Lewis's Oxford and grave (he loved cats--especially lions!)

On this day, November 22, 1963, Aldous Huxley died in LA of an LSD overdose, JFK died in Dallas from an assassin's bullet to the head. And on the same day at The Kilns near Oxford, C. S. Lewis's devoted brother Warnie brought a cup of tea to his ailing younger brother. Moments later, Warnie heard a clattering fall. Lewis had tried to get out of bed but had collapsed. He died of kidney failure. "Men must endure their going hence," was the Shakespeare quotation from the calendar on the day Lewis's mother had died many years before when he was nine. Warnie had the words chiseled on his brother's grave marker in Holy Trinity churchyard in Headington Quarry where you can see them today.  Eclipsed by the high-profile deaths of the author of Brave New World and an American president, in the drenching November rain, only a handful of friends showed up for Lewis's funeral and burial. 

In a chapter of God Sings! (And Ways We Think He Ought To), I explore a number of the things C. S. Lewis wrote about congregational singing and hymns, by no means all complimentary. Early in his Christian experience, he thought the things his unsophisticated neighbors tried to sing in church were "fifth-rate poems set to sixth-rate music." He revised that as he matured spiritually. I conclude that chapter with the following:

LEWIS SINGS NOW

In a thrilling moment in The Magician’s Nephew, Lewis gives us a peek into the irrepressible force of music, perhaps what he truly longed for in singing. He has Aslan utter

"...a long single note; not very loud, but full of power. Polly’s heart jumped in her body when she heard it.

She felt sure that it was a call, and that anyone who heard that call would want to obey it and (what’s

more) would be able to obey it, however many worlds and ages lay between."

We can be pretty certain Lewis and his brother would not be bolting from their pew at the end of the church service and heading for the exit sign during that kind of anthem.

Though Lewis may have been overly opinionated about congregational singing in worship, and wanted “fewer, better, and shorter hymns,” over time he did come to see “the great merit” of the voice of the congregation, untrained, but singing from the heart, voices joining together, making a joyful noise unto the Lord.

Three hundred years before Lewis’s time, another Oxford-trained poet, Thomas Ken, wrote of glorified saints singing in heaven:

And hymns with the supernal choir

Incessant sing and never tire.

We’re safe to assume that C. S. Lewis is doing it as we speak, singing more, the best, and longest hymns, incessant ones, right next to the man in elastic side boots who used to sing out of tune, but now who sings more like how God himself sings.

Douglas Bond is author of Grace Works! (And Ways We Think It Doesn't) and twenty-seven other books of historical fiction, biography, devotion, and practical theology. He is lyricist for New Reformation Hymns, directs the Oxford Creative Writing Master Class, speaks at churches and conferences, and leads Church history tours in Europe. His book God Sings! (And Ways We Think He Ought To), from which this post is an excerpt, is available at bondbooks.net; order today and receive a free Rise and Worship cd.

Solitary Conceit: CS Lewis Sticking His Nose Up at Hymns

A

 generation ago, most mature Christians knew the power of singing psalms and psalm-like hymns in worship, in the home, and around the family table. Experienced Christians knew more of life and of the reality of death; they had knelt at the deathbed of loved ones and friends, and made the connection. A disciplined life of joyful singing was one of the very important ways we prepared ourselves for singing in the hour of death, blessing and encouraging the dying—and ourselves, the bereaved living.

"Solitary conceit," Lewis later called this dislike

Enter one of the great tragic problems for the new generation of Christians who have spent their lives singing happy-clappy songs, with little or nothing about death and dying in those songs, and singing them in a venue that requires the full array of entertainment instruments and soloists to lead us, a venue that is wholly inaccessible at the deathbed. There’ll be no band, no lead vocalist, nor will there be an organ at your loved one’s deathbed—or at yours.

Thoughtful Christians, ones who look down the road, will want to sing in the home and in their churches in ways that can be portable, can be carried on in the hospice bed. Christian, rediscover how to sing, before it’s too late.

The stories are legion of the elderly unable to remember anything and anyone, but able to sing hymns they had learned in their childhood. My father-in-law, suffering with Alzheimer’s, unable to remember his own wife and children, and unable to read the words in front him, sang Christmas carols with us a few short months before his death, all by memory—which he had of nothing else. Ten minutes before my father died, he sang Psalm 23 with us; I believe he was even harmonizing on the bass line, as he had taught me to do in corporate singing as a young man.

But it’s not just the elderly. There’s the 2014 account of eighteen-year-old Lexi Hansen who was pronounced brain dead and on life support after being struck by a car while riding her longboard. The doctors were grim; they said the unresponsive teen had a 5% likelihood of survival. Lexi’s mother gave the account of the family joining hands around her hospital bed, expecting her to die. Then, one of them began singing hymns. The rest of the family joined in. In moments, Lexi’s eyes opened, and she squeezed her family’s hands as they sang.

I remember seeing my aunt who had turned away from her Christian upbringing, now in her eighties, weeping as we stood around the piano singing hymns from her childhood, hymns whose content she no longer claimed to believe. Tears, nevertheless. 

In his Confessions, Augustine credits overhearing Christians singing with preparing his heart for the gospel. “How greatly did I weep in thy hymns and canticles, deeply moved by the voices of thy Church so sweetly singing.”

It would be impossible to overstate the role of corporate singing in the Reformation. John Calvin, cautious about music, nevertheless, knew its power over human hearts. “Music has a secret and almost incredible power to move hearts.” And Luther ranked music, and singing hymns together in worship, next only to the Word of God and theology.

SOLITARY CONCEIT

Though C. S. Lewis did not get everything right, one of the things that compels many of us back to his writing, is that in the things he did get right he wrote and spoke about those things better than just about anyone. But when it comes to singing in corporate worship, Lewis seems unable to break free of some of his early prejudices against corporate singing. Put bluntly, Lewis did not agree with Augustine, Calvin, and Luther about hymns and the power of singing them in worship, at least not initially.

Picture Lewis as a new convert in 1931, knotting his tie and walking from his home The Kilns to attend corporate worship at Holy Trinity parish church for the very first time as a true believer in Christ, in working-class Headington Quarry, only three miles from the exalted spires of his sophisticated life at the oldest university in England, but an intellectual and aesthetic cosmos apart from his life in blue-color Headington Quarry.

In his collection of essays, God in the Dock, Lewis describes his initial impression of his neighbors’ singing, their untrained voices, their unrefined musical tastes.

I disliked very much their hymns, which I

considered to be fifth-rate poems set to sixth-rate

music. But as I went on, I saw the great merit of it. I

came up against different people of quite different

outlooks and different education, and then gradually

my conceit just began peeling off. I realized that the

hymns (which were just sixth-rate music) were,

nevertheless, being sung with devotion and benefit

by an old saint in elastic-side boots in the opposite

pew, and then you realize that you aren’t fit to clean

those boots. It gets you out of your solitary conceit.

It is not for me to lay down laws, as I am only a

layman, and I don’t know much.

Notice the development of his opinion about their singing, “the great merit of it.” Whatever his claims about not knowing much, Lewis had finely tuned, refined musical and literary tastes. Literature was his life’s work. He was one of the best-read scholars of his century, and much of that reading was poetry. Yet, he was operating under the cloud of postmodern changes in poetry, the Imagists of the early 20^th century, the fragments of vers libre poets, and the general revolt against conventional poetry, the kind Lewis appreciated, understood, and loved. This may have had an influence on his early rejection of their “fifth-rate hymns.” The literary elites of the 20^th century insisted that poetry with specific theological content was lesser poetry, perhaps not even worthy of being included as poetry. Lewis could not be entirely unaffected by his culture’s secular prejudice.

But observe Lewis’s change, his confession that it was his pride, his “solitary conceit” that led to his early dislike of corporate singing at Holy Trinity.

HYMN TO EVOLUTION

More of a spoof than a true hymn of praise to God, Lewis did set his pen to write a hymn, a tongue-in-cheek lyric to evolution.

Lead us, Evolution, lead us

Up the future’s endless stair;

Chop us, change us, prod us, weed us.

For stagnation is despair:

Groping, guessing, yet progressing,

Lead us nobody knows where.

Having fun at evolution’s expense, Lewis continues his playfully derisive verse through several more stanzas. We can’t help applauding his mocking lyric. But Lewis, of course, would not rank this as a proper hymn to be sung in the praise of God in corporate worship.

CORRUPT TEXTS

Nevertheless, hymns and singing not infrequently appear in Lewis’s writing... [excerpt from God Sings! (And Ways We Think He Ought To), available at bondbooks.net]

Douglas Bond is author of Grace Works! (And Ways We Think It Doesn't) and twenty-seven other books of historical fiction, biography, devotion, and practical theology. He is lyricist for New Reformation Hymns, directs the Oxford Creative Writing Master Class, speaks at churches and conferences, and leads Church history tours in Europe. His book God Sings! (And Ways We Think He Ought To), from which this post is an excerpt, is available at bondbooks.net; order today and receive a free Rise and Worship cd.

How Does a Cathedral Mean?

Notre Dame Paris, 2013

I've been thinking a good deal about Notre Dame burning in Paris. I know I am not alone. My first of many visits to the most visited monument in Paris (yes, more than the Eiffel Tower) was in 1982; our Armistice Centenary Tour visited Notre Dame ten months ago. I will never forget or ever be able to fully express in words what walking into an 850-year-old Gothic cathedral feels like. It still feels that way. 

To the thousands who participated in building it, what did all the splendor mean? To a world secularizing at warp speed, what does a centuries-old stone church mean? I explore some of these questions in chapter 27 of my WWII historical fiction book The Resistance (available at bondbooks.net). My protagonist downed B-17 pilot and his French Resistance escort are forced to hide from the encircling SS manhunt on the precipitous tiles of a Medieval house directly across the street from another French Gothic structure, Bayeux Cathedral. Here's what happened:

27

HEIGHT OF TERROR

T

he alarm now wailed in Evans’ head, unrelenting, inescapable. Then, abruptly, it was no longer internal.

From the street came the roar of engines, tires thrumming on the cobblestones, brakes screeching to a halt, doors slamming, jackboots clonking on the pavement. Crisp knocking on a door. Silence. Fists beating a door. Shouting in German. Rifle butts pounding on a door five stories below.

“Maybe it is another door,” hissed Andre, his face ashen. “Perhaps for someone else?”

Hasty footfalls came from the stairs, then rapid knocking on the door of Andre’s studio.

Through the keyhole came a breathless voice. “They are coming! Waffen SS!”

“For us? Are you certain?”

“Absolutely. At the door of the shop.”

“How much time?”

“Three minutes. No more,” and he was gone.

Aimée grabbed Evans’ arm. “We must hide you!” He drew in breath sharply. His shoulder was not fully healed yet.

“Forget me,” said Evans. “Hide Ruben.”

“It is you they are searching for,” said Aimée, her green eyes wide and imploring. “You are an American flyer. If they find you, they will arrest all of us, including Ruben.”

She turned to Andre. “Is there anywhere?”

“The roof.” With a sweep of his arm, he cleared the workbench. “Out the window. Climb along the gable. Do not fall. Hide behind the chimney. Be sure they do not see you.”

“I want to go home.” There was a quaver in Ruben’s voice; he tugged at Aimée’s hand.

“Evans, you must hurry,” said Aimée, leaning toward him as if to give him farewell kisses on the cheeks.

“No!” said Andre. “You must hide as well. I will take the boy down. He is my cousin. It will look normal with the boy. They are not searching for a little boy.”

Aimée began to protest.

“There is no time. Go now! Hide with the American. We will stall them.”

Swallowing the lump in his throat, Evans followed Aimée out the window and onto the steep, slate roof. He tried not to look down. The hard cobblestones, he knew they were far below.

Scrambling behind the chimney, Evans drew in a deep breath and let it out slowly. He’d flown bombing missions high over enemy-occupied Europe, antiaircraft riddling his Fort, Fw190 fighters swooping in for the kill. Why more raw fear at this?

He heard the SS captain barking orders at his men in German, the harsh commands echoing across the street below and bouncing back at them off the west façade of the cathedral. Dropping bombs from 20,000 feet on munitions factory buildings, dangerous as it was, was detached, impersonal, done with machines. This was close, human, intimate, and—he feared—soon to be face-to-face.

Aimée and Evans pressed against the brickwork of the chimney. It wasn’t much cover, but it was all they had. A soldier glancing up from the street at just the right angle, and they would be seen. They pressed closer together, hard against the ridge and the chimney. Evans heard and felt Aimée’s heart pounding next to him, and the clutching staccato of her breath. Or was it his own?

“All we can do is wait,” whispered Evans, his voice barely audible.

Aimée’s face was pale. “And pray.” She mouthed the words. “I could not bear it if anything happened to my little brother.”

He nodded, trying to slow down the hammering of his heart. Directly across the narrow street loomed the massive cathedral. Evans studied the intricate medieval statuary adorning the west façade. The resurrection of the dead, souls rising from tombs, some to heaven, more to hell. Clearly the stonemason was more interested in the howling torments of the damned in hell.

A spasm fluttered in Evans’ left hamstring muscle. He tried to ignore it. The spasm hardened, constricting and contracting, tightening into an iron fist. If only he could change positions. The pain was excruciating. He tried to relax, but it was impossible, not while clinging to a precipitous roof on a medieval house far above the street. Teeth clenched, a tremor ran through his body.

“What is the matter, Evans?” whispered Aimée.

He swallowed hard and attempted to control the quavering he knew would be in his voice if he spoke.

“Are you ill?”

 “Cramp,” he managed to mouth, “in my leg.”

“I am sorry for you,” she whispered. “Perhaps, pressure directly on the muscle?”

He nodded. Holding on for dear life, how was he going to apply direct pressure to the back of his thigh?

“Think of something else,” she suggested. She bobbed her head at the cathedral façade. “Think of that.”

He looked again at the medieval stonework; the muscle in his leg felt like hard stone. The writhing condemned in the Last Judgment scene looked like he felt at the moment. Evans studied the north portal. It began to make sense. The mason had chiseled stony vignettes from the Passion of Christ. There was the Last Supper, the betrayal, Jesus praying to his father in the garden; and there was the kiss of Judas, the arrest, torture, carrying the cross, brutal crucifixion.

Evans shuddered. The war, the SS bursting into homes, arrests, torture, senseless killing, reprisals, ambush, spies, double agents, secret radio transmissions—being shot down, bailing out, hunted, others in grave danger because of him. How would all that look in stone relief? 

He scanned back through the stone vignettes, the knot in his hamstring subsiding. Why had they done it, carved those scenes in stone, built the entire structure, all in stone?

It suddenly occurred to Evans that from this angle, cowering high atop the roof of a medieval house, he and Aimée were seeing parts of the cathedral others never saw. Statues so high up, so out of sight from passersby, they were impossible to be seen from the pavement. Slowly, he scanned the facade, higher and higher it continued. People had lived in the shadow of Bayeux’s cathedral for nearly 1000 years, and how many hundreds of intricately carved statuary had never been seen by anyone? Yet humble stonecutters had tap-tapped away for years, decades, generations, each successive mason doing his part to create this magnificent place, whether his work would ever be seen by anyone or not. What was so important that centuries of workers would do it?

As Evans mused, the sun began to set and a golden glow radiated from the façade of the ancient edifice. Even if it had been safe to speak aloud, what was on display at that instant was so spectacular, wonder alone would have hushed them.

What had the voice on the BBC broadcast said only a short while ago? “When Christ died, he died for you individually just as much as if you’d been the only man in the world.” Evans wasn’t at all sure what it meant; Sunday School had been long ago; he needed to think more deeply about it. But whatever it did mean, it made him feel that there had to be something bigger, far more important than his own troubles.

Jolted abruptly back to the peril of the moment, Evans and Aimée heard the harsh barking of the SS captain apparently reentering the street below. They could not see anything, but his words echoed from the gulf between the house and the façade of the cathedral.

“Please, God, not Ruben,” whispered Aimée.

Evans nodded in agreement. He wanted to see what was going on five stories below, in the street. He felt so helpless. What good was a flyer without his weapon, his plane? If only he could do something to stop the Germans.

“When will they leave?”

Evans shook his head. He had no idea. How long would they have to hide? All night?

The yelling continued, guttural, harsh, brutal. There was nothing to do but wait. Oddly, as they waited, involuntarily crammed together behind the chimney, high atop the medieval house, they began to feel detached from the commotion, as if their vantage point made them safe, at least for the instant.

“If I tell you something,” whispered Evans, “can you promise not to tell anyone else?”

Aimée looked wary. “Oui, bien sur.”

Evans cleared his throat, loosening the scarf at his neck. “I-I am not a big fan of heights.”

Aimée looked wide-eyed at him, and then her lips twitched slightly, as if she were restraining herself; it was hardly the time for humor.

“You are a pilot. You fly the mighty B-17, the Flying Fortress. The high-altitude bomber of your Army Air Corps. Are you telling me that you are afraid of heights?”

Evans nodded. “Always have been. Never liked climbing trees. Never slept in the top bunk. I told my younger brother it was the best mattress. Until one day he figured it out. I had to pay him off with marbles to keep quiet. And then we got older, but he still remembered.”

“It is courageous to do this.”

“What, to tell you?”

“I suppose. But I think it is courageous to fly high-altitude bomber airplanes when you are afraid of heights, in defiance of your fears.”

“Courageous? Maybe, or maybe just dull-witted.”

Aimée smiled. “You being dull-witted this morning at the checkpoint, it was merely a ruse de guerre.”

Evans nodded. “I get a hitch in my innards just hearing the words high-altitude. I really should have volunteered to do something closer to the ground.”

“Then you would not be here.” Aimée said it as a matter of fact.

Evans stole a glance at her.

“Ruse de guerre,” she said. “Comprenez-vous?”

Evans swallowed, avoiding her gaze, her green eyes that looked right through you. Ruse de guerre, he understood. Deception of war. Everyone in wartime engaged in it—generals, prime ministers, spies, deep-cover agents. And so was he.

It was nearly dark. The yelling abruptly stopped. For an instant there was silence in the invisible gulf below them.  Suddenly, vehicle engines roared to life, and the SS sped north down the Rue de Bienvenu.

Read all of The Resistance by Douglas Bond

Being a Writer--Is It Worth It? Inkblots

"[Writing] holds all the hope there is." EB White

Stormy Pacific Northwest day, heavy rain, dark and gray, power outages in region, brown-outs here--a good day to hunker down, drink tea, and write. Six Blots braving the dark and bluster for two hours of vigorous literary time together. It was well worth it.

Hear what the collaborator/refiner of Elements of Style wrote about being a writer: "I’m glad to report that even now, at this late day, a blank sheet of paper holds the greatest excitement there is for me—more promising than a silver cloud, prettier than a little red wagon. It holds all the hope there is, all fears. I can remember, really quite distinctly, looking a sheet of paper square in the eyes when I was seven or eight years old and thinking, ‘This is where I belong, this is it.'" E. B. White

Does your writing journey concur with White's? This is not my testimony. My first book was published when I was forty. Sydney concurred with E. B. White. None of us were surprised at that bit of intelligence. But what about his words, writing "holds all the hope there is"? If not hyperbole, it is very sad, indeed, when my hope is in any work I do with my own hands, mind, imagination. I do agree about the fear part, though. If you write, you will fail, and there will be a lineup of critics to inform you and the rest of the world about your failure, real or perceived. Is it worth it?

Rachel Ng leads off with her 1941 yarn, just as the US entered WWII. She feels like she's made major progress. How? By consistency. Getting up and going to work, writing work. Daisy Bishop... saucy, pendulum rhythm. I like it. I agree, your dialogue is lively, realistic. And you are still giving it layers with description of people and inner worries. I wonder how much is gained by nearly identical uniforms; just identical uniforms, but even that is redundant, uniforms being already identical wear. What are you actually wanting to feature in this description? I feel like the closer connection with Walter the lieutenant and Daisy your female protagonist happened too suddenly. Maybe I missed something. Is quality control too modern a phrase for the historical period? We discussed for some time the age of Daisy for 1941. Seventeen would not have been too young for marriage. I suggested that Rachel make her 15. Rachel H suggested 16 to avoid the modern creep factor, which would not have been there in those days. My mother in law was married when she was 16, 60 years ago.

Sydney up next. Picked up after Fynn was dragged out of the prison. Far better fate than God, or god is it? I want you to come back to this in other places and have this be a doctrine that gets revised as the story unfolds. Almost, pain in the word almost. I think the first person is working so well for Sydney in this sobering tale. I want to suggest that you break up lengthier passages of dialogue with more natural interjections, as in human conversation, where people interject, if not interrupt. The best dialogue is like a relay race, the baton passing smoothly, logically, fluidly from one speaker to the other. Dialogue is the place for sentence fragments, and filling in the blank from one speaker to the next. I love Sydney's as ifs. Especially with the descriptions of the crosses in the cemetery. And the door opened. Intrigue in every dependent clause. Rhythm and cadence in the prose, Rachel H commented, poetic feeling prose. Cheyenne liked the transition from the last chapter, grim array of crosses and death, to this chapter. Sydney was able to outline forward, plot the future of the story. 

Cheyenne wrote this yesterday and feels like this passage needs help. Brave soul. Chapter 13 of book 2. She revised this based on input that it leapt too much, not enough character development and setting development. Historical fantasy, medieval Japan-esque. Other worlder, more goes on than you know. Quiet stillness of the air. Is this a redundancy? What feature of the atmosphere are you wanting to share with your reader here? Cheyenne has her protagonist ask internal questions, inner conflict. This only works in first person point of view, one of the strengths of this pov. Faces, faces. I feel like this might be too internal. John liked the part about the dreams. Sydney had read this before the dream was included. Alisa thought the pace was good, but she had a couple of ideas. Oblivion, could she actually answer some of her questions. Should she remember more of the cause of the dream? Cheyenne wrote about her protagonist's remembering of the dream, and Sydney thought that she should have more vivid recollections of the specific details. The questions she is asking will be answered as the plot unfolds. Rachel H suggested that there be eyes or a ring or something that symbolizes the dream or the conflict of the dream. 

Alisa finishes us up for this evening, reading from The Emblem, forthcoming in 2019. Nobody I know is as thorough and persistent as Alisa. she has the drive and work ethic of a master storyteller. It shows in her work. Chapter 3, Callie ran all the way home, working for the Burke family. Could she remember her father's injury more graphically, or more immediately, as in how he walks now, or how he winces with the weather changes? Something that makes her sadness about her father's injury have a more tangible feel for the reader. I thought you handled Sam's answer so well. And her longing for her father to have more of Sam's attitude about his injury and work in the mines as the years pass and aging makes the hard labor harder. Mt Pisgah Presbyterian, is this a real church in Roslyn? FDR's fireside chats--could you have a brief excerpt he was hearing, crackling from the radio on the sideboard, maybe? This is powerful, seeing a man declining in health and age, the verve dwindling. Five perspectives. Press on. Looking forward to reading the whole book.

There are going to be a number of remarkable writers, there are already, coming from this fine group of people sitting around the Scriptorium this evening. 

This just received from a post-publication reviewer of my newest release: "The Resistance is quite a work. I read it in one sitting--all the way through. You have an extraordinary ability to capture the nature of minds at war. All the ambiguities. All the inhumanities. All the stress of war and flying in it, and the camaraderie of those aircrews. The sense of responsibility in Evans is brilliant throughout." Marvin Padgett, Executive Director of Great Commissions Publications 

My host, Richard L. Pike on my speaking time in Western Australia in September, turns out to be a remarkable C. S. Lewis look alike and sound alike. Here's one of the clips I did of him reading a segment heard by the French Resistance in The Resistance: 

Special 2-book bundle of my War in the Wasteland and newest release, The Resistance at bondbooks.net. CS Lewis plays a significant role in both books, though more subtle in The Resistance. He is antagonist in the WWI yarn and "the voice of faith" on the BBC broadcasts heard by the French Resistance in my newest. 

Is This Dying? (excerpt from THE RESISTANCE)

3

HELL FIRE

Teen, atheist to BBC "voice of faith."

For an instant, as Evans free fell from the spiraling bomber, he was certain the right wing was going to pound into his body like the arm of a giant windmill. Hot black smoke engulfed him, choking him, the heat from the burning engines suffocating him, singeing his hair. The ground rushing closer.

Why had he not gone into the infantry? As God intended, both feet firmly on the ground? He hated heights, always had. “Keep your eyes on the instruments and fly the plane,” his father had knowingly advised him.

He didn’t remember pulling the ripcord. Just a violent wrenching as his chute harness tried to crush the breath out of him, then nausea, and wincing pain in his left shoulder.

Then silence. His ears ringing from the chaos of noise he’d just escaped—engines roaring, machine guns spewing bullets, the high-pitched whine of the Fw 190s, more machine guns firing, the horrifying rush of air as he free fell through the bomb bay. And now silence, utter, floating silence.

For an instant, Evans wondered if this was death. Had he died and was this floating to heaven? Was there such a place? War had made him a firm believer in hell. But was there a heaven? And if so, who on earth—on such an earth—would be going there?

Then, behind and somewhere below his right boot, hanging prone from his chute harness, he heard a sickening crash as 25,000 tons of doomed aircraft hit the ground. Straining to see, he watched his B-17 erupt in a belching cloud of orange flame and black smoke. No, only a delusional fool would deny hell fire.

Tearing his eyes from the burning wreckage, Evans counted parachutes, one, two, three—he looked upward at the taut underside of his chute—four. Six of his crew didn’t make it. They were gone. A violent shudder ran down his spine. He was responsible for his men. He hoped they had died before the crash, before experiencing that burning inferno. He would write letters to their families, if he got the chance.

Suddenly, two of the chutes below him sagged and deflated. Two of his men were on the ground, in a pasture, bordered by a narrow road, enclosed on either side by a hedgerow. Alarmed at the sudden intrusion, three or four white cows kicked up their heels and fled.   

His navigator’s chute and his own were drifting sideways in a breeze, westward, as near as he could calculate. Then he saw them. Three trucks, a staff car, and two motorcycles.

His heart sank. Gunmetal gray paint, iron cross on the doors, swastika fluttering from the hood of the staff car...

Douglas Bond, author of a number of successful books of historical fiction, biography, and practical theology, podcasts at The Scriptorium, speaks at churches and conferences, and leads historical tours in Europe. Order a signed copy of The Resistance at bondbooks.net.

Driving, Writing, and Living On the Wrong Side of the Road

OXFORD CREATIVE WRITING MASTER CLASS
Picture yourself here with me on the next OCWMC 

"Drive left. Look right! God, help me to do this right--I mean, correct!" So I tell myself and pray in the days and hours before leading another group of aspiring writers on the Oxford Creative Writing Master Class. At Heathrow, I warily circle the nine-passenger rental van and then lunge into the driver's seat on the right side, murmuring to myself to keep the vehicle on the left side of the road and a weather eye to the Bentleys, Minis, red buses, and black cabbies bearing down on my right side. Though it is not my first rodeo (not to be construed as a cliche; it is a metaphor chosen precisely to reflect how it feels swerving around about every frantically encircling roundabout intersection), I have driven in the UK on the wrong side of the vehicle--and the road--over many years now. But I still pray earnestly before loading the van with precious human cargo and braving the blaring streets, curvaceous back roads, and bustling motorways of Britain.

And then there's the matter of my talking--while driving (whilst motoring, to be more colloquial). One previous OCWMC participant, her hand trembling, passed me an almost illegible note on which she had scrawled out a plea for me to stop using hand gestures as I talk--and drive. "Please, please, keep both hands on the wheel," she implored me (I nodded, looking down at the clutch and gear shifter, wondering just how I was supposed to do that when every vehicle in the UK seems to be equipped with a manual transmission). As I teach my master class writers the evil of exaggerating language, I will avoid pronouncing it "miraculous," but it is a significant answer to prayer, with many instances of divine intervention, that I have never had an accident whilst motoring in Britain (okay, a few close calls; every one of them, I am morally certain, not my fault, like the one en route from London to Oxford opening day of the master class when a raven-colored Peugeot nearly strafed the side of us on the M-40, clearing my arteries, invigorating my vocabulary, and making me still more grateful).

In Oxford, or anytime I talk about writing, I emphasize the importance of figurative language, of metaphor. "The greatest thing by far," wrote Aristotle in his Poetics (384 BC - 322 BC), "is to have a command of metaphor. This alone cannot be imparted by another; it is the mark of genius, for to make good metaphors implies an eye for resemblances." And for the rest of us who are emphatically not geniuses, we work at training our eye and ear so we are equipped to use the most appropriate metaphors, the precise imaginative comparisons, the best mini stories to awaken the imagination and immerse our readers in the larger story.

Which makes me pause and consider driving on the wrong side of the car and the road as a metaphor, a miniature story very much like life itself. The author of the book of Proverbs employed a similar metaphor: "Turn not to the right hand or to the left. Keep your foot from evil." When driving a car, if I turn right when I should have turned left, or if I don't keep my eyes on the road ahead of me, screeching tires, broken glass, mangled metal, and far worse can follow.

Similarly, when writing a book, if I take my eyes off the real issue for my protagonist, or when I lose control of the story arc and the plot wanders aimlessly like an overfed bovine, sniffing at this or that irrelevant morsel, my reader gets distracted, yawns, closes the book, and (after awakening from his stupor), pounds out a scathing review on amazon.

How much worse when this happens in life. When I wander to the right and then to the left, grazing for fulfillment and happiness in this tidbit and that morsel of this life, I will always come up empty, unsatisfied, idolatrous, lost. And damned. The stakes are high. Those who persist with this try-this, try-that, foraging approach to life will end this life and enter the life to come with the most horrific words ringing in their eternal ears, "Depart from me you cursed into everlasting fire where there is weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth." When we do this in life, the result is infinitely worse than a car smash-up or a bad review on amazon.

Though our culture persists in shrieking the mantra, "There are many roads," or in effect, "Take whatever road feels good. There is no wrong side of the road." Imagine driving or writing that way. Made in the image of God, we all know at the deepest level of our being that there is only one road that leads to heaven. "One road leads home and a thousand roads lead into the wilderness," as CS Lewis put it. Left or right, O the pain of those thousand roads. No one gets to heaven by scrupulously following the right path, the path of self-improvement and good works; or from swerving left, following his heart and doing what he feels.

If not to the right or the left, where are we to keep our eyes? If there's only one way, The Way, how are we to get on--and keep on--the road? There's no equivocation. Nor is there any alternate route. The Word of God makes the path of life plain. Abandon all hope in ourselves and "Gaze upon the beauty of the Lord." It is what we were made for, not just on Good Friday or Easter, We are designed to keep our eyes straight ahead, to "Fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith." We do this because by his finished work on the cross in place of sinners and his righteousness imputed to those same sinners' specific account, Christ is alone the path to life; in his presence there is fullness of joy; at his right hand their are pleasures forevermore (Psalm 16).

God alone places us by his grace on the right road--and he alone keeps us on it. All other roads lead into the wilderness.     

Douglas Bond, author of dozens of books, directs the Oxford Creative Writing Master Class. Contact him about the next OCWMC at bondbooks.net@gmail.com