C.S. Lewis' Letter to a little girl...
C.S. Lewis wrote the following letter in response to a letter from a little girl in 1958... It struck me quite hard and I want to preserve it on my blog just in case I lose the book:
"Dear Mary,
Thank you for you letter of the 26th. I am very sorry to hear about the earache. It is a horrid thing, much worse than a toothache. We all go through periods of dryness in our prayers, don't we? I doubt (but ask your directeur) whether they are necessarily a bad symptom. I sometimes suspect that what we feel to be our best prayers are really our worst; that what we are enjoying is the satisfaction of apparent success, as in exectuting a dance or reciting a poem. Do our prayers sometimes go wrong because we insist on trying to talk to God when He wants to talk to us. Joy (Lewis' wife) tells me that once, years ago, she was haunted one morning by a feeling that God wanted something of her, a persistent pressure like the nag of a neglected duty. And till mid-morning she kept on wondering what it was. But the moment she stopped worrying, the answer came through as plain as a spoken voice. It was "I don't want you to do anything. I want to give you something"; and immediately her heart was full of peace and delight. St. Augustine says, "God give where He finds empty hands." A man whose hands are full of parcels can't receive a gift. Perhaps these parcels are not always sins or earthly cares, but sometimes our own fussy attempts to worship Him in our way. Incidentally, what most often interrupts my own prayers is not great distractions but tiny ones-- things one will have to do or avoid in the course of the next hour.
We are all well, but tired of the refusal of spring to arrive I've never known a colder, wetter, darker March. This is pretty early in the morning and Joy is still asleep; otherwise she would join me in our love to you.
Yours,
Jack
"Dear Mary,
Thank you for you letter of the 26th. I am very sorry to hear about the earache. It is a horrid thing, much worse than a toothache. We all go through periods of dryness in our prayers, don't we? I doubt (but ask your directeur) whether they are necessarily a bad symptom. I sometimes suspect that what we feel to be our best prayers are really our worst; that what we are enjoying is the satisfaction of apparent success, as in exectuting a dance or reciting a poem. Do our prayers sometimes go wrong because we insist on trying to talk to God when He wants to talk to us. Joy (Lewis' wife) tells me that once, years ago, she was haunted one morning by a feeling that God wanted something of her, a persistent pressure like the nag of a neglected duty. And till mid-morning she kept on wondering what it was. But the moment she stopped worrying, the answer came through as plain as a spoken voice. It was "I don't want you to do anything. I want to give you something"; and immediately her heart was full of peace and delight. St. Augustine says, "God give where He finds empty hands." A man whose hands are full of parcels can't receive a gift. Perhaps these parcels are not always sins or earthly cares, but sometimes our own fussy attempts to worship Him in our way. Incidentally, what most often interrupts my own prayers is not great distractions but tiny ones-- things one will have to do or avoid in the course of the next hour.
We are all well, but tired of the refusal of spring to arrive I've never known a colder, wetter, darker March. This is pretty early in the morning and Joy is still asleep; otherwise she would join me in our love to you.
Yours,
Jack
posted by Laura Alden at Sunday, October 10, 2004
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