61 The Trials that made C.S. Lewis - a podcast by Br Lawrence MGL

C.S. Lewis, the mind behind Narnia, did not have an easy life. See how God uses the crucibles of loneliness, challenging domestic life and existential crisis to forge one of the greatest authors and apologists of our times.

Short excerpt from episode: "... C.S. Lewis never had it easy at home or in the family life … right from childhood all the way to his death. After his mother’s ultimately death when he was nine, Lewis’s relationship with his father became deeply strained, as his father grew more and more distant. You could almost say he grew up with an absentee father, which we now know in some ways is even more painful than losing a father outright. And it wasn’t like Lewis wasn’t partly to blame for the estrangement: he would write later in life that the strain with his father was the greatest sin of his life. But luckily, they did get to reconcile shortly before his father died, where they could spent 6 golden weeks together. Two more significant domestic figures punctuate the decades of Lewis' adult years - his brother Warnie, and also a certain Mrs Moore, who shared a home with Lewis even throughout his years of fame. Mrs Janie Moore was a fascinating figure indeed… and also mysterious. During WWI, Lewis had made a promise to his friend Paddy, that should one of them perish, they would look after the surviving parent. True to his word, when Paddy died, Lewis took Mrs Moore into his home after the war, and lived with her until her own death, thirty years later. Moore in turn became the mother and father Lewis never had, and so, a psychologically complex sort of co-dependency developed. What was their relationship like?.."

Practical Pilgrim Reflection: Here is a YouTube link to the movie Shadowlands, which centres of C.S. Lewis' relationship with Joy Davidman. Anthony Hopkins plays a surprisingly satisfying Lewis! 

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