A Post About C.S. Lewis

Hre's one of those posts where I mainly want to preserve something I enjoyed and hope anyone reading it also enjoys it. this is a play about the life of C.S. Lewis ("Mere Christianity" and Narnia books among others). I'm not a fan of rht eacting style but I always enjoy Lewis' story and this covers the main events. The last half is about hi brief marriage to Joy Gresham which is very romantic and very touching.

I think I read all of lewis' books during my reading binge about religion which finally led me to Christ, and Lewis was a big part of what turned me to Protestantism. I'm really not a fan of his children's books but Mere Christianity and The Abolition of Man are I think my favorites. How he became a Christian is an interesting part of his life story and this play touches on it:


then I watched an interview with his stepson, Douglas Gresham, about whom I had known nothing until then, and what's particularly interesting to me about it is that When his mother Joy was diagnosed with bone cancer and given a few mweeks to a month to life, Douglas who was ten went and prayed for her to be healed, telling God that he couldn't live with out her. And that day she went into remission which gave them all some happy years. He was ten at the time.


tgeb U found the movie "Shadowlands" about Lewis' life with Joy and I've watching it. But I'm disappointed in it. The character of Joy doesn't come across as the vibrant witty genius Joy Gresham was in reality, which does come across more in other accounts of their life together. By the time they fall in love I don't see that much ground for it has been established. In life she was a tr4ue genius who had written poetry and books herself, someone Lewis later described as his intellectual equal in a way he hadn't found in any of his men friends. In the movie she comes ac5ross as ordinary and a bit forlorn, at least in the first pat of it. I'm hoping for better to come from the point of his marrying her during her hospitalization and the cancer's going into remission. the movie has also left out the boy's praying for her which is no doubt the reason for the remission. I love the actors, Anthony Hopkins and Debra Winger, but although Douglas Gresham recommended it I'm not happy with the movie yet. Nevertheless here's the link:


Well, I finished it and it didn't get any better. She spends most of her time in the movie sick. What about those almost four years of remission we'e heard about in which they had a passionate happy marriage. What about the endless wit at the dinner table they exchanged wsith each other according to her son> What about their happy trip to Greece just beffore she died, when she behaved "impishly" in the restaurant, flicking pieces of bread at the members of the very bad Greek band. No no no. This movie is not what their lives as they've been recounted elsewhere would lead us to respect. Not this unrelieved sadness. No no no.