S7E12 – AH – “Letters From Jack”, After Hours with Dr. Diana Glyer

Dr. Diana Glyer returns once again to talk about “Letters From Jack”, a book which has been brought back into print and sent out to our Patreon supporters!

S7E12: “Letters From Jack” (Download)

Show Notes

Introduction

Quote-of-the-week

I write as one amateur to another, talking about difficulties that I have met, or lights I have gained.

C. S. Lewis, Letter

Biographical Information

Dr. Diana Glyer is a professor in the Honors College at Azusa Pacific University. She is the author of The Company They Keep, Bandersnatch, and The Major and the Missionary. All of her work has one constant theme: “Creativity Thrives in Community.” This is her third appearance on Pints with Jack!

Chit-Chat

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Toast

• David drank a Best Day Brewing West Coast IPA
• Dr. Glyer had water in a bottle detailed with a Pints with Jack sticker

Discussion

01. “Origin”

Q. So the reason you’re here is because of a certain book, “Letters From Jack”. Would you mind telling the listeners about the origin of this book?

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02. “Epistolary analysis”

Q. It’s amazing how many collections there are of Lewis’ letters, but there isn’t much secondary material on the letters specifically. I couldn’t think of anything that’s specifically on his letters. Why do you think that is?

• Walter Hooper

03. “What letters reveal…”

Q. As we’ve gone through Letters to an American Lady, Latin Letters, and Letters to Children, there’s something that you get out of letters that you don’t get out of someone’s main books. You get to see more of a complete person…because these texts are not carefully edited by their original author. Have you felt a closer connection to Lewis after reading his mail and working on this project?

• Letters to an American Lady by C.S. Lewis
• The Latin Letters of C.S. Lewis by C.S. Lewis
• Letters to Children by C.S. Lewis

04. “Time wasted letter-writing?”

Q. I’ve heard people lament about the time that writing letters “stole” from Jack, when he could have been writing more brilliant books. But I feel these were actually the petri dishes for ideas for future books… Do you think that Lewis’ letter writing was a distraction from his work, or part of the creative process?

• The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis
• Letters to Malcolm by C.S. Lewis

05. “Audience-centered”

Q. Lewis spoke to an awful lot of his audience. From my own experience, I’ve found that you notice a difference between those who deal with people day in and day out, and those who manage to stay in their ivory towers…there’s a different sense and texture to what they’re writing, because what they’re telling you is coming from real conversations that they’ve had with real people. Did you found this to be the case with Lewis?

• C.S. Lewis and the Craft of Communication by Dr. Steven Beebe

06. “Why are we talking about this?”

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07. “Dedication to Roger White”

Q. To whom is this book dedicated?

• Dr. Roger White help put together the Inklings Collection at Azusa.
• Some of the inklings were J.R.R. Tolkien, Owen Barfield, Hugo Dyson, and Lord David Cecil. Dr. Glyer examines their collaboration in her book, The Company They Keep: C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien as Writers in Community.
• Owen Barfield Family Collection

08. “Part I: Books”

Q. Let’s look to the body of the book. You said it’s grouped around different collections of a device. Could you talk through some of these sections and some of the bits of advice?

Turn off the radio.

C.S. Lewis, Letters

Read all the good books you can, and avoid nearly all magazines.

C.S. Lewis, Letters

Always write (and read) with the ear, not the eye. You should hear every sentence you write as if it was being read aloud or spoken. If it does not sound nice, try again.

C.S. Lewis, Letters

It is a good rule after reading a new book, never to allow yourself another new one till you have read an old one in between.

C.S. Lewis

09. “Part II: Love”

Q. Can you tell us about the advice on relationships?

Friendship is the greatest of worldly goods. Certainly to me it is the chief happiness of life. If I had to give a piece of advice to a young man about a place to live, I think I should say, ‘sacrifice almost everything to live where you can be near your friends.

C.S. Lewis

10. “Part III: Moods”

Q. What can you tell us about the advice on moods?

• J. Stanley Mattson

By the way, don’t ‘weep inwardly’ and get a sore throat. If you must weep, weep: a good honest howl! I suspect we – and especially, my sex – don’t cry enough now-a-days. Aeneas and Hector and Beowulf, Roland and Lancelot blubbered like schoolgirls, so why shouldn’t we?

C.S. Lewis, The Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis

Keep them watching their own minds and trying to produce feelings there by the action of their own wills. When they meant to ask Him for charity, let them, instead, start trying to manufacture charitable feelings for themselves and not notice that this is what they are doing. When they meant to pray for courage, let them really be trying to feel brave. When they say they are praying for forgiveness, let them be trying to feel forgiven. Teach them to estimate the value of each prayer by their success in producing the desired feeling; and never let them suspect how much success or failure of that kind depends on whether they are well or ill, fresh or tired, at the moment.

C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

11. “Part IV: Faith”

Q. What is some of your favourite advice given in the section on faith?

But the great thing to remember is that, though our feelings come and go, His love for us does not. 

C.S. Lewis

Nobody can always have devout feelings: and even if we could, feelings are not what God principally cares about. Christian love, either towards God or towards man, is an affair of the will. If we are trying to do His will we are obeying the commandment, ‘Thou shall love the Lord thy God.’ He will give us feelings of love if He pleases. We cannot create them for ourselves, and we must not demand them as a right.

C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

Do not be deceived, Wormwood. Our cause is never more in danger than when a human, no longer desiring, but still intending, to do our Enemy’s will, looks round upon a universe from which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys.

C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

…Don’t expect (I mean, don’t count on and don’t demand) that when you
are confirmed, or when you make your first Communion, you will have all the feelings you would like to have. You may, of course: but also you may not. But don’t worry if you don’t get them. They aren’t what matter. The things that are happening to you are quite real things whether you feel as you would wish or not, just as a meal will do a hungry person good even if he has a cold in the head which will rather spoil the taste. Our Lord will give us right feelings if He wishes – and then we must say Thank you. If He doesn’t, then we must say to ourselves (and Him) that He knows us best.

C.S. Lewis, Letters to Children

For many years after my conversion, I never used any ready-made forms except the Lord’s Prayer. In fact I tried to pray without words at all—not to verbalize the mental acts. Even in praying for others I believe I tended to avoid their names and substituted mental images of them. I still think that the prayer without words is the best—if one can really achieve it.

C.S. Lewis

• The Interior Castle by St. Teresa of Avila
• The Book of Common Prayer by The Episcopal Church

 A third time the Lord called, “Samuel!” And Samuel got up and went to Eli and said, “Here I am; you called me.”

Then Eli realized that the Lord was calling the boy. So Eli told Samuel, “Go and lie down, and if he calls you, say, ‘Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.’” So Samuel went and lay down in his place.

The Lord came and stood there, calling as at the other times, “Samuel! Samuel!”

Then Samuel said, “Speak, for your servant is listening.”

1 Samuel 3:8-10

The best thing, where it is possible, is to keep the patient from the serious intention of praying altogether. When the patient is an adult recently re-converted to the Enemy’s party, like your man, this is best done by encouraging him to remember, or to think he remembers, the parrot-like nature of his prayers in childhood. In reaction against that, he may be persuaded to aim at something entirely spontaneous, inward, informal, and unregularised; and what this will actually mean to a beginner will be an effort to produce in himself a vaguely devotional mood in which real concentration of will and intelligence have no part.

C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

• Into the Region of Awe: Mysticism in C. S. Lewis by David C. Downing

12. “Part V: Recursive Advice”

Q. What about final section of advice, recursive advice? Can you talk a little about that?

There are better things ahead than any we leave behind.

C.S. Lewis, The Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis

Freely take encouragement. For some people, they seem to have a resistance to it. *I don’t know if this is a direct quote, I couldn’t find it*

C.S. Lewis, The Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis

Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness

James 3:1

13. “Letter, transcript and analysis”

Q. The book concludes with a sample letter, its transcript and some analysis of the text. What was the goal of this section?

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14. “Concluding thoughts”

Q. Any thoughts you’d like to share before we wrap-up?

Wrap-Up

More Information

• DianaGlyer.com

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