I first encountered C.S. Lewis as a child in a humble elementary school library. The layout of that library has probably changed but I can remember the exact location of The Chronicles of Narnia and each cover as I checked them out. What sent me that way was the gap between the next publication of the Harry Potter series. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone was my gateway into reading. That magical world pulled at something deep within me (Lewis would identify that as joy).
I needed more books that held me spellbound like Harry Potter. The details are fuzzy on how exactly how I encountered the Narnia series, but I remember quickly devouring them. They with the assistance of the films by Peter Jackson would lead me into J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle Earth. Nerd life was good.
Believe it or not, I do not remember catching much of Lewis’s message at that early age. The next time I would read Lewis would be college. This time Lewis would take more of a hold then previously. My true introduction began after my conversion to Christianity. The first book that I read was Mere Christianity. It drastically changed me. His argument on the natural law and the existence of God was something I had never heard before. I recall the excitement of a Christian writer that engaged with the reader in an intellectual way but also enjoyable (and understandable).
Mere Christianity brought me back to Narnia and that is where I stayed during my college years with Lewis. It wasn’t until after college and the freedom to read whatever I wanted that I truly began to not just read Lewis but to study him and his books. The Screwtape Letters, The Great Divorce, and the Ransom Trilogy introduced new depths and challenges to my faith. His ability to articulate human nature caught me off guard. His candor and insight into humanity was shaping me more and more. That foundation was settled by the time I got to Till We Have Faces and A Grief Observed. Yet somehow Lewis achieved new heights again. I return to those two often, the mature Lewis speaks both softer and louder in these works. Lately, it has been his essays and non-fiction such as Abolition of Man that have been my companions. His prophetic voice rings out truer for the church today.
What do you say of an author that you encounter in elementary school but enjoy even more now as a husband and father of three children? Narnia speaks more to me now than it did as I was a child. I read A Grief Observed as a young husband long before sorrow visited our own house — I fled to it in those dark moments. How do you summarize that? I didn’t care much for school until recently, my studies were encouraged in part with reading and learning at home. Lewis served as a steppingstone to the past and the great western tradition for me. I have been introduced to the wonders of the Middle Ages and writers like Aquinas, Boethius, and Dante. My Anglo-Catholic readings of Chesterton, Eliot, and Tolkien are due to him.
I read Lewis because he embodies the past, encourages me in the present, and points to the hope of the future coming kingdom. His books remain on the list of books to revisit often. They are old friends and favorites. I encounter Lewis every year, and I think he is worth encountering every year for you too.