At the Christian Book Club we are into our first week of reading C.S. Lewis “The Weight of Glory”.  I am always captivated by the writings of Lewis.  I may have mentioned in the past that in 2005 my wife, teenage daughter and son, and I all went to England for a once in a life time trip as a family.  The highlight of the trip was a visit to Oxford to see where C.S. Lewis hung out.  We went to the pub that he frequented with Tolkien and the other Inklings and we sat and ate at the table where they would sit and talk.  They had framed napkins on the walls that all the Inklings had signed.  It was a memorable experience.  I wonder what it would have been like to be sitting there and listen to their discussions of their writing.

As I have been reading this week I was really impressed with the way Lewis wrote about a feeling that I am sure we all have from time to time.  He was once again able to describe something that is hard to describe.  Starting at the bottom of page 29:

“In speaking of this desire for our own far-off country, which we find in ourselves even now, I feel a certain shyness.  I am almost committing an indecency.  I am trying to rip open the inconsolable secret in each one of you - the secret which hurts so much that you take revenge on it by calling it names like Nostalgia and Romanticism and Adolescence; the secret also which pierces with such sweetness that when, in very intimate conversation, the mention of it becomes imminent, we grow awkward and affect to laugh at ourselves; the secret we cannot hide and we cannot tell, though we desire to do both.  We cannot tell it because it is a desire for something that has never actually appeared in our experience.  We cannot hide it because our experience is constantly suggesting it, and we betray ourselves like lovers at the mention of a name”.

What a gift to be able to write like that!  Keep on commenting.  I love to read what you are getting from the books!