"We are travellers…not yet in our native land" – St. Augustine
I’ve just received the video from a talk I gave earlier this week at Theology Uncorked on Our Lady. The video is available on Vimeo:
…and it’s also available on YouTube:
If you would like an audio version, I recorded an MP3 of this talk last year when I spoke in Los Angeles.
Summary
We open with Lewis standing in a bus queue. He’s been wandering in continual twilight through The Grey Town in the rain. Other than the bus queue, the town appears to be deserted.
As he joins the queue, a couple argue and they both leave.
The Short Man in front of him makes a disparaging comment about “the sort of society” in the bus queue. After Lewis fails to respond to the slight, The Big Man punches The Short Man who limps away.
Next, a young, seemingly androgynous, couple leave arm in arm, “it was clear that each for the moment preferred the other to the chance of a place in the bus”.
A woman four places ahead complains “We shall never all get in”. A man offers to change places with her for five shillings, but he then double-crosses her. The rest of the group throw her out of the line.
We get the impression that events like this continue to happen for some time until “the queue had reduced itself to manageable proportions long before the bus appeared”. The bus is a stunning vehicle, driven by a driver who is “full of light”. To our protagonist’s puzzlement, the driver’s appearance raises the ire of those in the queue. They all push and shove to get into the bus but, in the end, there is plenty of room for all.
Our man sits at the back of the bus, a good distance away from the others, but is immediately joined by “a tousle-headed youth” who sees in our protagonist a kindred spirit. He comments on his bewilderment at the other passengers, saying they “won’t like it at all when we get there, and they’d really be much more comfortable at home” where “they’ve got cinemas and fish and chip shops and advertisements and all the sorts of things they want”. He says he ought to have taken the bus as soon as he arrived, but he’d “fooled about trying to wake people up”. It becomes clear that this man is a poet and, to our protagonist’s horror, he is about to show him some of his poetry… It is at this point Lewis realizes that the bus is now airborne and he looks out of the window to see the Grey Town disappearing below into the rain and the mist.
Questions
Q1. What words would you use to describe The Grey Town?
Q2. What do you make of the different members of the queue? The arguing couple, The Short Man, The Big Man, The Androgynous Couple, The woman who pays to change places with the man who cheats her…
Q3. In what way do the characters in the line each display one of the Seven Deadly Sins? Envy, Gluttony, Greed, Lust, Pride, Sloth, Wrath
Q4. In what ways are the members of the bus stop similar? In what ways are they different from each other?
Q5. Why do you think the line for the bus is so short? Why do people so easily leave the line?
Q6. Why do you think the members of the queue react so badly to the driver?
Q7. Do you think the tousle-headed youth represents anyone in particular?
Q8. Why does the tousle-headed youth think that the others would be happier staying in the town?
Q9. Who do you think Cyril Blellow was?
A delightful video of the most excellent Peter Kreeft talking about C.S. Lewis and his relationship to Catholicism…
I saw this documentary about C.S. Lewis posted on Reddit the other day. It basically traces through Lewis’ own book, Surprised By Joy:
This is the second of two talks I gave during Lent at a parish in Los Angeles this year…
“Apologetics for the confused” (Download)
— Questions —
• What does IHS stand for?
• Who is your blog’s patron saint?
• How do you evangelize at work?
• How do I deal with my Mormon family attacking my Faith?
• What can I do about my niece who is drifting away from the Faith?
Just before Easter, I posted an article written by one of my friends on her one-year anniversary entering the Catholic Church. Now that we reach the end of the Easter Octave, here is another article which she wrote shortly before entering back in 2017…
As the Easter season quickly approaches and thousands of adults around the world prepare for the Sacraments of Initiation (Baptism, Confirmation and First Holy Communion), I thought it would be an appropriate time to explain why a person converts to the Catholic Church.
Of course, with hundreds of faith traditions and spiritual experiences, there could be hundreds of reasons, but I want to give you the top seven reasons why I left my life-long Protestant faith to become a member of the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church (although that may describe it right there ☺).
1. Silence
I list this reason first because it was one of the first aspects of the Church that drew me in. When I refer to silence, I simultaneously refer to the feeling of peace within a soul. We live in a chaotic world, a world of incessant noise, a world pulling us in so many directions we sometimes don’t know which way is up. These noises and distractions make our souls crazy; our souls are crying out for inner peace, to just slow down and let God fill us in the silence.
When I first began attending Mass about two years ago, this phrase jumped out at me again and again, “Jesus said to his disciples, My peace I leave with you; My peace I give you.” How our souls yearn for this peace! Imagine how different our lives would be if we consistently let God give us His peace. One of the ways Catholics allow Christ to do this is in adoration. To kneel before the Blessed Sacrament and simply allow the silence to infiltrate our whole being is such an incredible gift; to allow the noises and distractions of the world fade away as we worship God in the quiet stillness of the Church. It feeds our hungry souls. And amongst our busy lives, God reminds us: “The Lord will fight for you; you have only to be still.” (Exodus 14:14)
I think St. Augustine perfectly described our yearning for the peace of God when he said, “Thou hast made us for thyself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it finds rest in thee.”
So today I got to have a lovely chat with one of the manliest men out there, the star of The Long Ride Home, Mr. Bear Woznick. Bear invited me onto his radio show for a chat about all things Catholic, during which we discussed Judo, St. Edmund Campion, Byzantine Christianity and Atheism.
Please brace yourself for the manliest of conversations…