August 11th Meeting: Format Thoughts

I thought I'd break with tradition a little and give you all a heads up on the August 11th C.S. Lewis Society Meeting and make a few suggestions. The meeting book is "C.S. Lewis Essay Collection: Faith, Christianity, and the Church." The book has 67 entries, 55 essays and 12 letters. That would be a lot to read and discuss so I thought for this meeting we should have a slightly different format. Moreover the book is out of print (not sure why it is a wonderful resource) so if you can't get it but you have "God In the Dock", "Christian Reflections", "The World'http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifs Last Night", or "The Weight of Glory" you've got quite a subset of the essays presented here.

SHORT WORKS RESOURCE: < http://cslewis.wikispaces.com/Index+of+Short+Works > is a great resource if you want to find a particular essay and don't have this volume of essays.

MY SUGGESTION: is to read a few of the shorter essays and maybe a couple of the longer ones and pick one or two favorites and prepare to talk a little about your favorites:
1) What your favorite was?
2) What you liked about it?
3) What you thought Lewis was trying to get at and if you thought it fit into his other work is some way?
4) What questions it raised in your mind? or What answers it gave you?

AT THE MEETING: I thought we'd go through the group asking each person to share on their one or two favorites.
COMMON READING: Perhaps you could each read at least the two essays: 1) Christianity and Culture (also in Christian Reflections), and 2) Religion without Dogma (also in "The Grand Miracle" and in "God In The Dock") then we'll have something we've all read we can share.

LIST OF ESSAYS AND LETTERS ORGANIZED BY LENGTH: below is the contents of the volume in length order (things shown as 0 pages begin and end on the same page (letters generally). (sorry the columns are not exactly lined up)

Essay# Title #pages pg#
57 The Conflict in Anglican Theology 0 413 L
60 A Village Experience 0 415 L
63 The Holy Name 0 420 L
58 Miracles 1 413 L
59 Mr. C.S. Lewis on Christianity 1 414 L
64 Mere Christians 1 420 L
65 Canonisation 1 421 L
66 Pittenger-Lewis and Version Vernacular 1 422 L
27 What Christmas Means to Me 2 216
36 Two Ways With the Self 2 297
39 Three Kinds of Men 2 315
44 Scraps 2 346
56 The Conditions for a Just War 2 411 L
61 Correspondence with an Anglican who Dislikes Hymns 2 415 L
67 Capital Punishment and Death Penalty 2 423 L
9 Must Our Image of God Go? 3 66
11 Evil and God 3 93
20 Work and Prayer 3 160
23 On Forgiveness 3 184
34 Why I am Not a Pacifist 3 281
35 Dangers of National Repentance 3 294
41 The Laws of Nature 3 329
53 Christian Reunion 3 395
62 The Church's Liturgy, Invocation and Invocation of Saints 3 417
5 What Are We to Make of Jesus Christ? 4 38
7 Is Theism Important? 4 54
15 Horrid Red Things' 4 127
18 Religion and Science 4 143
37 Meditation on the Third Commandment 4 299
45 After Priggery -- What? 4 348
47 The Trouble with "X" ... ' 4 357
51 A Slip of the Tongue 4 384
4 God In the Dock 5 33
17 Myth Becamse Fact 5 138
22 The Decline of Religion 5 179
30 The Efficacy of Prayer 5 237
43 The Sermon and the Lunch 5 341
46 Man or Rabbit? 5 352
52 We Have No 'Right to Happiness' 5 388
54 Priestesses in the Church 5 398
29 Religion and Rocetry 6 231
48 On Living in an Atomic AGe 6 361
50 Good Work and Good Works 6 378
55 On Church Music 6 403
1 The Grand Miracle 7 3
16 Religion: Reality or Substitute? 7 131
8 The Seeing Eye 8 58
14 Dogma and the Universe 9 118
25 Petitionary Prayer 9 197
42 Membership 9 332
24 The Pains of Animals 10 187
26 On Obstinacy in Belief 10 206
3 The Funeral of a Great Myth 11 22
12 The Weight of Glory 11 96
13 Miracles 11 107
49 Lilies That Fester 11 367
2 Is Theology Poetry 12 10
6 The World's Last Night 12 42
32 The Language of Religion 12 255
33 Transposition 12 267
38 On Ethics 12 303
40 Answers to Questions on Christianity 12 317
19 Christian Apologetics 13 147
28 The Psalms 13 218
31 Fern-seed and Elephants 13 242
21 Religion Without Dogma? 16 163
10 Christianity and Culture 22 71

August 11th Essay Collection: Faith, Christianity and the Church

Our reading for the August meeting will be on the Essay Collection Faith, Christianity and the Church. This is a comprehensive essay collection of 67 essays which Lewis wrote on these themes. This collection, edited by Lesley Walmsley, is composed of the religious essays and letters from her definitive collection of 135 essays and letters titled Essay Collection & Other Short Pieces.

Neither volume appears to be in print currently however there are fairly inexpensive volumes of this available at second hand vendors and many of the essays can be found in other volumes of Lewis essays.

A useful resource when looking for where a Lewis essay might be found at a page I composed at the C.S. Lewis Wiki-Spaces site titled SHORT PIECES. A quick review shows that to get most of these essays you'd need at least five essay volumes and that you can't get them all without buying this volume. But if you want most you could have it if you have: 1) God In The Dock 2) Christian Reflections 3) Weight of Glory 4) The World's Last Night and 5) Present Concerns. And if you have all five of those volumes you'd still be missing some of the content here. So it's a good investment if you like having a one-stop reference for Lewis's essays on Faith, Christianity and the Church.

Since the amount of the material is so large I'd recommend that people coming to the meeting find a few favorites among the many essays in the volume or some of the volumes mentioned above and prepare to explain a little about what the essay says and why you liked it. Then if you can link it a little with another essay all the better.

The meetings are the second Thursday of each month at the Harrisonburg Barnes and Noble at 7:30 p.m. The group meets at the cluster of chairs in the back of the store at the right. Some members almost always show up at Panera's around 6:30 p.m. to eat dinner before the meeting and others grab coffee and a scone or other goodie at the Starbucks in the Barnes and Noble.