Wednesday, December 25, 2024

Letters to Malcom

Chiefly on Prayer, by C.S. Lewis

I've no good excuse for not having read this before. Something about the title seemed off-putting, perhaps--I'm not greatly intrigued by somebody else's correspondance, and reading about prayer can seem as much of an awkward duty as doing it can sometimes be (and Lewis wrote about that in one of the letters).

At any rate, I have corrected that deficiency, and if you haven't, you should. His letters show as much vivid imagery as his work written for publication, and some things he has thought about much more deeply than I.

A still worse thing may happen. Novelty may fix our attention not even on the service but on the celebrant. You know what I mean. Try as one may to exclude it, the question, "What on earth is he up to now?" will intrude. It lays one's devotion waste. There is really some excuse for the man who said, "I wish they'd remember that the charge to Peter was Feed my sheep; not Try experiments on my rats, or even, Teach my performing dogs new tricks."

It isn't hard to find the book.

No comments: