It has been an excellent and rewarding experience in my mentoring sessions this year to be reading some books with my youth, by coincidence two of my youth that I meet with regularly have asked to read a book together and have time of discussion, one asked if we can read through Mere Christianity and the other asked if we could read Screwtape Letters, two classics by C.S. Lewis...and in our staff reading and discussion we have started reading Beyond The Shawdolands by Wayne Martindale, a scholarly look and interpretation through C.S. Lewis's works on Heaven and Hell...so being immersed in C.S. Lewis has been an extremely rewarding situation to find one self in.

Lewis has a wonderful way of thinking through challenging philosophy and theology and being able to bring it to life in his fiction and non-fictional works. And although I have been loving both books, I truly appreciate C.S. Lewis's imagination and creativity to bring to life truth and beauty through fiction; as Martindale puts it: "...never doubt the power of fiction to tell the truth." I love that! The other day my son and I went to see Horton Hears a Who! a Dr. Seuss story of Horton the elephant who, on the fifteenth of May in the Jungle of Nool, hears a small speck of dust talking to him. It turns out the speck of dust is actually a tiny planet, home to a city called "Who-ville", inhabited by microscopic-sized inhabitants known as Whos. All the while there is another character the Kangaroo who does not like Horton and how and what he teaches others, so when she hears Horton speaking about the speck and the people on it, to her this non-sense Horton is spreading in the jungle about a world on a speck full of Whos is disturbing and she is angry and is on a mission to make this stop...Her mantra is: "if you cant see it touch it or feel it its not real."

Which of course had me thinking of the C.S.Lewis books I am reading, how Lewis masterfully uses ficiton to tell a story of God, and how often that beauty gets pillaged with demands for being able to be seen, touched and felt. It is interesting how often we put God in a box and demand for him to act, be a certain way, we put our ideas and limitations on God...we demand a certain cause and effect...we demand God to explain himself to us, and our current situations.

We are so powerful and big and yet so fragile and small all at the same time, stories, art and love help us understand and put shape to the reality we so often don't understand. Why feed the hungry why care about others why fight for causes, for the good of people, if all I see, touch and feel is about me...why care...why desire good for others, and yet this invisible reality of love is found all over our globe and it is birthed, growing and some times dying in side of us...In fact this hope that we offer that we give in service, in love, in caring, is truly a glimpse of goodness, beauty and love that comes from God...and "in Him all places even Heaven exist...and...if Heaven is the ultimate and permanent reality and this the shadowlands, then worldliness is escapism."

Hope...means...a continual looking forward to the eternal...It does not mean that we are to leave the present world as it is. If you read history you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world were just those who thought most of the next...It is since Christians have largely ceased to think of the other world that they have become so ineffective in this. Aim at Heaven and you will get earth "thrown in": aim at earth adn you will get neither.

Labels: Beyond The Shawdolands, C.S. Lewis, mentoring, Mere Christianity, Screwtape Letters