Table Of Content

Yours, Jack Spiritual Direction from Edited by Paul F. Ford CONTENTS Editor’s Note ^ v Acknowledgments ^ vii C. S. Lewis Letters ^ 1916 1 • 1920 5 1921 7 • 1929 9 • 1930 11 • 1931 23 1932 33 • 1933 37 • 1934 43 • 1935 45 1936 47 • 1938 51 • 1939 53 • 1940 59 1941 81 • 1942 • 93 • 1943 97 • 1944 99 1945 109 • 1946 117 • 1947 121 • 1948 127 1949 131 • 1950 151 • 1951 159 • 1952 175 1953 195 • 1954 231 • 1955 253 • 1956 281 1957 301 • 1958 307 • 1959 315 • 1960 329 1961 339 • 1962 351 • 1963 365 Index ^ 375 Biblical Index ^ 390 About the Author Credits Cover Copyright About the Publisher EDITOR’S NOTE Unless you were a personal friend of C. S. Lewis, or one of his many correspondents, you are probably not aware that he went by “Jack” to his friends, a name he landed on as a child and decided it suited him better than his given one (Clive Staples Lewis). So at the end of most of his letters, you encountered “Yours, Jack.” This book is intended to extend that personal relationship to you, the reader. The purposes of this collection of letters are (1) to draw at- tention to how, indirectly and directly, C. S. Lewis experienced spiritual direction, wrote about it, and practiced it, and (2) to al- low the reader to benefi t from having Lewis as a director. The letters are arranged chronologically because that seemed to be the best way to demonstrate what Lewis was experiencing, reading, and thinking about at the time. Lewis’s spelling, punctuation, grammar, and various ways of dating letters have been regularized to provide the reader an un- distracted experience. His capitalization was generally maintained because he used it for emphasis. Translations of foreign-language quotations are provided in brackets. Biblical references and essen- tial bibliographical references are provided in the footnotes when Lewis did not insert them into the actual letters. Deletions are to be assumed at the beginnings and endings of letters; ellipsis marks indicate deletions within letters. The com- plimentary close and the signature of letters are retained when they are signifi cantly diff erent from Lewis’s regular style. Readers who desire more complete bibliographical information about books cited and more complete biographical information about people written to or mentioned are invited to consult the three volumes of The Collected Letters of C. S. Lewis, so admirably and lovingly edited by Walter Hooper.1 1The Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis, Volume I: Family Letters, 1905–1931 (London and New York: HarperCollins, 2000), The Collected Letters of C. S. Lewis, Volume II: Books, Broadcasts, and the War, 1931–1949 (London and New York: Harper- Collins, 2004), and The Collected Letters of C. S. Lewis, Volume III: Narnia, Cam- bridge, and Joy, 1950–1963 (London and New York: HarperCollins, 2006). vi , YOURS JACK This collection contains three kinds of letters. There are letters of spiritual companionship (letters between equals) to Arthur Greeves (his oldest friend, twenty-eight letters), Warren Lewis (his brother, eleven letters), Leo Baker (three letters), Owen Barfi eld (four letters), and Bede Griffi ths (twenty-eight letters). There are letters of spiritual discipleship (letters to those from whom Lewis sought spiritual advice) to (Saint) Giovanni Calabria (six letters, written in Latin and translated by Martin Moynihan) and Sister Penelope (Lawson, C.S.M.V., eleven letters). Finally, there are letters of spiritual direction (letters to those to whom Lewis gave spiritual advice) to Rhona Bodle (fi fteen letters), Michael Edwards (two letters), Vera (Mathews) Gebbert (four letters), Genia Goelz (two letters), Mr. Green (three letters), Mrs. D. Jessup (seven letters), Mrs. Johnson (five letters), Mrs. Frank L. Jones (two letters), Laurence Krieg (two letters), Philinda Krieg (two letters), “Mrs. Lockley” (six letters), Edward Lofstrom (two letters), Mary (née Shelley) Neylan (eleven letters), Mary Willis Shelburne (forty letters), Patricia Thomson (two letters), Sheldon Vanauken (twelve letters), Mary Van Deusen (thirty-three letters), and others who received one letter each. Abbreviations, Nicknames, and Translations Minto Mrs. Janie King Moore, Lewis’s adopted stepmother. Oremus pro invicem. Latin for “Let us pray for one another.” Lewis often used this at the close of letters in Latin or in English. Vac. The vacation or holidays. At Oxford there are short vacs. between school terms and the long Vac. during the summer. Ox- ford and Cambridge terms are eight weeks in length. Oxford terms are named Michaelmas (from the Feast of St. Michael, September 29), Hilary (from the Feast of St. Hilary, January 13), and Trinity (from Trinity Sunday, the first Sunday after Pentecost). Cambridge terms are named Michaelmas, Lent, and Easter. The long Vac. lasts from July through September. W. “Warnie,” i.e., Warren Hamilton Lewis, the older brother and only sibling of C. S. Lewis. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Deep gratitude to my first-ever Harper editor, Roy M. Carlisle, and to Patricia Klein, his successor. Deep gratitude to Michael Maudlin, editorial director, and to Alison Petersen, production editor, at HarperOne. Deep gratitude to Joshua Falconer, my assistant, and to my spiritual director, Marilyn Peppin. 1916 TO ARTHUR GREEVES, his oldest friend: On the book that baptized Lewis’s imagination—see Surprised by Joy, 180–181. Anodos is the hero of the book Phantastes; Cosmo is the hero of a story Anodos tells in the book.1 7 March 1916 I have had a great literary experience this week. I have dis- covered yet another author to add to our circle—our very own set: never since I first read ‘The well at the world’s end’ have I enjoyed a book so much—and indeed I think my new ‘fi nd’ is quite as good as [Thomas] Malory or [William] Morris himself. The book, to get to the point, is George MacDonald’s ‘Faerie Romance’, Phantastes, which I picked up by hazard in a rather tired Everyman copy—by the way isn’t it funny, they cost 1/1d. now—on our station bookstall last Saturday. Have you read it? I suppose not, as if you had, you could not have helped telling me about it. At any rate, whatever the book you are reading now, you simply must get this at once: and it is quite worth getting in a superior Everyman binding too. Of course it is hopeless for me to try and describe it, but when you have followed the hero Anodos along that little stream to the faery wood, have heard about the terrible ash tree and how the shadow of his gnarled, knotted hand falls upon the book the hero is reading, when you have read about the faery palace . . . and heard the episode of Cosmo, I know that you will quite agree with me. You must not be disappointed at the first chapter which is rather conventional faery tale style, and after it you won’t be able to stop until you have finished. There are one or two poems in the tale—as in the Morris tales you know—which, with one or two exceptions are shockingly bad, so don’t try to appreciate them: it is just a sign, isn’t it, of how some geniuses can’t work in metrical forms—another example being the Brontës. 1 Letters I, 169–170.