Can a lie set you free?

Rod Dreher reviews Confession, a film he convinces me I should see. Dreher calls it "a masterpiece":

How does a man follow Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s directive to “live not by lies” when a lie could save his life? Once he has soiled his soul with lies, can it ever be made clean? And the most difficult question of all, the one at the heart of Ben Shapiro’s extraordinary new film and screenwriting debut, Confession: In a world without God, why suffer for the truth if a lie can free you and your loved ones from tormentors too powerful to defeat physically?

These are Dostoyevskian questions, posed in a psychologically intense drama set inside Moscow’s Lubyanka prison in 1938, at the height of Joseph Stalin’s Great Terror. Rob Lowe (of all actors!) plays Alexei Abramov, a drunk and dissolute literature professor dragged into Lubyanka for interrogation by the NKVD, the predecessor of the KGB. .... Adding to the complexity of Abramov’s brutal interrogation is the fact he knows his interrogator, Vladimir (played by James Franco with the eyes and delivery of a spitting cobra). Vladimir was once Alexei’s most brilliant student. Lowe, a Hollywood heartthrob of yore, whose battered, handsome face conveys the psychological and spiritual downfall of his character, finds himself under the boot—at times literally—of his former protégé, who found life as a Bolshevik secret policeman more fulfilling than the scholarly path. ....

In a brief but punchy appearance, Nick Nolte plays a Jewish cellmate of Abramov’s who had been a senior member of the Soviet political elite. Before falling from political grace into the Lubyanka pit, this character had played a key role in the murder of millions of Ukrainians in Stalin’s engineered 1930s famine. In a bone-chilling monologue, he recalls in detail the children whose starvation he oversaw. Says the prisoner, “A man can get used to anything.” ....

Though the heart of this emotionally complex drama is about the meaning and worth of truth in a world that lives by lies, it explores a host of profound questions: Is there ultimate meaning, and if so, how can we know it? Can beauty change the world? Does evil exist? Can one be good without God? ....

Shapiro, director Václav Marhoul, and this strong cast have done it, and done it well. But here’s a startling thing: Toward the end, Confession takes a jaw-dropping Christian turn that is in no way tacked-on or gratuitous, but that flows naturally from everything that preceded it during Abramov’s interrogation. No spoilers here, but Confession ends as one of the most profoundly Christian films I’ve ever seen, one that knits truth-telling, redemption, suffering, and sacrifice as tightly and piercingly as vines twisted into a crown of thorns. .... (more)

Rod Dreher, "Confession Is a Masterpiece," The Free Press, Nov. 11, 2026.

"On the eleventh hour"

Tomorrow, November 11, was originally known as Armistice Day. Combat in World War I formally ended at 11:00 am on the morning of the eleventh day, and so "the eleventh hour, of the eleventh day, of the eleventh month." In Britain on Sunday they observed "Remembrance Day." When I was in grade school, we stood and observed a minute of silence at 11:00 on November 11. It was a solemn time, as it still is in Britain and Canada, and many other countries of the former British Empire who sent soldiers to fight in France. The US came late to that war, and although we suffered many casualties, the countries that were in it from the beginning, Britain, France, Russia, and others, suffered many more. When word spread that the war was over, the initial reaction, of course was relief and celebration. N.C. Wyeth:

Schadenfreude

I seldom post here about partisan politics and have been somewhat reluctant to post about our recent election. But I will. I am politically conservative in the traditional sense of the term. I identify with most of the views expressed in publications like National Review, The Dispatch, or the editorial page at The Wall Street Journal. I agree with what has been known as Fusionism with its three principles of social conservatism, a strong national defense, and free markets. I have usually voted for Republican candidates because they usually were most likely to advance conservative policies. The best President in my lifetime was Reagan. I was never comfortable with Trump, either his character or his commitment to anything that could properly be considered conservative. His use of the Presidency for financial gain was another reason. I was not surprised by last Tuesday's results. I feel much the same as Jonah Goldberg in "I Was Right About the New Right." He is in an "I told you so" frame of mind:

.... I think it’s worth surveying the damage. I don’t just mean the electoral carnage, which is the political equivalent of the Dresden firebombing. Whether or not the GOP goes the way of the Whigs or simply limps along as a rump party for a generation now depends almost entirely on whether or not the Democrats blow the opportunity Trump and his enablers handed them on Tuesday. Which is to say, for good or ill, the GOP has a chance.

But not with Trump and Trumpism. In our system, there are only two ways to make it out of the wilderness: if the other “side” massively screws up and/or if your side has a better argument and better ideas. It usually requires a good deal of both.

And that’s where the real damage has been done. The new right has waged a relentless war on the accumulated wisdom that essentially defines American conservatism in pursuit of power. Whether it was the nationalists, postliberals, populists, or careerist climbers, as a group they saw—accurately—that the rules, dogmas, sentiments, and principles defining conservatism were impediments to their agendas. And so they sought to delegitimize them. ....

.... Not everything Trump did was bad. For example, his Supreme Court appointees—to his lasting regret—are excellent jurists. I am glad he killed Qassem Suleimani, pulled out of the Paris Accords, etc. The branch of Never Trumpism that can brook no nuance or concessions always struck me as the mirror image of Always Trumpism.

But it’s worth pointing out that many—most—of the good decisions Trump made, he made because those hated “Zombie Reaganite” conservatives midwifed them. The conservative legal movement, Mitch McConnell, et.al., carried the ball to the 1-yard line for him. His first term economic successes were the fruit of Paul Ryan and his colleagues handing him something to sign. In his second term, the Trump voluptuaries insisted that the gatekeepers and grown-ups were the problem. “Let be Trump be Trump” was the order of the day. Let us submit to the rule of Trump’s instincts that passed for wise political judgment. ....

I am torn about the election results. On the one hand, I am very angry about the damage done. Because I am an actual conservative, I would much rather the GOP be poised to be a new majority party, if the GOP could be a sane, principled, responsible political party in the tradition of Lincoln, Coolidge, Eisenhower, and Reagan. That is clearly not an option for the foreseeable future. On the other hand, I’m modestly hopeful. If the Democrats were going to win the House and Senate at all, I think it’s arguable that a big win of this scale is better than a narrow one. I would rather have a Democratic Party that has the option to marginalize the Abdul El-Sayeds and democratic socialist types. Democrats in Congress won’t need their votes, so if they choose to follow their lead, it will be a clarifyingly ideological choice, not one dictated by the demands of a narrow majority. And that will offer a path back, hopefully for sane Republicans. ....

...[W]hile I was writing this, Trump appointed Stephen Miller, the single figure most responsible for the coalition’s destruction other than Trump himself, to be his new chief of staff. A more idiotic choice I cannot fathom.

I’ve been saying for more than a decade that this experiment will end badly. I think I’ve already been vindicated on that score, but with Trump and Miller driving what’s left of the Trump train for the next two years, I am confident that there’s more vindication to come. (more, but probably behind a paywall)

Jonah Goldberg, "I Was Right About the New Right," The Dispatch, Nov. 6, 2026.

Remembering a friend

A while back I found this passage from a letter Samuel Johnson wrote upon discovering a childhood friend had died:

I hope we may long continue to gain friends, but the friends which merit or usefulness can procure us, are not able to supply the place of old acquaintance, with whom the days of youth may be retraced, and those images revived which gave us the earliest delight.

I learned this morning that my best friend since childhood, Norman Burdick, died. We shared many interests. We talked and argued; our favorite pastime was conversation. We liked many of the same things, especially mysteries, and an admiration for Tolkien and C.S. Lewis. We also shared experiences. Norm and his wife, Faith, welcomed me into their temporary home in England, where Norm was doing a teacher exchange. They took me to Wales and Oxford. I particularly remember Snowdonia, and Conwy Castle, and the Kilns, and Lewis's grave in Headington (the picture below), and Magdalen College, where Lewis taught. I remember squirt-gun fights in the dark in the basement of Norm's parents' house when we were kids. I remember a Fourth of July in 1970 in Washington, where we experienced teargas for the first time while attending an anti-war concert near the Washington Monument (Norm was in the Army, out of uniform, and we were in DC for "Honor America Day," definitely not opposing the war). There are many more things that come to mind, and that will continue. Faith is in my prayers. So are his brother, Ken, and sister, Linda, and his many friends, former students, and relatives.

Norm was a Christian. When separated by geography, on vacation, in college, while he was serving, we wrote letters. I've saved some of them. This was part of a letter he wrote to me while he was in the Army:

I've been reading the gospels—and perhaps more forcibly than ever before, I've been struck with the pure drama, the unique tragedy with the happy ending, the sheer literary achievement in this play directed by the hand of God.

It is drama and tragedy in a higher form than any play ever written, life outdoing art, or perhaps the art of God outdoing that of man.

In ways, in its high drama and boisterous brutality, the story resembles Shakespeare, and nowhere more so than in the crucifixion.

The complexity of Shakespeare's characters is dwarfed by the sheer awe Christ's words and deeds create. And the others do symbolic actions with an exact rightness even Shakespeare might envy.

The Last Supper, with the presence of the traitor, his existence announced, but identity strangely not revealed, as if he were an Iago or Edmund; the strange scene of Christ praying in the garden, God asking God to let this pass from Him, while not far from Him His disciples cannot even "wake with him one hour" for His sufferings, then the line and transition, the most dramatic I know, "the hour is at hand for the betrayal of the Son of Man." The symbol of the Judas kiss, the washing of Pilate's hands, and the fleeing of all away from Him, brought to its height in Peter's threefold denial. All of this the complete rejection of Christ by man. Then there is the cruel treatment of Christ, the brutal and boisterous humor of the common man, from casting lots for the cloak to the crown of thorns and the vinegar.

Then, after the formal "Tragedy" ends, the only perfect happy ending to a real tragedy that I know—the hero triumphs in death and is resurrected. And it's a tragedy with an ending that means life not only for one, but for all.

And for me, one of the proofs of it all is that it is this perfect a tragedy. I do not believe in some unknown Jewish writer or writers that much greater than Shakespeare: I do not even believe in a mortal man able to write some of the lines of Christ. And most of all, I do not believe in anyone either convinced of Christ or trying to create a new religion, who could write those lines I still don't wholly understand, that render His isolation complete, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?"

That line in dramatic effect is greater than anything Shakespeare ever wrote. Its mystery is stupefying. And no spreader of any gospel would have invented it; only a man who was there and who heard it, and who felt compelled to tell all other truths would have put it in his account of the one he believed was his savior.

Norm became an English Professor.

"Remember, remember the Fifth of November"

November 5^th is celebrated in the UK as Guy Fawkes Day, the anniversary of a foiled attempt by Catholic plotters in 1605 to blow up King James and the Houses of Parliament. It was known as the "Gunpowder Plot" and came very close to success. From an online description:

.... It was intended to be the beginning of a great uprising of English Catholics, who were distressed by the increased severity of penal laws against the practice of their religion. The conspirators, who began plotting early in 1604, expanded their number to a point where secrecy was impossible.

[In] a cellar under the House of Lords...36 barrels of gunpowder, overlaid with iron bars and firewood, were secretly stored. The conspiracy was brought to light through a mysterious letter received by Lord Monteagle...on October 26, urging him not to attend Parliament on the opening day.

The 1^st Earl of Salisbury and others, to whom the plot was made known, took steps leading to the discovery of the materials and the arrest of Fawkes as he entered the cellar. Other conspirators, overtaken in flight or seized afterward, were killed outright, imprisoned, or executed.

.... While the plot was the work of a small number of men, it provoked hostility against all English Catholics and led to an increase in the harshness of laws against them. Guy Fawkes Day, November 5, is still celebrated in England with fireworks and bonfires, on which effigies of the conspirator are burned. ....

Remember, remember the Fifth of November,

The Gunpowder Treason and Plot,

I know of no reason

Why the Gunpowder Treason

Should ever be forgot.

Guy Fawkes and his companions

Did the scheme contrive,

To blow the King and Parliament

All up alive.

Threescore barrels, laid below,

To prove old England's overthrow.

But, by God's providence, him they catch,

With a dark lantern, lighting a match! ....

Holloa boys, holloa boys, let the bells ring.

Holloa boys, holloa boys, God save the King!

English children's rhyme for Guy Fawkes Day

  

11/5 I updated the picture with one I found today and like better.

"Swiftly vanishing..."

I grew up in the period described here as "the golden age of the LP." My parents were on the faculty of a liberal arts college with a strong music department. Some of my closest high school friends were serious classical music students: one a countertenor, another an organist, a classical guitar player, and others. Several of them were collectors of, and advocates for, particular composers. All of us, often together, listened to classical music on good stereo systems. I was lucky to have experienced those times. From Isaac Sligh's "For the Record":

Lately, I have been visiting a small used-record shop in Manhattan that seems to be in some stage of shedding its classical music section. I come back from my lunch breaks with armfuls of records rescued from the curb. They pile up in my cubicle; they spill into the common walkway. ....

.... Never in history has so much music been so available and yet simultaneously so inaccessible. On streaming platforms, recordings by different orchestras, conductors, and performers, from distinct years and labels, blend together into an incomprehensible slurry. Listen to a single movement, and autoplay and shuffle will whisk you away to some completely different part of the algorithm. ....

Psychologically and spiritually, streaming is an impoverished and impoverishing medium. It is no wonder that classical music’s status in the record industry has diminished. ....

During the golden age of the LP from the 1950s to 1970s, thousands of recordings proliferated on labels great and small. Classical was the industry’s prestige repertoire and the reference material for rapidly advancing audiophile sound systems.... The postwar era that coincided was one of middle-class aspiration: The record industry catered to the G.I. Generation’s desire to build collections of great classical music in their homes, just as publishing imprints like the Modern Library helped them easily build libraries of the Great Books. College attendance became widespread, and a liberal arts education at that time encouraged building a generalist, canonical knowledge of the humanities. All of this went hand in hand.

As these private libraries have died out in recent decades, public and institutional libraries have hardly offered a sound alternative. Increasingly, they move to hide their collections of books and music in off-site storage, converting valuable square footage into space for coworking, events, and computers. Swiftly vanishing are the days of wandering the stacks, picking up a book by Dostoevsky, and noticing his other novels on the shelf beside it; glancing to the shelf above and finding Gogol; looking further and discovering Pushkin. Even the physical space of the library has been transformed into a kind of replica of the streaming interface: More is available than ever before upon request, but nothing is intuitively accessible, and all is stripped of its canonical context. ....

Such artifacts are the ligatures of history. When we cast them to the curb, we reject a hand that is outstretched in a gesture of friendship from past to present. .... (more)

Isaac Sligh, "For the Record," Portico.

"A great multitude that no one could number"

"We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about those who are asleep, that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope. For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep."
1 Thessalonians 4:13-14 (ESV)

A hymn most appropriate for All Saints' Day sung to Ralph Vaughan Williams's SINE NOMINE ("without name").

For all the saints, who from their labors rest, Who Thee by faith before the world confessed, Thy Name, O Jesus, be forever blessed. Alleluia, Alleluia!	The golden evening brightens in the west; Soon, soon to faithful warriors comes their rest; Sweet is the calm of paradise the blessed. Alleluia, Alleluia!
Thou wast their Rock, their Fortress and their might; Thou, Lord, their Captain in the well-fought fight; Thou, in the darkness, their one true Light. Alleluia, Alleluia!	But lo! there breaks a yet more glorious day; The saints triumphant rise in bright array; The King of glory passes on His way. Alleluia, Alleluia!
O blest communion, fellowship divine! We feebly struggle, they in glory shine; Yet all are one in Thee, for all are Thine. Alleluia, Alleluia!	From earth’s wide bounds, from ocean’s farthest coast, Through gates of pearl streams in the countless host, Singing to God, the Son, and Holy Ghost: Alleluia, Alleluia!

Reformation!

Today, October 31, is the anniversary of that day in 1517 when Luther nailed his 95 theses to the church door, now observed in many Protestant churches as Reformation Day. The Wittenberg Door reminded us why the Reformation matters:

The basic doctrine of the Reformers was that the Bible is our only infallible rule of faith and practice. Not the pope, not human tradition, not church councils, but the Word of God must be our final court of appeal in matters of belief and conduct. This soul-liberating truth needs fresh emphasis in every generation.

Another doctrine rediscovered in the Reformation was justification by faith in Jesus Christ alone. Our salvation can depend on nothing except the perfect righteousness of Christ. The means of laying hold of the perfect righteousness is faith. “Therefore, since we have been justified by faith,” Paul says, “we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ” (Rom. 5:1). Without this truth there is no gospel, no good news for sinners.

Another truth stemming from the Protestant Reformation is the universal priesthood of believers. We depend on no priest or minister for our access to Almighty God. Jesus is the “high priest whom we confess.” Only through him do we have the right of direct access into the presence of a holy God. ....

About Tolkien

The King Under the Mountain: In Search of J. R. R. Tolkien "is not a biography of Tolkien.... It is, rather, 'a series of fan’s notes, material brought back from some of the remoter caverns of Tolkien’s imagination, into which...critics and biographers have rarely strayed.'” From today's review of the book in the WSJ:

Mr. Taylor’s search is consistently engaging and a pleasure to read. The caverns of his own mind are amply stocked with information not only about Tolkien and his largely uneventful life in England, but also the academic and literary worlds in which the chronicler of Middle-earth went about his duties and authorial purposes.

By the time The Lord of the Rings was published in full, Tolkien was 63. Known to friends as Ronald, he was a teacher of English, first at Leeds University and then, beginning in 1925, at Oxford, where he rose to the position of Merton Professor. His specialty was Anglo-Saxon language and literature, with a penchant for the former. Even Chaucer, the first major writer in Middle English, could seem, to Tolkien, a bit progressive. ....

Wain reminded readers of his autobiography that in Tolkien’s time the Oxford English syllabus “was weighted in favor of the Middle Ages.” It was possible to get a degree without having read a page of Charles Dickens, George Eliot or Thomas Hardy, but not without having studied the 14^th century poem “Piers Plowman.” To Amis, the study of Old English at Oxford “carried the redoubted impediment of having Tolkien, incoherent and often inaudible, lecturing on it.”

It is hardly surprising that the professor, into his 50s when the Amis set arrived on campus, felt out of touch among this new type of student—the “angry young man.” When introduced to Ava Gardner by the poet Robert Graves in 1964, Tolkien thought her “a pleasant young woman...well but quietly dressed, easy and agreeable, and we got on quite well.” According to Mr. Taylor, “Tolkien, being Tolkien, did not of course know who Miss Gardner was.” ....

Tolkien didn’t want readers to think of The Lord of the Rings as some kind of political allegory, like Animal Farm. He dismissed the suggestion that Mordor might represent the Soviet Union and that its ruler, Sauron—the “Lord” of the book’s title—stood for Stalin. “As for any inner meaning or ‘message,’” he wrote in the foreword to the revised second edition of 1966, “it has in the intention of the author none.” Tolkien was charmingly frank about what he wanted to do. “The prime motive was the desire of a tale-teller to try his hand at a really long story that would hold the attention of readers, amuse them, delight them, and at times maybe excite them or deeply move them.” This would have seemed reasonable coming from the mouth of Homer in answer to a question about the “Odyssey.” ....

Like many of his generation, he cared little for the ultrapermissive aspect of the 1960s, Mr. Taylor tells us, “whether the decade manifested itself in the Beatles, high taxation or the Beautiful People in hippy glad-rags who could now be seen wandering through central Oxford”—quite a few of them carrying copies of The Lord of the Rings. ....

A different perspective on sudden fame is found in his remark to a reporter that many young people “are involved in the stories in a way that I am not.” .... (more)

James Campbell, "Tolkien’s Affinity for the Old," The Wall Street Journal, Oct. 30, 2016.

Justified

Tomorrow, October 31^st, is Reformation Day, and the day following is All Saints' Day. Reformation Day is the anniversary of the day Martin Luther issued the challenge to debate his 95 theses—not the beginning of the Reformation but an important point in it. Halloween is actually All Hallows Eve, the eve beginning All Saints’ Day. Days were thought of as evening to evening so the eve was the beginning of the next day—think New Year’s Eve or Christmas Eve. Although today most approach it as a secular holiday that wasn’t its origin and for Protestants, all believers are “saints” and All Saints’ Day is when we acknowledge “the great cloud of witnesses” who have passed on. So on Halloween, we can celebrate both the Protestant Reformation and all those believers who have gone before.

Therefore being justified by faith,

we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ:
By whom also we have access by faith into this grace wherein we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God.

Romans 5:1-2 [KJV]

Reclaiming All Hallows Eve

As an annual reminder I re-post excerpts from "Concerning Halloween" by James B. Jordan:

.... "Halloween" is simply a contraction for All Hallows’ Eve. The word "hallow" means "saint," in that "hallow" is just an alternative form of the word "holy" ("hallowed be Thy name"). All Saints’ Day is November 1. It is the celebration of the victory of the saints in union with Christ. The observance of various celebrations of All Saints arose in the late 300s, and these were united and fixed on November 1 in the late 700s. The origin of All Saints Day and of All Saints Eve in Mediterranean Christianity had nothing to do with Celtic Druidism or the Church’s fight against Druidism (assuming there ever even was any such thing as Druidism, which is actually a myth concocted in the 19th century by neo-pagans.) ....

The Biblical day begins in the preceding evening, and thus in the Church calendar, the eve of a day is the actual beginning of the festive day. [emphasis added] Christmas Eve is most familiar to us, but there is also the Vigil of Holy Saturday that precedes Easter Morn. Similarly, All Saints’ Eve precedes All Saints’ Day.

The concept, as dramatized in Christian custom, is quite simple: On October 31, the demonic realm tries one last time to achieve victory, but is banished by the joy of the Kingdom.

What is the means by which the demonic realm is vanquished? In a word: mockery. Satan’s great sin (and our great sin) is pride. Thus, to drive Satan from us we ridicule him. This is why the custom arose of portraying Satan in a ridiculous red suit with horns and a tail. Nobody thinks the devil really looks like this; the Bible teaches that he is the fallen Arch-Cherub. Rather, the idea is to ridicule him because he has lost the battle with Jesus and he no longer has power over us. ....

Similarly, on All Hallows’ Eve (Hallow-Even – Hallow-E’en – Halloween), the custom arose of mocking the demonic realm by dressing children in costumes. Because the power of Satan has been broken once and for all, our children can mock him by dressing up like ghosts, goblins, and witches. The fact that we can dress our children this way shows our supreme confidence in the utter defeat of Satan by Jesus Christ – we have NO FEAR! .... (more)

Biblical Horizons » Concerning Halloween

"For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world,..."

Reposted:

Ben Dueholm, a Lutheran pastor, and a friend, attended a conference for Christian writers. One of those he heard speak was a television writer and producer who works in Hollywood. From Ben's sermon: "For the Sheep":

.... And the moderator of this panel asked her, “what’s it like to be Catholic in the entertainment industry?” My friend answered with something that I thought was very obvious and yet kind of profound. She said “I’m the only one in the writers’ room who thinks that dying is not the worst thing that can happen to a person.” She went on to talk about how, in movies and television shows, if a character is faced with the possibility of dying, writers and audiences will accept that the character can do anything to avoid it. That dying is the worst fate, and nothing you do to avoid it is immoral or unjustified.

My friend talked about growing up with stories of saints who were martyred rather than giving up their faith, and that left her with the idea that some things really are worse than death. You can lose your life, but it’s worse to lose your soul. ....

...It’s not that we, as modern Americans, are so in love with our own lives—that we are so overflowing with joy and satisfaction that we lash out at the slightest hint of possible danger. It’s that we do not believe in or value our eternal souls. As if so many of us believe we are not prepared to bring our sins before God. Or maybe worse, as if we think there is no such thing, and there will be no accounting of our actions.

In today’s Gospel we hear something entirely different. Today Jesus calls himself the good shepherd. What makes him good? He lays down his life for the sheep. The hired hands run when they see the wolf coming. They leave the sheep on their own. But Jesus, the good shepherd, does not run. He does not seek first to preserve his own life. He lays it down for the sheep. ....

He laid down his life for us, so we lay down our lives for each other. The resurrection of Jesus breaks the chains of death and hell, first in himself, and then in his church. He speaks of a life that is greater than death because he is the Life that is greater than death. When he gives us this life, through words and sacrament and preaching and faith, we share in his life beyond death too.

So a good rule of thumb: if a voice in the world is telling you to be more afraid—if a voice is cultivating your fear, using your fear, enjoying your fear—that is not the voice of the Good Shepherd. That is at best the voice of a hired hand. None of us can save our own lives, in the end, and no one can do it for us, either. Instead, we are told to listen for the voice of Jesus, and to hold to it even when we may be fearful.

That is what John’s letter calls “our victory over the world”: our faith. We worship one who points us beyond fear of death into love of life. Not the brief experience of life that we try so hard to keep from slipping through our fingers, but the life that stretches out before and after everything we can see. We worship one who teaches us with his words, and then shows us with his resurrection, that death has not won. Amen.

For the Sheep | Brutally Ordinary Things

"Spoiled and subverted"

Re-posted because of the current controversy about The Magician's Nephew film for Netflix.

Should the Narnia books be read in the order they were written or according to their place in the chronology of Narnia? Opinions differ and dubious claims have been made that Lewis himself preferred the latter. Alister McGrath, in my opinion, argues persuasively for the former:

.... The most significant difficulty concerns The Magician's Nephew, the last in the series to be written, which describes the early history of Narnia. To read this work first completely destroys the literary integrity of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, which emphasises the mysteriousness of Aslan. It introduces him slowly and carefully, building up a sense of expectation that is clearly based on the assumption that the readers know nothing of the name, identity, or significance of this magnificent creature. In his role as narrator within The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Lewis declares, "None of the children knew who Aslan was any more than you do." But anyone who has read The Magician's Nephew already knows a lot about Aslan. The gradual disclosure of the mysteries of Narnia—one of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe's most impressive literary features—is spoiled and subverted by a prior reading of The Magician's Nephew.

Equally important, the complex symbolic structure of the Chronicles of Narnia is best appreciated through a later reading of The Magician' Nephew. This is most helpful when it is placed (following the order of publication) as the sixth of the seven volumes, with The Last Battle as the conclusion. ....

Alister McGrath, C.S. Lewis - A Life: Eccentric Genius, Reluctant Prophet, 2013

Indian Summer

I am enjoying a series of sunny days with highs in the upper 60s and low 70s. It seems to me to qualify as an "Indian Summer," so I re-post this:

Beginning in 1907 and continuing at least into my youth, at some point in the Fall the Sunday Chicago Tribune would publish these on the front page. The cartoonist was a nationally famous Tribune cartoonist, John T. McCutcheon.

The story from 1907 (pdf)

"Who gets to define Narnia?"

Some reports indicate that Netflix's termination of a lot of employees has been at least partly due to reactions to their version of The Magician's Nephew. The reported feelings from those who have had a chance to see the film, as well as those who viewed the first trailer, have been largely negative. These excerpts from a blog post titled "The Last Battle for Narnia" argue that there was a basic flaw in the director's vision for the movie:

.... When it comes to such a classic work of fiction, there should never be a two-way swinging door. The door of creativity should swing outward from the book towards the film itself. Never the opposite. For the original work is the source — the adaptation is derivative.

An author creates the world, while the filmmaker is merely invited to enter it. ....

What Gerwig is striving for, and can’t seem to grasp, is what Lewis penned so well in crafting the character of Narnia — an elusive sense of holiness. Aslan can’t be nailed down. He can’t be caged. He can’t be fully explained, nor is he in the books. And that mystery is part of his majesty.

But what has puzzled so many Narnian readers is the rather obvious comparison her reimagining of Aslan invites. In The Last Battle, Lewis’s final Chronicle, Shift the Ape discovers a lion skin and persuades Puzzle the Donkey to wear it. He then presents this counterfeit Aslan to the Narnians, insisting that they accept his manufactured version of the Lion as the real thing. Those who question the substitution are manipulated into silence. The irony is beyond perfect, because here we are, seventy years later, debating what Aslan is supposed to look and sound like. One would think that anyone attempting to reinvent the Lion might have anticipated the comparison.

The backlash started with the decision to cast Meryl Streep as the voice of Aslan. The objection isn’t to Streep herself who is, beyond dispute, a legendary actress. Rather, the controversy arises from the identity of the character she’s been asked to portray. Aslan is not simply a talking lion whose voice can be reinvented without consequence. To Lewis, Aslan is unmistakably male. For readers who understand that Christological connection, it raises questions about whether the filmmakers understand the theological significance of the character they’ve inherited. Whatever Gerwig’s intentions, the casting risks appearing less like a faithful interpretation of Lewis and more like an attempt to reshape his creation according to contemporary sensibilities. It’s a case where the ideological tail appears to be wagging the lion. ....

Who gets to define Narnia? The author who created it, or the generation that controls the camera? If the author owns the pen, and a director owns the camera, then in a game of Rock, Paper, Scissors, my money is on the pen being mightier than the camera.

Perhaps the greatest irony is that Lewis already wrote a story about what happens when someone manufactures a new Aslan and insists that everyone else accept the substitution. He called it The Last Battle. .... (more)

The illustration is a modified version of one created for the source.

The Punk Monk Abbey is a recently created Substack and I've decided to follow it. The excerpts above are from a much longer entry very much worth the time of anyone interested in the subject.

Peyton Jones, "The Last Battle for Narnia," The Punk Monk Abbey, Oct. 19, 2026.

Not of this world

C.S. Lewis in Surprised by Joy wrote about "an unsatisfied desire which is itself more desirable than any other satisfaction."  Parts of what Roger Scruton wrote in "Beauty and Desecration," reminded me of that:

...[S]uppose you are walking home in the rain, your thoughts occupied with your work. The streets and the houses pass by unnoticed; the people, too, pass you by; nothing invades your thinking save your interests and anxieties. Then suddenly the sun emerges from the clouds, and a ray of sunlight alights on an old stone wall beside the road and trembles there. You glance up at the sky where the clouds are parting, and a bird bursts into song in a garden behind the wall. Your heart fills with joy, and your selfish thoughts are scattered. The world stands before you, and you are content simply to look at it and let it be.

Maybe such experiences are rarer now than they were in the eighteenth century, when the poets and philosophers lighted upon them as a new avenue to religion. The haste and disorder of modern life, the alienating forms of modern architecture, the noise and spoliation of modern industry—these things have made the pure encounter with beauty a rarer, more fragile, and more unpredictable thing for us. Still, we all know what it is to find ourselves suddenly transported, by the things we see, from the ordinary world of our appetites to the illuminated sphere of contemplation. It happens often during childhood, though it is seldom interpreted then. It happens during adolescence, when it lends itself to our erotic longings. And it happens in a subdued way in adult life, secretly shaping our life projects, holding out to us an image of harmony that we pursue through holidays, through home-building, and through our private dreams.

Here is another example: it is a special occasion, when the family unites for a ceremonial dinner. You set the table with a clean embroidered cloth, arranging plates, glasses, bread in a basket, and some carafes of water and wine. You do this lovingly, delighting in the appearance, striving for an effect of cleanliness, simplicity, symmetry, and warmth. The table has become a symbol of homecoming, of the extended arms of the universal mother, inviting her children in. And all this abundance of meaning and good cheer is somehow contained in the appearance of the table. ....

Christians have inherited from Saint Augustine and from Plato the vision of this transient world as an icon of another and changeless order. They understand the sacred as a revelation in the here and now of the eternal sense of our being. .... For the most part, transitory purposes organize our lives: the day-to-day concerns of economic reasoning, the small-scale pursuit of power and comfort, the need for leisure and pleasure. Little of this is memorable or moving to us. Every now and then, however, we are jolted out of our complacency and feel ourselves to be in the presence of something vastly more significant than our present interests and desires. We sense the reality of something precious and mysterious, which reaches out to us with a claim that is, in some way, not of this world. .... (more)

Roger Scruton, "Beauty and Desecration," City Journal, Spring 2009.

Skaggs family heritage

Last week I spent a few days with my brother. When that happens we usually spend hours sorting through at least one of the bins of letters, photographs, cards, news clippings, etc., that we stored after clearing out our parents' house when they moved into assisted living. One of the things we came across, and decided to keep, was a 1984 letter from the granddaughter of Dad's older brother, Alison Skaggs (Uncle Al). Her references to the D.A.R. are, of course, to the Daughters of the American Revolution.

Dear Aunt Mary & Uncle Leland —

I'm sending along to you copies of information I've found on a recent trip to Washington D.C. I spent one morning within the library at the National H.Q. of D.A.R. (the are quite a stuffy bunch). I found proof of our James C. Skaggs as serving in the American Revolution! The copy of this proof is enclosed. At some point in time I'll look up those records of him in Tennessee. Apparently a woman in CA has registered under James C., in the D.A.R. chapter of her local. I was informed that to join this club, you are to write your local chapter and "humbly" inform them that you are eligible with proof. Consequently they write back and invite you to join. Enclosed are copies of the forms used by "Teresa Skaggs Gonsa", to give you an example. I made these copies from records on micro-film at the library also. What fun it was to find all this! Hope you enjoy having these.

Spent Labor Day at Gull Lake. Mom & I & Susie took "Kuby" to Bill Knapps for lunch. She's pretty good, and quite healthy these days. The best to you & yours,

                                     Colleen

The envelope included all the print-outs of the micro-filmed documents she had obtained. And they do, indeed, show that James C. Skaggs, who was born in South Carolina in 1763 and died in Tennessee in 1838 served on the "Patriot" side in a "Company of Cavalrymen," as a Lieutenant.

He enlisted during 1780 under Captain John Roebuck and Col. Roebuck. Later, he joined Gen. Morgan and was in the battle at Cowpens. He was also in the battle at Guilford Courthouse. In addition, he was under Gen. Sumpter and was at the fall of Orangeburg. He was under Col. Pickens and was at the siege of Ninety Six, the battle at Kettle Creek and one at Waxhaw. (Move to Tenn.)

All very interesting. James C. Skaggs is a direct ancestor. I taught high school US History for decades and enjoy finding a family connection to significant events. I also enjoy knowing about family genealogy. I'm not inclined to do original research, although it is much easier today than in 1984, but I am happy to profit from the work of others. I do not plan to apply to be a "Son of the American Revolution," if such an organization exists.

"Firm in the day of distress [and] gay in the hour of jollity"

Samuel Johnson on genuine friendship:

That friendship may be at once fond and lasting, there must not only be equal virtue on each part, but virtue of the same kind; not only the same end must be proposed, but the same means must be approved by both. We are often, by superficial accomplishments and accidental endearments, induced to love those whom we cannot esteem; we are sometimes, by great abilities, and incontestable evidences of virtue, compelled to esteem those whom we cannot love. But friendship, compounded of esteem and love, derives from one its tenderness, and its permanence from the other; and therefore requires not only that its candidates should gain the judgment, but that they should attract the affections; that they should not only be firm in the day of distress, but gay in the hour of jollity; not only useful in exigencies, but pleasing in familiar life; their presence should give cheerfulness as well as courage, and dispel alike the gloom of fear and of melancholy.

To this mutual complacency is generally requisite an uniformity of opinions, at least of those active and conspicuous principles which discriminate parties in government, and sects in religion, and which every day operate more or less on the common business of life. For though great tenderness has, perhaps, been sometimes known to continue between men eminent in contrary factions; yet such friends are to be shewn rather as prodigies than examples, and it is no more proper to regulate our conduct by such instances, than to leap a precipice, because some have fallen from it and escaped with life.

Samuel Johnson, "The requisites to true friendship," The Rambler, Oct. 1750.

C.S. Lewis in World War II

CS Lewis at the RAF Chaplains’ School in Oxford in 1944 

Bruce R Johnson in The Telegraph explains "Why the Second World War was the making of CS Lewis" (excerpts):

Lewis understood [speaking to airmen] could give him repeated opportunities both to advance the Christian point of view and “bring encouragement to some lonely chaplain who had been finding the going hard”. But this opportunity was very different from his weekly routine of teaching English literature at Oxford. ....

Lewis spent the next four years travelling to RAF establishments throughout Britain. It was exhausting work, with months where Lewis was hardly home three consecutive nights. Yet he began to make a difference. The words of his 1943 Palm Sunday address at RAF Feltwell became the chapter “Making and Begetting” in Mere Christianity. The squadrons there were flying massive night bombing campaigns and experiencing staggering losses. Chaplain Stuart Barton Babbage said it was “into hell and back again”. Lewis used the experiences of these aircrews in his talk. He compared historic Christian doctrines to lines on the maps they used each night to guide them safely home. Religious experiences are far more exciting than dry doctrine, as walks along a beach are more pleasant than reading maps. But Lewis pointed out, “the map is going to be more use than walks on the beach if you want to get to America”.

That same evening, Lewis addressed smaller groups in the station chapel. To men facing death, Lewis was unusually frank about his own struggles (just as combat veterans can sometimes open up to one another). Lewis then transitioned to a description of Christ’s suffering on the cross. Padre Babbage remembered: “We were, once again, made aware of his extraordinary feeling for words, of his rare ability to use exactly the right word in the right place, and of the endless fertility of his imagination.” ....

While Lewis continued with these RAF addresses, he was also hosting evacuee children in his home near Oxford, the Kilns. They had been sent there by parents worried about German bombing. Different groups of evacuees (all teenage girls) continued to be rotated in and out of the Kilns throughout the war. Around the time that the first group arrived, Lewis decided to write a story about a picture he had carried in his head since his own teenage years. It was of a faun with an umbrella carrying packages through a snowy wood. The first paragraph of that story introduced four children sent away from the air raids of London to the countryside home of an old professor. Lewis did not know where the story could go from there, until he began having dreams about lions. Soon the Great Lion Aslan pulled the whole story together. It is significant that the fantasy which became The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe was framed by the real-life battles between the RAF and the Luftwaffe. .... (more, probably behind a paywall)

Bruce R Johnson, "Why the Second World War was the making of CS Lewis," The Telegraph, Oct 11, 2026.

"Graft in our hearts the love of thy Name"

I once wrote that Alan Jacobs' students were very fortunate. At the end of this semester he is retiring from Baylor. He is teaching a course he calls “The Christian Renaissance of the Twentieth Century.” He writes "Of all the classes I’ve ever taught, it’s the one that’s closest to my heart."

In a recent class meeting, we were discussing some of Auden’s poems from the 1930s. Next month we’ll turn to his later poems, the ones that he wrote after his return to the Christian faith. But right now I’m having the students read his earlier work so we can see the ways in which his conscience began to trouble him and give him the gradually growing suspicion that there might be something more to the world than he had previously guessed. We saw how, as he grew closer and closer to Christian faith, the language of the Bible and of the Book of Common Prayer began to saturate his poems. When we got to “Atlantis,” a poem he wrote just as he was beginning to attend an Episcopal church in Brooklyn Heights, a short walk from where he lived, I called my students’ attention to this stanza:

Stagger onward rejoicing;
  And even then if, perhaps
Having actually got
  To the last col, you collapse
With all Atlantis shining
Below you yet you cannot
  Descend, you should still be proud
  Even to have been allowed
Just to peep at Atlantis
  In a poetic vision:
Give thanks and lie down in peace,
  Having seen your salvation.

I asked my students whether anything here reminded them of anything else. A couple of them immediately said, “That’s Moses! Looking down at the Promised Land, but he can’t enter it.” Yep. Then: “That ‘having seen your salvation,’ that’s from the Gospels, right? That old man …” Another voice: “Simeon!” General nodding. Moses and Simeon—what do they have in common? Why might Auden be thinking of them? Is he like them? Is this poem not about himself but about others? (It’s addressed to “You,” after all.) Much to discuss—once you can hear the echoes of the biblical stories. ....

How many American university students, in the Year of Our Lord 2026, are able to recognize the Christian allusions and quotations that poets like Auden expected their readers to be able to identify? Not many; not many at all, as a percentage of the overall population. ....

I am expecting to receive Jacobs' book about Dorothy L. Sayers this week.

Alan Jacobs, "Things They Carry," The Dispatch, Oct. 11, 2026.