If people and dogs have common ground of a higher order than animal needs, it must be in the territory of the spirit. Spirit is, just as Aristotle says, where friendship is at home. Now among us humans, this capability of the spirit is both an accomplishment and a work in progress, and so it [...]
So incisive and troubling did the Nazis find Jean Renoir’s indictment of war and his embrace of the shared culture of Europe, that when the Wehrmacht invaded France and occupied Paris in the spring of 1940, Renoir’s film La Grande Illusion was among the first cultural artifacts Nazi officials confiscated… The Great War was a catastrophe for Europe. The [...]
What is friendship? Why is it important and why is it worth cultivating? These axiomatic questions form a significant part of the thought and writing of C. S. Lewis. In a letter to his lifelong friend, Arthur Greeves, Lewis touched upon the heart and meaning of friendship: The First [Universal Friend] is the alter ego, [...]
The last Saturday morning in August, my wife noticed that some of our neighbors had a moving truck outside their home. After watching with the kids for a minute or two, she acknowledged that she had never seen the people before. I recognized the man, though I had never spoken to him—he seemed to purposefully [...]
“Owen Barfield on C.S. Lewis” allows us to enter into the friendship of the two men in some mysterious and possibly mystical way. It is not just a testament to that friendship, it is a testament to friendship in general. “He stood before me as a mystery as solidly as he stood beside me as [...]
"Every human being, my dear, must thus be viewed according to what it is good for, for none of us, no not one, is perfect; and were we to love none who had imperfections this world would be a desert for our love. All we can do is to make the best of our friends: [...]
Through the Tea Club he formed with his young classmates, J.R.R. Tolkien felt his first comradery among friends dedicated to something higher than themselves… Long before Tolkien began his own personal mythology, he had already lived a rather full life. Joy as well as tragedy had filled it. His father had passed away while Tolkien, [...]
Friendship, or philia, is one of the “loves” that C.S. Lewis elucidates and celebrates in his book, The Four Loves, the others being familial love (storge), sexual love (eros) and Divine love (caritas or agape). Although not the greatest or highest of the loves, Lewis saw friendship as the noble coming together of those who [...]
For all whom we love and value, for every friend and connection, we equally pray; however divided and far asunder, we know that we are alike before Thee and under Thine eye. May we be equally united in Thy faith and fear, in fervent devotion towards Thee, and in Thy merciful protection this night. —from Jane [...]
The relationship between C.S. Lewis and poet Roy “Zulu” Campbell was a troubled and mercurial one, which lurched, sometimes violently, between enmity and friendship. In this third and final essay about the relationship between C. S. Lewis and Roy Campbell, the “bearded poet” whom Lewis lampoons in The Pilgrim’s Regress, we will chart their troubled [...]
I was intrigued to learn that the weird poet Edith Sitwell was friends with the wild sexpot Marilyn Monroe. The juxtaposition of the aristocratic Englishwoman with the Hollywood starlet makes one wonder about the two women and the lessons we might learn from their famous and fragile lives. Having known for some time of the [...]
Some people like cooking. Others don’t—indeed, some would be happy to guzzle Soylent and throw the whole cooking thing out the window. Yet many of us, as we grow older, become responsible for others: children, friends, and family members who may come over for dinner or who may live with us. Cooking isn’t a gender-specific [...]
It takes all sorts to make a world and all shades of opinion to make a good discussion or even a good argument. There is, however, as Chesterton reminds us, a world of difference between an argument and a quarrel. The former is animated by charity and a genuine desire to arrive at the truth; [...]
As young children, my older brother and I watched the original Star Trek series on Saturday mornings. We were not big TV watchers as a family, but Star Trek was special. To make it even better, it was the local PBS that aired Star Trek, presenting it free of all commercials. Every Saturday, Todd and [...]