C. S. Lewis - Surprised by joy

Born in Belfast, Northern Ireland on November 29, 1898, Clive Staples ("Jack") Lewis was reared in a peculiarly bookish home, one in which the reality he found on the pages of the books within his parents' extensive library seemed as tangible and meaningful to him as anything that transpired outside their doors. As adolescents, Jack and his older brother, Warren, were more at home in the world of ideas and books of the past, than with the material, technological world of the 20th Century. When the tranquility and sanctity of the Lewis home was shattered beyond repair by the cancer death of his mother when he was 9-10, Lewis became extremely embittered and sought refuge in composing stories and excelling in scholastics. Soon thereafter he became precociously oriented toward the metaphysical and ultimate questions.

The rest of his saga and the particulars of his writing career might be seen as the melancholy search for the security he had taken for granted during the peace and grace of his childhood. By Lewis's testimony, this recovery was to be had only in the "joy" he discovered in an adult conversion to Christianity. Long-time friend and literary executor of the Lewis estate, Owen Barfield has suggested that there were, in fact, three manifestations of "C. S. Lewis." That is to say, during his lifetime Lewis fulfilled three very different vocations-- and fulfilled them successfully. There was, first, Lewis the distinguished Oxbridge literary scholar and critic; second, Lewis, the highly acclaimed author of science fiction and children's literature; and thirdly, Lewis, the popular writer and broadcaster of Christian apologetics. The amazing thing, Barfield notes, is that those who may have known of Lewis in any single role may not have known that he performed in the other two. In a varied and comprehensive writing career, Lewis carved out a sterling reputation as a scholar, a novelist, and a theologian for three very different audiences.

Lewis emerged during the World War II years as a religious broadcaster who became famous as "the apostle to skeptics," in Britain and abroad, especially in the United States. His wartime radio essays defending and explaining the Christian faith comforted the fearful and wounded, and were eventually collected and published in America as Mere Christianity in 1952.

I like this quote: "In the Christian story, God descends to reascend. He comes down...down to the very roots and sea-bed of the Nature He has created. But He goes down to come up again and bring the whole ruined world up with Him."