Iron Mountain ski jump

Iron Mountain ski jump

Saturday, January 19, 2019

CS LEWIS ON IMMORTALITY [Sat, 1-19-18]


My late great friend, Bill White, was a premier C.S. Lewis scholar. [He once took us to lunch at The Eagle and Child inn, where Lewis and Tolkein and Charles Williams and the other “Inklings” gathered each afternoon. That was a fun day!]

In The Image of Man in C.S. Lewis, Bill points out [page 199] that Lewis believed that every person is immortal, and so every individual is more important than any political or religious entity on earth because each of those lasts but a moment in time. A heartening thought for our age.

I find that incomprehensible, about everyone being immortal, which probably means it is true, because my comprehending abilities are really limited! Yours may be, too.

It’s always good to be reminded by Lewis on this topic: “You are not a body that has a soul; you are a soul that has a body.”

And using the word “but” in the way I did in the last line of the first paragraph reminds me of the preacher doing the pastoral prayer in church and intoning, “Lord, we are but dust…” and would have continued but was unable to when a little voice piped up and said, “Mommy, what’s butt dust?”

John Robert McFarland

No, these are just random thoughts—doesn’t count as writing.

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