I have just finished reading a new book by Joseph Loconte, The War for Middle Earth. The subtitle is “J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis Confront the Gathering Storm. 1933-1945.” It is a good book and I recommend it, though this will not be a book review.

As Loconte points out in a recent interview, for a generation of readers Lewis and Tolkien are not just authors. They are teachers and mentors. We remember when and where and why we first read The Chronicles of Narnia or Mere Christianity. We recall the thrill and the fear brought to mind by The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.

The works of Tolkien and Lewis have helped countless Christians make sense of our world. We hear the call to go “further up and further in” as we come to our “real country” (The Last Battle). When tragedy or trial crash into our lives, we join Frodo as he laments the ring having come to him. Gandalf’s wise words answer our fear and anxiety as they answered Frodo, “So do all who live to see such times, but that is not for them to decide. All you have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to you.” (The Fellowship of the Ring).

Loconte chronicles the ways in which the thoughts and the writing of Tolkien and Lewis, both veterans of the catastrophe (even the eucatastrophe?) of the Great War, equipped their contemporaries to weather not only the gathering storm, but to continue with Churchill’s phrases, “their finest hour” and “tragedy and triumph.”

Lewis and Tolkien were unlikely friends in many ways, yet their friendship is at the center of their story and of the impact they have had on millions of people. Each credits the other with encouraging him to keep on writing and keep on hoping in the darkest hours. Over a pint at the Eagle and Child pub (and occasional comments about the poor quality of war-time ale) or in Lewis’ rooms at Oxford, stories were told and deep thoughts about important things were shared. While keenly aware of the war and victory or defeat on the battlefield, they encouraged each other and their world with calls to courage and imagination, faith and virtue. Lewis would describe their friendship not so much the face-to-face sort as the side-by-side sort, a gift from God.

Lewis’ and Tolkien’s friendship changed not just their lives but the lives of so many others of us they invited into their worlds.

What about our friendships? I’ve been thinking about the friendships with which God has given me.

This Friday and Saturday I will be in Cincinnati for a Presbytery meeting. I am not looking forward to it so much because of an intriguing docket or the display of parliamentary excellence. I am looking forward to it for the time between docket items – those times in the hallway and over dinner when I am with friends, church people from Indiana, Ohio, and Michigan who have become friends over the past five years. Oh, we may roll our eyes at things that one or the other say, rise to speak against a motion a friend may have made, but mostly we will grow in our friendship just a bit, even find courage and imagination, faith and virtue, in the company of one another.

I don’t expect any of my friendships to change a million lives. Maybe a few lives will be or have been changed, however. Certainly, friendships have changed my life. Friends in California and in Oregon, Virginia and in Michigan, in Pennsylvania and in Indiana. Thank God for friends.

As for many of you, this past week in Auburn, Indiana, has been filled with wind and snow and very cold temperatures. And lots of snow shoveling. At least for me. My neighbors might be correct to assume that I have some sort of snow removal obsession disorder. Not long after the last flake floats to the ground (or sometimes a little bit before it makes its final landing), I am out to clear the driveway and sidewalks of the wicked white stuff. Heaven forbid if I have to leave the garage while there’s still snow on the driveway. Those nasty ice tracks become deadly slip traps for the next many days. So, yeah, I am sometimes obsessed with ridding our hard surfaces of that frozen menace.

We have lived in the real snow country of the mountains of California and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan where to let the falling snow get too far ahead of you is to never catch up.  I come by my compulsive behavior honestly.

Not all our neighbors share my obsession, however, as their sidewalks and driveways become obstacle courses of icy ruts and slippery concrete. Whether it is good for them to slip slide away on their way to work every morning is theirs to decide, however. Their inattention to the fine art of snow removal is not good for me, that is for sure. Filled with disdain and self-righteousness, I find myself judging my neighbor. Continue reading →

but I’m not a national champion

You may have heard that the Hoosiers of Indiana University are the national champions of college football. They beat Miami 27-21 on Monday night. In and of itself, the win should make any resident of Indiana proud. But it’s not just that. It was not the Ohio State Buckeyes or the University of Michigan Wolverines winning the national championship. It was the Indiana University Hoosiers. There are various ways of summing it up. ESPN puts it succinctly. Since records have been kept, IU had suffered “715 losses, which was the most recorded by any team in the 156 years of college football.”

The college with the worst record of all time is now the national champion. Way to go, Hoosiers!

And what or who are Hoosiers and how did they come to be called Hoosiers? No one knows where the appellation comes from, but in its nearly 200 years of use, it has come to mean someone from Indiana. Becky and I have been nomads, having lived in six different states, so our Hoosier identity may not be deep, but, indeed, we are Hoosiers, and Monday’s game adds just a little bit of polish to the name. Continue reading →

Sometime last year the street department put up a bunch of new speed limit signs in our neighborhood. I’m not sure the signs have had much effect. Some of our neighbors have been not so good about obeying the limit. This time of year, school buses pick up children before the sun rises. Fast cars, dark streets, and little kids laden with winter jackets and heavy backpacks are not a good combination.

Apparently, there was an incident last week when a car zipped down the street, adding a little bit of vroom as it sped past the corner where children were waiting for the bus. A mother standing on the sidewalk with her children was not happy and said so on the HOA Facebook page. Her rage was justified.

Most of the comments to the mother’s post were supportive or recounted similar tales of fast cars, dark streets, and little kids. The community cynic, whose quips I often appreciate, posted, “I thought we had new 25 MPH speed limit signs installed?” along with a smile emoji. Continue reading →

Someone asked why I don’t write much about politics. It’s not that I think politics are unimportant, it’s just that they have become such a distraction to my stated purpose here  of offering “observations on living life faithfully and fully in our ‘not the way it is supposed to be’ world.” And they are a personal distraction to what the Catechism tells me is my chief end – “to glorify God and enjoy him forever.”

One dictionary defines politics as “the activities of the government, members of law-making organizations, or people who try to influence the way a country is governed.”  Another speaks of “activities that relate to influencing the actions and policies of a government or getting and keeping power in a government.”  The polis, of course, is the city and it is a good thing for men and women to be engaged in politics as they seek to influence and guide the life of the city. I am not necessarily opposed to getting or keeping power, either, as that power is used to implement policies for the common good of the people of the polis. I am all for politics and politicians, whether I am in agreement with their direction and principles or not.

So, how have politics, arguably a good thing, become a distraction? Perhaps it is that politics have become more about power and less about the common good of the polis. Noble principles have been replaced by base ideologies. Politicians have become personalities in our personality-obsessed culture. Base ideologies and the cult of personality share a common home in the life of the ideologue, the “blindly partisan advocate or adherent of a particular ideology.” Continue reading →