PWJ: S3E18 – AA – Andrew Lazo

Since we’ve now finished Part I of Till We Have Faces, Andrew Lazo came back on the show to walk us through what we’ve just read, and to prepare us to read the final part of the book.

S3E18: “After Hours” with Andrew Lazo (Download)

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Time Stamps

00:50 – Andrew’s Bio
01:35 – Drink-of-the-week
02:04 – Lewis and Scotch
04:33 – Quote-of-the-week
54:26 – Closing remarks

YouTube Version

After Show Skype Session

There was no Skype Session this week.

Show Notes

• I offered an abbreviated version of Andrew’s bio:

Andrew Lazo is an internationally-known speaker and writer specializing on C .S. Lewis and the Inklings. He has published a book, Mere Christianity, where fifty different Christians share their stories of how Lewis shaped the course of their spiritual journeys. He is married to Christin, who is an author and speaker in her own right. He is a former teacher, but now studying at Virginia Theological Seminary and preparing for ordination in the Episcopal Church. Pertinent to this discussion, he is also working on a long-awaited study of Till We Have Faces.

Brief bio of Andrew Lazo

• I was drinking the regular Vat 69 and Andrew was drinking Vat 69 Gold from his Pints With Jack Glencairn glass.

• We found out that Andrew is attending the same seminary in Virginia where Lewis’ secretary, Walter Hooper, attended.

• When I first met Andrew, he was doing a Q&A about Lewis at a Conference. My first question to him was, “What scotch did Lewis like to drink?” Andrew then read me an email from Walter Hooper:

‘By “Scotch” Lewis would have meant “whiskey,” and by “whiskey” he would have meant “Scotch.” The whiskey he sent me to buy for the two of us was Vat 69 – which you can learn about from Google. It wasn’t grand, but Lewis liked it.

Before supper every night his housekeeper, Mrs Miller, would bring in a tray with two glasses, a small pitcher of water, and the bottle of Vat 69. We had a single glass of Vat 69 with water, and then went into the dining room where our supper would be on a trolley, left there by Mrs Miller.

I have said somewhere, that after our meal, Lewis would tell me to go back to the Common Room, and he would be away for perhaps 20 minutes. I wondered what he did during that time, and one night I followed him into the kitchen and found him up to his elbows in soapsuds. He was washing dishes. “If you ever tell people,” he said, “what it is like in this house you must say that, not only are the servants soft underfoot, but invisible as well!”

Walter Hooper in an email to Andrew Lazo

• Since Till We Have Faces has the subtitle, “A myth retold”, I thought it would be appropriate for the quote-of-the-week to relate somehow to myth:

The value of the myth is that it takes all the things we know and restores to them the rich significance which has been hidden by ‘the veil of familiarity’… This book applies the treatment not only to bread or apple but to good and evil, to our endless perils, our anguish, and our joys. By dipping them in myth we see them more clearly. I do not think he could have done it in any other way.

C.S. Lewis, On Stories

• I invited Andrew to unpack Part I of Till We Have Faces…