The Inspiration of C. S. Lewis - The Inner Ring

 Speaking to college students in this address, Lewis provides advice and warning to young men concerning a temptation specific to the world, after a brief mention of the devil and the flesh. Although he does not refer to a specific scripture,1 John 2:15-17 aligns with his message.  He summarizes an exchange between two soldiers and their commanding officer from Tolstoy's War and Peace before launching into a discussion of the phenomenon of an "inner ring".  In that conversation, the two junior officers, instead of following the official system of conversation that would have respected the commanding general, followed their own system, and essentially ignored the general who had to wait for the junior officers to complete their conversation before he could speak. 

Have you ever noticed yourself being left out of conversations?  Do you know what it feels like to be excluded?  Who hasn't?  Lewis's address has a message for everyone because everyone has at one time or another, felt they've been left out of some inner ring.   He notes that these inner rings are constructed by "unwritten systems", and that the deep desire to be a part of an inner ring (and the terror of being excluded) can be a strong driver.  We hope to profit from inclusion in the inner ring "...power, money, liberty to break the rules, avoidance of routine duties, evasion of discipline."

His advice is brilliant and true:

1. Recognize that the desire and ambition to be part of an inner ring is a danger for two reasons:
• It can cause us to do some very bad things.
• Being governed by that urge for the inner ring is like attempting to fill a sieve with water - it is something that is impossible to do.    
2. Until you conquer the fear of being an outsider to the inner circle, you'll remain outside the inner circle.
3. You can break that desire by becoming a "sound craftsman" in the work you do, which is the longer lasting goal of any profession.
4. Finding other people who like one another and enjoy meeting to do things they like to do is something that no inner ringer can ever have - friendship. 

Lewis's wisdom on this subject seems so timeless, and so true to human nature, it can be helpful to all of us at many points in our lives.  As I wind down my "official" duties as a full-time employee, my influence and power in the company has diminished and I am no longer in the official or unofficial inner ring.  In these times, I am finding joy in continuing to grow as a skilled craftsman and finding friends who have similar desires to help others that I have.  

You can read the entire essay here: the-inner-ring-by-c-s-lewis.pdf (wordpress.com) 

The Inspiration of C.S. Lewis: Learning in War-Time

People one generation younger than mine remark that C.S. Lewis was writing to their generation. Lewis wrote this essay during my father's generation, yet I am soaking up Learning in War-Time some 80 years later as if it was written last week.  There's something timeless about this Lewis address to students because I am reading this in an age of increased turmoil and totalitarianism in the world and in America.

Lewis, delivering his remarks to college students in 1939, first speaks to the reality that war, because it is a finite object, cannot absorb the entire attention of the human soul. Thus, no matter how badly things are going around us, we were not wired to be entirely absorbed in them.  Ecclesiastes 3:11 says that God has put eternity into man's hearts, something far beyond the travails of the present world.

He moves on from there to emphasize that our work of learning (whether we are in school or college or engaged in a career or ministry) becomes a spiritual act if offered in humility to God.  He encourages them not to let their emotions and nerves make them think that their situation, mired in the suffering of WWII, is more abnormal than it is. Those same words need to be heard in my heart today.  Sure, there is much to grieve and much to be alarmed about, but Lewis encourages his students with three defensive mental exercises with which to combat the war (or the equivalents of war we experience today).  These enemies are:

1. Enemy #1 - Excitement - Don't wait for distraction to end to get to work.  He remarks that the people who work hard, including under unfavorable conditions, will achieve much. Sure, evil seems to be thriving and there's plenty of distractions but if we wait for the distractions to end, they won't, and we will have achieved nothing. Instead, we could have been about doing good in this world.
2. Enemy #2 - Frustration - Lewis encourages his listeners to instead of saying "No time for that" or "Too late now." or "Not for me" to put the future in God's hands.  He reminds us that working moment to moment "as to the Lord" since the present is the only time in which duty can be done or grace received.  Live for today.
3. Enemy #3 - Fear - Although the threat of death and pain was incredibly real for Lewis's listeners, he reminds them it's not a question of life or death for us but only one death or another.  Being aware of our mortality is useful and was considered a blessing by great Christians of the past.  Lewis reminds us that in this world we're on a pilgrimage, not trying to build of a utopian society on earth.

The idea of a life of learning that Lewis encourages for his war-time students is worthy of our attention today.  It is up to us subdue our enemies and to flourish in these times when many are held prisoners by enemies (excitement, frustration, fear).  Lewis's narration can be read here: https://bradleyggreen.com/attachments/Lewis.Learning%20in%20War-Time.pdf
 

   

The Christmas Gift Of My Helping Family

 

The family 2021 Christmas Day plans were all perfectly in place.  The rides to pick up Mother and Dad were all set, we had invited Corinne's hairdresser and son to join us, Matt had made the trek home from Philadelphia, and I was thinly slicing potatoes with a mandolin two hours before all our guests were set to arrive.  Then, in a blink of an eye my hand slipped off the handle, sliced the end of my finger off, and our Christmas plans were instantly jeopardized.  In the hours that followed, I who was to be putting out for everyone else, received the Christmas gift of my family helping me and working together to care for everyone. 

Just a few of the many blessings I received included:

1. Matthew finding a nearby Urgent Care facility, driving me there and being my caretaker through the painful medical procedure, that fortunately didn't require stitches. 
2. Corinne contacting everyone and pushing the schedule for dinner back 2 hours.
3. Bunny and Tim picking up Dad, which I was set to do, safety bringing him to our house and returning him to the Episcopal Church Home.
4. Bob and April picking up Mother, which Bunny and Tim were set to do, bringing her to our house and returning her to River Edge Manor.
5. Corinne, Bunny and April taking over all the food and other preparations and doing the kitchen cleanup afterwards.

It was a wonderful experience for me to see my family jumping in to help when the unexpected happened to me and to see them carrying on so graciously.  In all those events, I could see in action the words of the Christmas song O Little Town of Bethlehem that say:

How silently, how silently the wondrous gift is given,

So God imparts to human hearts the blessings of His heaven.

No ear may hear his coming, but in this world of sin,

Where meek souls will receive him still, the dear Christ enters in.

I felt that I received some of the blessings of God's heaven through my family members on Christmas Day 2021.    

In Harmony With the Creator

Here's a series of photos I took from the shoreline of Heart Lake at the Adirondack Loj at sunset, relaxing and marveling with Corinne over the changes in the sky in just over 15 minutes.  The science of how light reflects off a still body of water and of how the sun rays are refracted as they take a longer path through the earth's atmosphere at sunrise and sunset are well known.  But what I responded to in those moments was not the physics of light but the harmony of nature with its Creator God.  The sky started out cloudy but as the clouds lifted the setting sun splashed some clouds in pinks and peach colors, blue sky appeared, and some of the clouds remained gray.  Nature seemed to be responding in tune with its Creator's design, and it was beautiful and peaceful in line with the Hebrew word Shalom.

Then I considered the state of humankind. Of all the created world, humans were to be God's crowning creation.  

I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers,

the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, 

what is man that you are mindful of him, 

and the son of man that you care for him?

Yet you have made him a little

lower than the heavenly beings,

 and crowned him with glory and honor

Psalm 8:3-5 

So as wonderful as creation itself was intended to be, we who were to be the capstone of His creation, seem to be more out of touch with our Creator than the rest of creation.  What went wrong?  He gave to humankind something that he gave to nothing else in the created world - a free will.  With that free will, Adam and Eve disobeyed God by eating the fruit from the tree at the center of the garden, Cain killed his brother Abel, Isreal abandoned God and clung to idols, and the Jewish leaders and Romans conspired to murder His Son, Jesus.  If God knew all this was going to happen, why did He allow it?  He could have made us like the rest of creation which seemed to me at that sunset moment to be in harmony with the Creator.  But God has made us for himself, to experience fellowship with Him. That kind of desire does not derive from compulsion but from a heart that desires such a relationship.  So if He intentionally created us to experience fellowship with Him and our waywardness has separated us, what can be done to restore it?

God sent His Son, Jesus to perform the work of atoning for our sins, and putting us back into a right relationship with the Creator God (Romans 3:21-23).  While enjoying these long-awaited summer months when we are outdoors near our homes or vacationing in remote and beautiful places, and marveling at God's Creation, think about the door God has opened for us in Jesus to be brought back into harmony with Him.

         

The Marcy Dam Breach and Its Effects

 

While hiking in the Adirondack High Peaks on July 13, 2021, we came across what's left of the Marcy Dam that breached during Hurricane Irene in August 2011.  The top view looks downstream and the bottom view looks upstream.  There used to be a bridge that spanned across the top of the dam that served as a route for hikers on their way to Mt. Colden, Mt. Marcy and other High Peaks. It turned out that as my son, Tim, shared his photos on social media that he learned a good friend of our family's had crossed over the top of this dam with his children hours before it failed.  The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (NYSDEC) has decided wisely, I believe, to not rebuild the dam. They instead have built a new stone crib bridge to replace the function that the dam provided.  We crossed over that bridge as we made our way to Mt. Colden.  The dam itself, constructed of timber cribs filled with boulders and faced wtih timber planks was not well suited to such a harsh environment and aggressive stream conditions.  A replacement dam, constructed to NYSDEC dam standards would cost $10M or more and would still be a safety hazard for people and infrastructure located downstream of the dam.  

As we approached the dam from upstream on our way back from Mt. Colden, I noticed that the banks of Marcy Brook were severly eroding and many trees had fallen into the brook.  The breach of Marcy Dam also triggered a channel avulsion that changed the brook's geomorphology in a dynamic manner that can be explained by the relationship developed by E. W. Lane (Lane, 1955).  In his emperical relationship, there's a balance between stream energy (represented by the product of stream discharge, Q and channel slope, S) and sediment yield (represented by the product of sediment discharge Qs and median sediment size, ds) as shown below:   

Q_s * d_{s ~} Q * S

Prior to the dam's breaching the channel slope, S, upstream of the dam had flattened and sediment had been deposited in the upstream zone.  When the dam breached, the slope began to re-steepen by increasing the sediment discharge, Qs from in front of the dam, but that erosion also extended upstream as I observed from the severely cut banks and downed trees.  A change to any one variable in Lane's relationship on one side of the equation requires a change to one of the variables on the other side of the equation.  In this case, channel slope, S increased while stream discharge, Q, remained unchanged, thus the sediment discharge, Qs must increase since median particle diameter would be unchanged by the dam breach.  Streams in a pristine environment, such as the Adirondacks, don't typically display this dynamic unless there's a significant and dynamic change.  Eventually the stream will return to a quasi-equilibrium and the banks upstream of the dam will eventually cease to erode.

Remembering The Lord Is My Banner

These little yellow socks are a remembrance from a scary and surprise event that our 2 year old son, Matthew, and our family walked through together while traveling around town.  We were driving along and noticed Matthew was lethargic and when Corinne looked in his eyes, she noticed they were bloodshot.  We happened to be on the other side of town when we discovered this, and it was the weekend, before the time of urgent care centers.  But a doctor friend from our church lived in the area and we decided to drop in just to get him checked out.  She looked him over and told us to take him to the emergency room.  It turned out that he had a severe bacterial infection and needed an IV.  So this toddler was kept in the hospital for a day or two until they were certain the infection was under control and could discharge him.  I remember later the evening we left him at the hospital, gathering the rest of our kids together with Corinne and weeping while praying that Matthew would be healed from this and not harmed by it.  God answered our prayers, he was soon back home with us, and we rejoiced, but I held onto the little yellow socks that he wore while in the hospital as a remembrance of God's faithfulness to Matthew. 

Fast forward almost 30 years and we are at a worship service at Renewal Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia with Matthew, and the pastor is preaching from Exodus 17:8-16.  In this passage the Amalekites launch a surprise attack on the Israelites near Rephidim.  Moses instructs Joshua to launch a counterattack the next day.  As Joshua and the Israelites engage the enemy, Moses stands on a hill with Aaron and Hur on either side of him.  When Moses' hands are raised the Israelites prevailed and when Moses' hands drop from wearyness, the Amalekites prevailed.  So, Aaron and Hur have Moses sit on a rock and they keep Moses' hands held high until the Amalekites are defeated at sunset.  At the conclusion of the event, the Lord tells Moses "Record this event on a scroll as something to be remembered and make sure that Joshua hears it because I will completely erase the memory of the Amalekites from under heaven."  Then Moses builds an altar and called it The Lord Is My Banner.  He said "For hands were lifted up to the throne of the Lord..."

There are many connections here.  It is good to remember the times when God's banner was over us, where we needed to raise our hands towards the heavens and seek His help, where we needed the help of other believers and people of faith to walk or stand with us.  And it's good to build altars by keeping remembrances of events where God showed up and we experienced The Lord is My Banner in a deep and rich way.  Because of distance we don't often worship together, but recalling this family event while we worshipped together, while being instructed to remember the times when God has showed up in our lives was a very special gift.

Mike's Mother's Day Tribute

 (I welcome guest blogger, a dear friend and brother in the faith, Mike Mazzochetti who shares the following blog post.)

Having a Mom who is still alive gives me pause as I age too!

Yes, my Mom took care of me from my youth, sorted out my relationships and situations as needed, dealt with my behaviors, and offered guidance until I was on my own as a young adult.

Once when I was in my mid-20s my Mom said to me, the oldest of 3 siblings, that she was sad that she was not a mother any longer. I assured her that I needed a Mom as any 26-year old could have. Once a Mom, always a Mom!

I carried on in career development, and then marriage with 3 sons of our own. The years went by as my Mom was in and out at different times in the normal course of events. Along that journey my Dad died when I was 38. She was a young widow herself as she struggled with loneliness and finding her way. I did not offer her any special attention as she enjoyed family with her 7 grandchildren and found a way to cope with a certain set of friends. Eventually, she dated a widower whom she knew from her youth, so we were delighted she was with someone we could trust until his death a few years ago.

We grew up in a household that was the center of activity. Friends and family members were a continual source of visiting. Food and drink were always plentiful as we had fun with my parents' fiends and their children. My Mom and Dad never really had to go out, so you knew where to find them. But over time, she, being the youngest of her friends, saw them die one-by-one to just a handful remaining.

In the last few years as her arthritis advanced, sustained a broken hip, and experienced mounting internal ailments, she quietly withstood this onset of age with strength and little complaint, unless you ask her! As the executor of her will, I have had to help her with financial decisions. I laugh now, but it has been so frustrating to deal with a multitude of fragmented accounts as a separate "envelope system" for her expenditures - one for house repairs, another for grocery and monthly expenses, a third so she can cash checks with a known teller, yet another where she had a credit card, and so on. She lives on her own and has a helper whom she has known for years, attending to her 3 days a week, doing the laundry, and grocery shopping. I visit her 2 or 3 days a week to pay some bills and take care of some household tasks amid the conversation.

Why do I tell you these things? 

What is most beneficial is that I call her each day, even when I am to visit. This gives me a chance to assess how she is doing and what she needs - some days she feels better than others. This phone conversation is focused as we give undivided attention in just a few minutes to anticipate the actions for the day. 

I pause at this because I find in my heart the reason to care. I realize we are in relationship and not just a needs provider. When I am there, I hear her thoughts and sense her emotions as I note her problem solving skills. Is this easy? No, as I can be testy or stand-offish with her idiosyncrasies!  She has hearing deficiencies as I need to repeat myself, not always being patient. When she has a restless night, she sadly is incoherent in speech or cannot count money properly. When she struggles with the remote for the TV or navigating her smart phone, I do my best to teach her watching her steps - again hopefully with patience! I applaud her when she cooks a meal, or bakes cookies, or mops a portion of the floor - things she likes to do that make her feel productive - but learning that she needs her rest to take on the next day.

When she was young and I was a child, she took care of my needs - but I know now she was in relationship with me. She is the "other woman" in my life. We have each other in relationship of giving and receiving, caring and sharing - building on vulnerability. I love you, Mom! I know you say the same to my brother, sister, and me.