Hello to all,
The Adult Spirituality Team has selected the CS Lewis Book “ A Grief Observed “ as our Lenten Reflection. The book is Free on Line. Below is a direct link to a PDF version.
A Grief Observed. (samizdat.qc.ca)
A second way would
be to have an actual copy of the book. If you are interested in this
option, please contact Alice Jo Weaver and she will give you a copy (no
charge)
We are planning
to have a discussion of the Book along with Hospitality time after Mass on Sunday April 16th. It
is a short read ( 70+ pages) well worth the time .
Below is a
brief review:
At the time, CS Lewis described his marriage in
1956 to the American poet Helen ("H") Joy Davidman as "a pure
matter of friendship and expediency", primarily intended to keep her and her
two sons in the country; a confirmed bachelor, he later wrote: "I never
expected to have, in my 60s, the happiness that passed me by in my 20s."
But Joy was already ill, and
their relationship was conducted in the shadow of cancer: for Lewis the four years
following their wedding brought intensely personal experiences both of the
miraculous, and of despair.
First published in 1961
under the pseudonym NW Clerk, Lewis's account of his mourning for Joy is in
many ways the trial by fire of the faith he urbanely expounded in The Problem of Pain: an intimate, anguished account of
a man grappling with the mysteries of faith and love. The ferocious and
uncanting intellect that thrived in love denies Lewis the traditional
consolations of mourning: he is tormented by the thought that suffering in life
offers no guarantee of peace in death; that the mere act of remembering is one
of overwriting – his own selective memories falling "like the small flakes
that come when it is going to snow all night".
