Summer Studies Program

Oxford, 6/17/08

Don June 18th, 2008

Tuesday was a busy day.  Dr. Bauman’s wife, Nicole, introduced the students to Dorothy L. Sayers.  Dr. Bauman talked about the theology of Charles Williams, explaining his ideas on Exchange, Co-Inherence, and Substitution.  We live by exchange and no one is an island; we live in one another; and we can bear one another’s burdens through substitution.  Christ’s exchange of his righteousness for our sins, his substitutionary atonement, and his indwelling of us through his Holy Spirit, are not just isolated spiritual events but flow from the very Trinitarian nature of God and are imprinted by him on all of creation; they are the way the universe works. Calvary then was not a random act but simply the place where these principles are revealed in their greatest purity and profundity.

Then we had a lecture by Lewis’s former secretary and the editor of his many posthumously published works, Walter Hooper.  Hooper described his meeting Lewis as parallel in his own life to Lewis’s meeting Kirkpatrick–only Lewis’s ‘Stop–what do you mean by . . .’ was delivered with more charity and humor and with Christian rather than atheist underpinnings.  Tidbits included Hooper’s opinion that the cooling of the friendship between Lewis and Tolkien in the last decade of Lewis’s life has been exaggerated:  ‘Lewis adored Tolkien, and Tolkien always spoke of Lewis to me with great love.’  Hooper claims to have won one argument [and only one, and even that one only posthumously] with Lewis:  Lewis was sure that after he died his books would gradually fade into oblivion, and Hooper was sure they would not.  ‘I believe,’ he said with mock modesty, ‘that I may have been right on that one.’  And we must honor him as one of the reasons why he was right.  In his first negotiations with Harper Collins to begin his 45-year career of editing and publishing Lewis’s literary remains and collecting his essays, letters, etc., Hooper asked as a condition that for every new Lewis book published they would bring back into print an old one.  ‘All right,’ Lady Collins agreed, ‘which one should be first?’  The Abolition of Man was the reply.  Good choice.  We can be very grateful that we still have so much of Lewis’s work so easily available to us today.  My own life would have been profoundly impoverished without it.

Then we continued the day by visiting nearby Blenheim Palace, the seat of Duke of Marlborough and birthplace of Winston Churchill and topped it off with formal dinner in hall for the students at New College.  A good time was had by all.

From the Dreaming Spires,

Don

Donald T. Williams, PhD, Co-Director
Summit Oxford Summer Studies Program

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