Insects increase with the rains. Ants are always with us. Some are sugar seekers. Stink ants are just that when disturbed. Soldier ants we do not see but all non-concrete or brick buildings need a layer of metal pan in the walls low down to protect against the red ants. When the latter swarm the locals catch therewith a sack over the holes from their mounds. Boiling water floats off the wings for the bodies to be fried. One of my few Nigeria regrets is I was too chicken to try this delicacy. I am told they are nutty.
Other seasonal insects included sausage flies, a description of their abdomens. Prone to fly round the light at night like many insects. We had bib flying beetles which little boys would pick up to give as scary presents to missionary aunties. At Daffo we had a plague of earwigs which got into everything from keyholes to toys. They were legion. Hunting spiders did not make webs relying on phenomenal speed to catch prey. Scorpions were fairly common, the small brown ones that is. They were more lethal than the large, bis as your hand black ones. Our David had a close call at Langtang when a small one dropped out od a cardboard box he upended on his head.
I am told the pain from a scorpion sting is excruciating. One colleague was stung and given local anaesthetic. She said as it wore off to was like fire travelling cup the limb. One recommended relief was to hold onto the spark plugs of a running motor!
Snakes we rarely saw. The pharmacy stocked antivenin. We had sent carpet vipers live to a South African lab to get specific monovalent vaccine. Unfortunately with apartheid supplies dried up. So than snakes were sent to an institute in Iran. I do not know what happened after the revolution there. Once when at Zamko on holiday the dispenser came begging a ride into hospital for a local with carpet viper bite. The snakes were small and hidden in the sand, quite common in that are. I drove into town at very high speed, Peter Clark navigating on a recently graded laterite road with no culverts. As I approached the drift around where a culvert was to be placed he would warn me and I reduced speed. Finally he said straight on to town now. I would have been doing over 70 mph when a last unpredicted drift appeared ahead. I went tino tremendous four wheel drift through the diverted road and out again. Peter apologised and congratulated me on my driving.
On another occasion in Limakara a father brought me his son suffering from a haemolytic snake bite. Mist venom is quick acting, near-toxic. Some though attacks the blood slowly.This boy was in a terrible state, oedematous and bleeding everywhere. I knew he was terminal but out of compassion took him to Gwoza hospital. We rarely saw poisonous snakes. Among those feared were spitting cobras. They aimed venom at your eyes.
Of course the worst insects were the mosquitoes bringing irritating bits and malaria. We always used nets at night. Some of our houses had screening. The worst place for them was near Lake Chad. You stayed in afloat dark. My first bout of malaria was in Maiduguri. I thought I was merely coping badly with the extreme heat. No, the heat was inside me. We always took anti-malarial. Our only jabs were the travel necessities of smallpox and yellow fever, later cholera which was the least effective. Typhoid and tetanus were routine but we never had anything against hepatitis, a common scourge expats.
I believe Nigeria should erect a monument to the anopheles mosquito for I believe it saved Nigeria from British white settlers, unlike east Africa and South, Also southern Nigeria deserves a memorial for the test fly which spreads sleeping sickness. That prevented the Islamic jihad reaching southern climes for the Muslim warriors were cavalry and the sickness killed their horses.
Storms accompanied by much lightning. This area has one of the world's highest incidences of lightning strikes and between storms the night sky is full of flashes between the clouds. It is not uncommon for cattle herders to be brought in after strikes, usually DOA, dead on arrival. Our friend the Clarks has their house struck and fire started. I was once in the rocks above Rockhaven enjoying a quiet cigar when lighting struck nearby. I was concerned for my safety then wondered if I believed in providence or not. I did but not in testing.
On Easter Monday visited Assob Falls on the edge of the plateau, scene of a fatal accident a year before we arrived. A party from Vom went their and were warned by locals that the water had not yet come. They did not understand this ferried to a storm above on the plateau. The missionaries bathed, the flood came and one failed to escape from the stream. Her body was found days later. Some years later we too witnessed a drowning. We were at Kafanchan with a CMS friend., Susan Davies who in fact had a lifesaving qualification. Two students came down to swim in the fool beneath the waterfall. Later when only one emerged we asked where his friend was, 'Dead' he said. The undertow from the falls had carried him under. We asked the boy what he would do. 'Nothing' he said fearing he would be blamed. Sue took him back to the college to be witness that there was no foul play, Days later the body was recovered downstream. We had been there with our children who were blissful unaware of witnessing death.
Mid April our imported fridge at last arrived. Until then we must have managed without. Went to see rain dances in the town. Two suspected cholera cases. Made stocks of IV fluid bottles. Brought £1250 payroll from Jos. Postwar armed robbery was not a concern for us though it was made a capital offence. A silly law as robbers might as well kill to get away. Execution was by public firing squad, a popular spectacle.
Visitors from England and Nigeria.
Friday, November 24, 2017
The changing world (18) Feb - Mar 1971
Eid el Kabir public holiday. One has to get used to the two annual two day Muslim ones and as they are dependent on moon sightings you never know exactly when but they do have a faculty for timing them to join on a weekend.This one was a Friday.
Apollo XV men walk on the moon. Midwife Grace Stokes returned from leave. Also among out staff were Alan and Georgie White but I cannot remember their roles. I think he was maintenance. Katy started piano teaching at Hillcrest School for missionary children in Jos. Enjoyed a Valentine's party at the Cato's. Gordon is accountant for NESCO the hydro-electric generating company for the plateau tin mines and the hospital. Ann is daughter of our pioneer missionaries the Burroughs whose granddaughter Miriam e[was later to marry our Jonathan. David Morris at ANMC told us the Burroughs were sent to the north, a Muslim village where they were given an unhealthy plot of land and the local Muslims mocked when their two boys died.
Jonathan, Sharon Balfour and Florence Dabwang dedicated by Zwamun. The latter was hilarious. He had rehearsed the two expatriate baby names but never thought to rehearse the Nigerian baby's name not suspecting would be a name after a missionary, Florence Chandler, pioneer in Gwoza. His attempt went, 'Flo. Flor, Flow, Flowence'. UK went decimal on the basis of the £. When Nigeria did it they were more honest and £1 became two Naira so the pennies remained much the same and it was less inflationary. With the strength of the oil economy the naira doubled in value to parity with the pound before we left in 1982. Now it is over 500 to the pound, a tribute to Nigerian corruption and inefficiency.
Buying supplies in Jos was always a trial. The customer is not in the right. Supplies are short, delays usual. There is only one sizable supermarket with imported groceries and a couple of smaller ones. Outside of the shops, all is bargaining. England win the Ashes down under. Holiday at SIM Mango rest home., a treat except sometimes their USA cuisine was strange with sweet and savoury mixed like iced buns and scrambled eggs for breakfast. Enjoyed table tennis and croquet there. Visited the old suspension bridge which Dr Barnden built so the locals could cross the river to get to the hospital. Before medicine he had been an engineer. Miango is by two extinct volcanoes and there is an airstrip used by mission planes. It is but grass cleared of rocks. Nearby there are fine views off the plateau escarpment but often obscured by harmattan dust. Wing blows dust from the Sahara. it can prevent planes landing. All one furniture is covered so that if you dust one day the next it is covered in dust again. It also leads to dry throat and coughs.
We had two seasons, wet and dry. The former starts around Easter with intermittent heavy storms. Each one is preceded by a wonderful characteristic odour of land first moistened. It can be experienced in England after a drought but not as strongly. There is a name for it which escapes me now. Rains cease in October after an August peak. One year we had freak rain Christmas eve.
Mango cost us 18/- a day. Back at the hospital we heard cholera was in the south of the state so we were not accepting patients from those parts. The UK postal strike ended after about five weeks of no airmail for us. By mid March it started to be uncomfortably warm and more humid before the rains came. 101F on front porch. Usually the plateau is a beautiful temperate climate, the hill station of West Africa. Only December can be dry cool and August wet cool. March 11 received airmail posted 18 January! We subscribed to the airmail edition of the Guardian and sometimes kind folk like the Cato's let us see UK Times etc. Time and Newsweek from USA were on sale. From them I learnt our local vet Alf White was a top selling author as vet James Herriot. His books were the only things ever to make me homesick.
Teaching my student I found the two things prohibited which the boys wanted was alcohol and polygamy. The latter was not welcomed by the girls. The boys did not believe that the birth rates of the sexes is the same with any imbalance due to war.
Seven years after his crash, dad received his insurance settlement. We never did find out what was. When he died we found no record.
Joan Crockford was another lab worker at Vom. March 22 first rain. We had Dominic as our houseboy/cook and Boys as nurse for Jonathan. A Nigerian man will only cook European food. That is a man's job. If we wanted Nigerian chop he would call in his wife for that was woman's work.
Visitors from USA, England, Germany and Nigeria.
Apollo XV men walk on the moon. Midwife Grace Stokes returned from leave. Also among out staff were Alan and Georgie White but I cannot remember their roles. I think he was maintenance. Katy started piano teaching at Hillcrest School for missionary children in Jos. Enjoyed a Valentine's party at the Cato's. Gordon is accountant for NESCO the hydro-electric generating company for the plateau tin mines and the hospital. Ann is daughter of our pioneer missionaries the Burroughs whose granddaughter Miriam e[was later to marry our Jonathan. David Morris at ANMC told us the Burroughs were sent to the north, a Muslim village where they were given an unhealthy plot of land and the local Muslims mocked when their two boys died.
Jonathan, Sharon Balfour and Florence Dabwang dedicated by Zwamun. The latter was hilarious. He had rehearsed the two expatriate baby names but never thought to rehearse the Nigerian baby's name not suspecting would be a name after a missionary, Florence Chandler, pioneer in Gwoza. His attempt went, 'Flo. Flor, Flow, Flowence'. UK went decimal on the basis of the £. When Nigeria did it they were more honest and £1 became two Naira so the pennies remained much the same and it was less inflationary. With the strength of the oil economy the naira doubled in value to parity with the pound before we left in 1982. Now it is over 500 to the pound, a tribute to Nigerian corruption and inefficiency.
Buying supplies in Jos was always a trial. The customer is not in the right. Supplies are short, delays usual. There is only one sizable supermarket with imported groceries and a couple of smaller ones. Outside of the shops, all is bargaining. England win the Ashes down under. Holiday at SIM Mango rest home., a treat except sometimes their USA cuisine was strange with sweet and savoury mixed like iced buns and scrambled eggs for breakfast. Enjoyed table tennis and croquet there. Visited the old suspension bridge which Dr Barnden built so the locals could cross the river to get to the hospital. Before medicine he had been an engineer. Miango is by two extinct volcanoes and there is an airstrip used by mission planes. It is but grass cleared of rocks. Nearby there are fine views off the plateau escarpment but often obscured by harmattan dust. Wing blows dust from the Sahara. it can prevent planes landing. All one furniture is covered so that if you dust one day the next it is covered in dust again. It also leads to dry throat and coughs.
We had two seasons, wet and dry. The former starts around Easter with intermittent heavy storms. Each one is preceded by a wonderful characteristic odour of land first moistened. It can be experienced in England after a drought but not as strongly. There is a name for it which escapes me now. Rains cease in October after an August peak. One year we had freak rain Christmas eve.
Mango cost us 18/- a day. Back at the hospital we heard cholera was in the south of the state so we were not accepting patients from those parts. The UK postal strike ended after about five weeks of no airmail for us. By mid March it started to be uncomfortably warm and more humid before the rains came. 101F on front porch. Usually the plateau is a beautiful temperate climate, the hill station of West Africa. Only December can be dry cool and August wet cool. March 11 received airmail posted 18 January! We subscribed to the airmail edition of the Guardian and sometimes kind folk like the Cato's let us see UK Times etc. Time and Newsweek from USA were on sale. From them I learnt our local vet Alf White was a top selling author as vet James Herriot. His books were the only things ever to make me homesick.
Teaching my student I found the two things prohibited which the boys wanted was alcohol and polygamy. The latter was not welcomed by the girls. The boys did not believe that the birth rates of the sexes is the same with any imbalance due to war.
Seven years after his crash, dad received his insurance settlement. We never did find out what was. When he died we found no record.
Joan Crockford was another lab worker at Vom. March 22 first rain. We had Dominic as our houseboy/cook and Boys as nurse for Jonathan. A Nigerian man will only cook European food. That is a man's job. If we wanted Nigerian chop he would call in his wife for that was woman's work.
Visitors from USA, England, Germany and Nigeria.
The changing world (17) January 1971
Now we have the pressure cooker cooking meat is better. It is usually beef bought in late pieces which we cut and mince for only that way is it palatable. We were concerned as to a possible cholera epidemic. It had been unknown in West Africa until a pilgrim brought it back from Mecca. Treatment would require more IV fluids than we could provide. Thankfully it never happened. We did though have cases of the recently discovered Lassa fever, named after a village in the North East where the first cases were observed. It was an infection spread in rats urine especially when the stubble was burnt off after October when rains ceased. If you got it from a rat you would die bu from a human you had a better chance as the virulence attenuated. The problem was that initial symptoms were flu like. By the time lab teas were done overseas the patient was recovered or dead d. It had hit the headlines a year or two ago when two missionary nurses died in Jos then two lab workers in USA.
We did some preaching among the Ganawuri villages. This tribe had in the past a notorious reputation. A friend was interviewing one of their pastors on their history but he was reluctant to mention this topic until he was asked why the nomadic Fulani cattle herders had avoided Ganawuri lands. 'Because if they came we would eat their cattle and them too'. Such was the cannibal reputation that when the British brought the railway through they needed pressed labour as no-one would voluntarily work there. It should be noted that only a few tribes were cannibals in the past. One was the Mwontol. In 1966 at the time of the Ibo killings, pastors from Kwalla refused to return home from Langtang by night because they feared the Mwantol had returned to old ways eating Ibos fleeing south. Such cannibal tribes could be identifies by sharpened teeth!
I knocked a youth off his bike when he rode without warning across in front of me. Fortunately someone came up and told the gathering crowd it was all the fault of the silly boy. We were warned not to stop in event an accident but to drive to the nearest police. The next day I gave the bot something to repair his bike stressing this was a gift not an admission of liability.
Started teaching Religious Knowledge at kuru boys Secondary School where Geordie John Gordon id Christan headmaster. One teacher there is Jacob Isaacs. Not Jewish but an Indian Christian. They gave me one howler. 'Who was in the fields outside Bethlehem when Jesus was born?' 'Wild shepherds'. I also taught Scripture to student nurses. Pharmacology too. Katy taught hygiene to midwives.
Roast pork always a treat for it is the only meat you can roast and only available in non-muslim areas. One of our colleagues was Maurenn Harford, lab worker. A very lonely woman she eventually wanted to retire in Nigeria but could not do so with SUM. So she joined a RC order and eventually AFAIK died in a convent on Portugal. We only had one other single lady missionary leave in strange circumstances. Why a nurse in charge of the contraceptive supplies on private wards should get pregnant by a Nigerian remains a mystery. Except it shows immorality is folly as Proverbs says, more folly than wickedness. She went home and would have returned to marry the father except he meanwhile had had to marry a Nigerian girl likewise pregnant. We never lost a missionary for fiddling the books. Fraud was a Nigerian speciality.
Enjoyed playing badminton and volleyball also walking and even jogging the local peak behind Vwang town. I refereed football. A European ref was respected except when I had our accountant Trevor Wells running the line. We knew the offside rule. The players did not so once we lost control of a game after a correct decision. But I was glad to be absent for the hospital versus the army. We won and the army literally took prisoners. John Lang and the local chief had to go and ask the CO for the release of our team. Remember the army ruled the land at the time. We were there through one bloodless coup, one failed assassination coup and the return to civilian rule. I reckon their was much less corruption under the military as politicians said vote for me and I will look after you, hence the corruption. Originally we left Nigeria with a bicameral parliament, one elected house and an upper house of chiefs. Would be happy to see the latter introduced but then i am a conservative favouring hereditary Lords here too.
One help we received was from a USA charity MAP with donated drugs, some out of date but usable. All drugs are OK out of date except insulin and vaccines. Entertained John and Marion Braithwaite who became life long friends. He was an army captain with that light safely under a bushel as he commanded a Nigerian survey team map making in the depths of the northern bush. The month ended with a drought of mail. GPO strike in UK.
Our visitors were from England, Chad, Nigeria and Scotland.
We did some preaching among the Ganawuri villages. This tribe had in the past a notorious reputation. A friend was interviewing one of their pastors on their history but he was reluctant to mention this topic until he was asked why the nomadic Fulani cattle herders had avoided Ganawuri lands. 'Because if they came we would eat their cattle and them too'. Such was the cannibal reputation that when the British brought the railway through they needed pressed labour as no-one would voluntarily work there. It should be noted that only a few tribes were cannibals in the past. One was the Mwontol. In 1966 at the time of the Ibo killings, pastors from Kwalla refused to return home from Langtang by night because they feared the Mwantol had returned to old ways eating Ibos fleeing south. Such cannibal tribes could be identifies by sharpened teeth!
I knocked a youth off his bike when he rode without warning across in front of me. Fortunately someone came up and told the gathering crowd it was all the fault of the silly boy. We were warned not to stop in event an accident but to drive to the nearest police. The next day I gave the bot something to repair his bike stressing this was a gift not an admission of liability.
Started teaching Religious Knowledge at kuru boys Secondary School where Geordie John Gordon id Christan headmaster. One teacher there is Jacob Isaacs. Not Jewish but an Indian Christian. They gave me one howler. 'Who was in the fields outside Bethlehem when Jesus was born?' 'Wild shepherds'. I also taught Scripture to student nurses. Pharmacology too. Katy taught hygiene to midwives.
Roast pork always a treat for it is the only meat you can roast and only available in non-muslim areas. One of our colleagues was Maurenn Harford, lab worker. A very lonely woman she eventually wanted to retire in Nigeria but could not do so with SUM. So she joined a RC order and eventually AFAIK died in a convent on Portugal. We only had one other single lady missionary leave in strange circumstances. Why a nurse in charge of the contraceptive supplies on private wards should get pregnant by a Nigerian remains a mystery. Except it shows immorality is folly as Proverbs says, more folly than wickedness. She went home and would have returned to marry the father except he meanwhile had had to marry a Nigerian girl likewise pregnant. We never lost a missionary for fiddling the books. Fraud was a Nigerian speciality.
Enjoyed playing badminton and volleyball also walking and even jogging the local peak behind Vwang town. I refereed football. A European ref was respected except when I had our accountant Trevor Wells running the line. We knew the offside rule. The players did not so once we lost control of a game after a correct decision. But I was glad to be absent for the hospital versus the army. We won and the army literally took prisoners. John Lang and the local chief had to go and ask the CO for the release of our team. Remember the army ruled the land at the time. We were there through one bloodless coup, one failed assassination coup and the return to civilian rule. I reckon their was much less corruption under the military as politicians said vote for me and I will look after you, hence the corruption. Originally we left Nigeria with a bicameral parliament, one elected house and an upper house of chiefs. Would be happy to see the latter introduced but then i am a conservative favouring hereditary Lords here too.
One help we received was from a USA charity MAP with donated drugs, some out of date but usable. All drugs are OK out of date except insulin and vaccines. Entertained John and Marion Braithwaite who became life long friends. He was an army captain with that light safely under a bushel as he commanded a Nigerian survey team map making in the depths of the northern bush. The month ended with a drought of mail. GPO strike in UK.
Our visitors were from England, Chad, Nigeria and Scotland.
Thursday, November 23, 2017
The changing world (16) Sep to Dec 1970
Our flight to Nigeria was first time in the air for both of us. Days before the fist big Palestinians hijacking occurred with IIRC three planes hjacked to Jordan. One terrorist, a female Leila Khalid, was detained in Ealing.
We changed Sabena planes in Brussels, touched down in Madrid and had a ten and a half hour journey. Kano was dark, hot and humid. Formalities were straightforward and we lodged at The Central Hotel. The next day we flew a Nigerian Airways twin propeller to Jos. We lucked with Francis Williams' family. He has established the Christian Central Pharmacy supplying missions all over Nigeria. Nurse Mary Sainsbury took us to Vom where we saw our new house and dined with the Daintys. Peter is another missionary nurse. Next day Peter showed us the old compound dating from 1922 including the dispensary. We had a medical day breakfasting with John and Gay Lang, medical superintendent, lunch with Bob and Jean Balfour, obs and gynae and dinner with Monica Jones a third medic. Katy kept me awake frightened of noises in the night.
Next day Francis briefed me on the pharmacy and the staff. Zwambun is an elderly senior nurse, a church elder, Dabwandg is a local man as is Bashi. We breakfasted with matron Margaret Howells, lunch with Marie Willings senior lab technician and dinner with nurse Mary Sainsbury. Finding Vom quite cool. The plateau is over 4000' above sea level. Saturday breakfast at Dainty's, lunch Betty Major midwifery tutor, tea with Nancy Fiend a CRC nurse from USA, and dinner with the Triggs. Tony is maintenance man so the most important member of staff. The hospital has over 300 beds, the oldest and largest in the north. Nurse, midwifes and lab assistants are trained to national standard. All students have to be professing Christians.
Sunday Bob Balfour drove the transit van the five miles of ridged laterite unsurfaced road to church in Kaduna Vom. People did not seem very friendly. Hausa service at the hospitals totally unintelligible. English evening service was addressed by a Nigeria. The seats are concrete benches. The singing, Golden Bells.
Work office 7-9, 4-7, dispensary 10-1 doing drugs for the wards. Inpatients bring a relative to cook for them and also to give blood if needed. The hospital has a Robin Hood charging policy. Lowest fees are for locals and the poor. Then there is standard rate for all except those salaried of cattle herding Fulani nomads. Finally, much more expensive and mainly expats, the private wards where there is catering, where Katy helped with catering and our three eldest were born. A new compound is part constructed next to the old leprosarium which now houses patients' relatives. Two more nurses share our compound. Coral Citrine is from Liverpool and Phyllis Shorter from Australia.
Tuesday Katy went to our Jos headquarters. It is about 25 miles, most of it surfaced but some of that a single strip of tar where might is right and you move aside if the oncoming vehicle is bigger than yours. Thursday was a day off pharmacy and I gave a talk on animism to students of Government Technical Training College, Bukuru.The boys were attentive.
Second Sunday morning preached at Kaduna Vom. October 1st public holiday for 10th Independence Day. Letter took three to twelve days from UK. No email not any phone calls. One could make the latter but we never called home in twelve years.
Nov 19th 9:15 pm Jonathan Michael Weeks arrived, breech delivery. Next day into Jos for local birth registration, which certificate goes to the British High Commission for a UK one. Katy and baby not home until 27th. Learnt how to operate the mission shortwave radio our one instant communication. In mid December Peter and Elizabeth Clark and Brian Boddy arrived after a 4500 mil drive across the Sahara. Christmas day staff turkey dinner at the Langs. 29th our sea loads arrived safely to great rejoicing. One of our major pharmacy jobs was IV fluids, dextrose and saline also citrate for blood taking. We has an automatic still running on electricity.
29 Dec our visitors' book arrived and was unpacked. First entry, Anna from Switzerland.
We changed Sabena planes in Brussels, touched down in Madrid and had a ten and a half hour journey. Kano was dark, hot and humid. Formalities were straightforward and we lodged at The Central Hotel. The next day we flew a Nigerian Airways twin propeller to Jos. We lucked with Francis Williams' family. He has established the Christian Central Pharmacy supplying missions all over Nigeria. Nurse Mary Sainsbury took us to Vom where we saw our new house and dined with the Daintys. Peter is another missionary nurse. Next day Peter showed us the old compound dating from 1922 including the dispensary. We had a medical day breakfasting with John and Gay Lang, medical superintendent, lunch with Bob and Jean Balfour, obs and gynae and dinner with Monica Jones a third medic. Katy kept me awake frightened of noises in the night.
Next day Francis briefed me on the pharmacy and the staff. Zwambun is an elderly senior nurse, a church elder, Dabwandg is a local man as is Bashi. We breakfasted with matron Margaret Howells, lunch with Marie Willings senior lab technician and dinner with nurse Mary Sainsbury. Finding Vom quite cool. The plateau is over 4000' above sea level. Saturday breakfast at Dainty's, lunch Betty Major midwifery tutor, tea with Nancy Fiend a CRC nurse from USA, and dinner with the Triggs. Tony is maintenance man so the most important member of staff. The hospital has over 300 beds, the oldest and largest in the north. Nurse, midwifes and lab assistants are trained to national standard. All students have to be professing Christians.
Sunday Bob Balfour drove the transit van the five miles of ridged laterite unsurfaced road to church in Kaduna Vom. People did not seem very friendly. Hausa service at the hospitals totally unintelligible. English evening service was addressed by a Nigeria. The seats are concrete benches. The singing, Golden Bells.
Work office 7-9, 4-7, dispensary 10-1 doing drugs for the wards. Inpatients bring a relative to cook for them and also to give blood if needed. The hospital has a Robin Hood charging policy. Lowest fees are for locals and the poor. Then there is standard rate for all except those salaried of cattle herding Fulani nomads. Finally, much more expensive and mainly expats, the private wards where there is catering, where Katy helped with catering and our three eldest were born. A new compound is part constructed next to the old leprosarium which now houses patients' relatives. Two more nurses share our compound. Coral Citrine is from Liverpool and Phyllis Shorter from Australia.
Tuesday Katy went to our Jos headquarters. It is about 25 miles, most of it surfaced but some of that a single strip of tar where might is right and you move aside if the oncoming vehicle is bigger than yours. Thursday was a day off pharmacy and I gave a talk on animism to students of Government Technical Training College, Bukuru.The boys were attentive.
Second Sunday morning preached at Kaduna Vom. October 1st public holiday for 10th Independence Day. Letter took three to twelve days from UK. No email not any phone calls. One could make the latter but we never called home in twelve years.
Nov 19th 9:15 pm Jonathan Michael Weeks arrived, breech delivery. Next day into Jos for local birth registration, which certificate goes to the British High Commission for a UK one. Katy and baby not home until 27th. Learnt how to operate the mission shortwave radio our one instant communication. In mid December Peter and Elizabeth Clark and Brian Boddy arrived after a 4500 mil drive across the Sahara. Christmas day staff turkey dinner at the Langs. 29th our sea loads arrived safely to great rejoicing. One of our major pharmacy jobs was IV fluids, dextrose and saline also citrate for blood taking. We has an automatic still running on electricity.
29 Dec our visitors' book arrived and was unpacked. First entry, Anna from Switzerland.
Wednesday, November 22, 2017
The changing world (15) Jul to Sep 1970
Getting ready for packing and buying baby things. SUM conference at ANMC. Ian Tait promised to send us all new banner books published while we are in Nigeria. Left Ealing July 11th and drove to Skipton. Met Tom Brayshw my brother's future father in law. He was in the army and a guard at the Nuremberg war trials with interesting tales to relate concerning the Nazi prisoners many of whom faced execution. Had a day delivering Betterwear with my father. He would canvass taking orders four days a week then deliver on Fridays. He was Cock o' the North, the firm's top salesman in the north of England despite his reduced mobility after the 1964 accident. Betterwear paid commission only no salary and they reckoned only about5% of recruits made the grade. Some would not live only on commission. Some had not the gift of the gab. Some talked too much. Some had wives who would not trust their husbands being out all day with other women. At one stage dad was promoted to manager whereby he received commission on his recruits sales too. But he made more money selling than recruiting so he reverted to being salesman only. This work was definitely God's provision for him. He had had to give up engineering due to contact dermatitis from a combination of arc welding and oil. In our area there were few opportunities for work except farm labouring which paid poorly. He answered an advert for salesman no experience necessary and took to it like a duck to water.
Went to Paul Clough's wedding at Otley. sadly his bride died young. Holiday started by driving to Akeld just this side of the border in Northumberland and staying with Mum's relatives there. Had stayed while single and hiked the Cheviots. Next day B&B Doune via Tweed valley, Carluke, Airdrie and visited The Trosachs and Loch Lomond From Doune a 199 mile day to Beauty via Loch Tay Glen Garry, Spean Bridge and Loch Ness and Dingwall. Then a 104 mile day to Lybster , Caithness stating with the Davenports in the Free Church manse. Learnt about the Clearances and the Disruption. Next day visited Wick and Dunnet head seeing the Old Man of Hoy. On the Sunday free church in Lybster standing to pray and sitting to sing unaccompanied Psalms. On the Monday to Lochinver via the north coast. Saw the Dounray reactor. Crossed Kylesku ferry and saw spectacular peaks like Quinaig and Sullven.
Next day Strome Ferry to Oban with diversion avoiding Ballachulish ferry then via Glencoe. Next day 299 miles Oban to Stranraer. Friday 200 miles to Skipton via Gretna Green and High Force, Teesdale. Visited Bridlingon with the Sunday School outing and Bradford preaching. Helmsley and York visits. Down to Potters bar. Visited Chelmsford. Katy's parents' silver wedding. Visited and stayed Portsmouth and Newport. En route to Overends visited Churchill's grave at Blaydon. Stayed in Rugby. Visited Leicester en route to Wilmslow. Overnight in Leicester on way to Potters Bar. Visited Ealing. Stayed in Birmingham on way to Skipton. Sold car. Valedictory service. Aunty Joyce gave us a weepy farewell. Dad too us to Potters Bar and on September 15th to Heathrow for Nigeria
Went to Paul Clough's wedding at Otley. sadly his bride died young. Holiday started by driving to Akeld just this side of the border in Northumberland and staying with Mum's relatives there. Had stayed while single and hiked the Cheviots. Next day B&B Doune via Tweed valley, Carluke, Airdrie and visited The Trosachs and Loch Lomond From Doune a 199 mile day to Beauty via Loch Tay Glen Garry, Spean Bridge and Loch Ness and Dingwall. Then a 104 mile day to Lybster , Caithness stating with the Davenports in the Free Church manse. Learnt about the Clearances and the Disruption. Next day visited Wick and Dunnet head seeing the Old Man of Hoy. On the Sunday free church in Lybster standing to pray and sitting to sing unaccompanied Psalms. On the Monday to Lochinver via the north coast. Saw the Dounray reactor. Crossed Kylesku ferry and saw spectacular peaks like Quinaig and Sullven.
Next day Strome Ferry to Oban with diversion avoiding Ballachulish ferry then via Glencoe. Next day 299 miles Oban to Stranraer. Friday 200 miles to Skipton via Gretna Green and High Force, Teesdale. Visited Bridlingon with the Sunday School outing and Bradford preaching. Helmsley and York visits. Down to Potters bar. Visited Chelmsford. Katy's parents' silver wedding. Visited and stayed Portsmouth and Newport. En route to Overends visited Churchill's grave at Blaydon. Stayed in Rugby. Visited Leicester en route to Wilmslow. Overnight in Leicester on way to Potters Bar. Visited Ealing. Stayed in Birmingham on way to Skipton. Sold car. Valedictory service. Aunty Joyce gave us a weepy farewell. Dad too us to Potters Bar and on September 15th to Heathrow for Nigeria
SIX LITTLE STORIES
Well worth the 30 seconds to read! {1}Once all villagers decided to pray for rain.On the day of prayer all the people gathered,but only one boy came with an umbrella.That's FAITH.{2}When you throw babies in the air,they laugh because they know you will catch them.That's TRUST.{3}Every night we go to bedwithout any assurance of being alive the next morning,but still we set the alarms to wake up.That's HOPE.{4}We plan big things for tomorrowin spite of zero knowledge of the future.That's CONFIDENCE.{5}We see the world suffering,but still we get married and have children.That's LOVE.{6}On an old man's shirt was written a sentence'I am not 80 years old;I am sweet 16 with 64 years of experience.'That's ATTITUDE.Have a happy day and live your life like the six stories.When I was a child, I thought nap time was punishment. Now it's like a mini-vacation.
"GOOD FRIENDS ARE THE RARE JEWELS OF LIFE...DIFFICULT TO FIND AND IMPOSSIBLE TO REPLACE!
The changing world (14) Jan to Jun 1970
Jan 12 Biafra surrendered ending four years of civil war. Failed second driving test. Saw England 0 Holland 0 at Wembley. Dull possession football. Overheard coming out, 'The only good thing was some fools paid more than I did to watch this rubbish'. A new tyre for £5/4/-. My brother Geoffrey employed selling Rington's tea. Applied for a couple of other local pharmacy jobs without success.
£6 for car's six month service. L'Abri buy The Manor, Greatham with a legacy. Katy interviewed for SUM. Rhodesia decades itself a republic. saw The Flying Dutchman at Saddler's Wells, my first ever opera. It would be many years before I wanted to watch anything not in English as this was. Heard SUM had accepted us both. New English Bible published.
Applied for passports. Pregnancy not confirmed GP ruled it out late March. Passed driving test. On Good Friday visited Kew. 3d to get in. Hit by the tropical house atmosphere. Nothing like it until we alighted from the plane at Kano six months later. Serious fire at St John's with arson suspected. Rioting in Belfast. Visited the Newton family at Rugby school where Fiona's husband teaches physics.
Katy in hospital to remove three wisdom teeth. Enjoying a cigar from time to time. I had given up my pipe in 1965 when tobacco went to 5s per oz. Now as I write it is about 25 times that price. I avoid rendering to this Caesar and buy from USA or Europe. In Nigeria I was not supposed to smoke or drink. I did both with Christian Reformed friends. The Nigerian church prohibition on alcohol led to gross hypocrisy. A poor man would be disciplined for a sip but the state governor, a church member could open a brewery for his state and not be disciplined. Now I would never sign the pledge. Before Nigeria I drank little. Had no taste for beer only cider. and wine. I only got onto beer around 1980 and spirits 1990 when a church member introduced me to single malt. He had done work for the Distillers Company. Nowadays all I have is a pipe when the weather is mild enough to sit outdoors. I am banned from my pipe in the house or car. In Nigeria I could enjoy a cigar driving or hidden among the Jos rocks at the rear of the compound.
Chelsea kicked Leeds off the pitch at Old Trafford to win the one and only Cup Final replay I believe. Eddie Gray had run rings round them at Wembley. Chopper Harris took him out up north. So Chelsea joined Man U as Leeds hate objects. - with Maradonna as national object of illification this year.
Favourite TV shows of the year were The Forsythe Saga and Edward and Mrs Simpson. Edward Fox had the duke to perfection. USA advances into Cambodia. Heard we are to go to Vom Hospital. New suit for the tropics, £25. Early May unplanned pregnancy confirmed. Our friend Jack Jenner lost his wife and baby in childbirth.
General Election and I did not vote. We had three candidates. I asked their views on Common Market, abortion and hanging. Two replied disagreeing with me on all points. So I had no-one to vote for. OTOH in Thirsk my father, life long Labour voter had Robin Turton, father of the house and leading anti-marketeer. I told dad to vote for him. No need he said as the Labour woman was against it too. So he could not vote for nor me against the wretched Common Market which all the lying parties told us was a purely economic thing and not political.LIARS led by traitor Heath who came to power, our least and worst Conservative until Cameron. This was the biggest shock result for years. Majority of 42.
My barber was a Jewish communist who thought that SUM's equal pay policy from newest recruits to the field director was wrong! Each month we were not paid in Nigeria until the monthly salary was in the mission's kitty. So one could get three months in arrears. We never suffered want and when you came on leave you were paid any arrears. This was better than the r missions who paid what was in the kitty each month but if it was short, hard luck. It was never made u. We were glad too that we did not have to raise persona pledged support but all went none pot. The other system favoured missionary who had appealing work and could speak well on deputation.
Schaeefer visited and spoke at IPC on Ash Heap Lives, one of his published sermons . Met Dr John Lang our future boss at Vom. An excellent medical superintendent but whose preaching was as stimulating as phenobarbital IMO. BTW in those days barbiturates were the hypnotic of choice - and the drug of choice for would be suicides.
A former boyfriend of Katy's murdered his fiancee than killed himself. The Macaulays went to her brother's wedding. At the time we did not know he had got his bride pregnant when she was a student at L'Abri. Later, friends in the know said Frank was spoiled as the boy after three girls but also neglected as the work occupied his parents. He boasted about his artistic talents but I heard his only recommendation was his surname.
End of June finished work at Bruces. Bernadette Devlin jailed. Collected steel drums from Barking for shipping our loads to Nigeria. Used martin's VW camps which was LHD and I wondered if the pedals were on the wrong way round too.
£6 for car's six month service. L'Abri buy The Manor, Greatham with a legacy. Katy interviewed for SUM. Rhodesia decades itself a republic. saw The Flying Dutchman at Saddler's Wells, my first ever opera. It would be many years before I wanted to watch anything not in English as this was. Heard SUM had accepted us both. New English Bible published.
Applied for passports. Pregnancy not confirmed GP ruled it out late March. Passed driving test. On Good Friday visited Kew. 3d to get in. Hit by the tropical house atmosphere. Nothing like it until we alighted from the plane at Kano six months later. Serious fire at St John's with arson suspected. Rioting in Belfast. Visited the Newton family at Rugby school where Fiona's husband teaches physics.
Katy in hospital to remove three wisdom teeth. Enjoying a cigar from time to time. I had given up my pipe in 1965 when tobacco went to 5s per oz. Now as I write it is about 25 times that price. I avoid rendering to this Caesar and buy from USA or Europe. In Nigeria I was not supposed to smoke or drink. I did both with Christian Reformed friends. The Nigerian church prohibition on alcohol led to gross hypocrisy. A poor man would be disciplined for a sip but the state governor, a church member could open a brewery for his state and not be disciplined. Now I would never sign the pledge. Before Nigeria I drank little. Had no taste for beer only cider. and wine. I only got onto beer around 1980 and spirits 1990 when a church member introduced me to single malt. He had done work for the Distillers Company. Nowadays all I have is a pipe when the weather is mild enough to sit outdoors. I am banned from my pipe in the house or car. In Nigeria I could enjoy a cigar driving or hidden among the Jos rocks at the rear of the compound.
Chelsea kicked Leeds off the pitch at Old Trafford to win the one and only Cup Final replay I believe. Eddie Gray had run rings round them at Wembley. Chopper Harris took him out up north. So Chelsea joined Man U as Leeds hate objects. - with Maradonna as national object of illification this year.
Favourite TV shows of the year were The Forsythe Saga and Edward and Mrs Simpson. Edward Fox had the duke to perfection. USA advances into Cambodia. Heard we are to go to Vom Hospital. New suit for the tropics, £25. Early May unplanned pregnancy confirmed. Our friend Jack Jenner lost his wife and baby in childbirth.
General Election and I did not vote. We had three candidates. I asked their views on Common Market, abortion and hanging. Two replied disagreeing with me on all points. So I had no-one to vote for. OTOH in Thirsk my father, life long Labour voter had Robin Turton, father of the house and leading anti-marketeer. I told dad to vote for him. No need he said as the Labour woman was against it too. So he could not vote for nor me against the wretched Common Market which all the lying parties told us was a purely economic thing and not political.LIARS led by traitor Heath who came to power, our least and worst Conservative until Cameron. This was the biggest shock result for years. Majority of 42.
My barber was a Jewish communist who thought that SUM's equal pay policy from newest recruits to the field director was wrong! Each month we were not paid in Nigeria until the monthly salary was in the mission's kitty. So one could get three months in arrears. We never suffered want and when you came on leave you were paid any arrears. This was better than the r missions who paid what was in the kitty each month but if it was short, hard luck. It was never made u. We were glad too that we did not have to raise persona pledged support but all went none pot. The other system favoured missionary who had appealing work and could speak well on deputation.
Schaeefer visited and spoke at IPC on Ash Heap Lives, one of his published sermons . Met Dr John Lang our future boss at Vom. An excellent medical superintendent but whose preaching was as stimulating as phenobarbital IMO. BTW in those days barbiturates were the hypnotic of choice - and the drug of choice for would be suicides.
A former boyfriend of Katy's murdered his fiancee than killed himself. The Macaulays went to her brother's wedding. At the time we did not know he had got his bride pregnant when she was a student at L'Abri. Later, friends in the know said Frank was spoiled as the boy after three girls but also neglected as the work occupied his parents. He boasted about his artistic talents but I heard his only recommendation was his surname.
End of June finished work at Bruces. Bernadette Devlin jailed. Collected steel drums from Barking for shipping our loads to Nigeria. Used martin's VW camps which was LHD and I wondered if the pedals were on the wrong way round too.
IM C S Lewis 22 Nov 1963
If nothing in this world satisfies me, perhaps it is because I was made for another world. C. S. Lewis
Affection is responsible for nine-tenths of whatever solid and durable happiness there is in our lives. - Clive Staples Lewis, The Four Loves
The best men in the estate of grace would be in darkness, and call their estate into question, if the Holy Ghost did not convince them, and answer all cavils for them; and therefore we must not only be convinced at first by the Spirit, but in our continued course of Christianity. This, therefore, should make us come to God's ordinances with holy devotion. O Lord, vouchsafe the Spirit of revelation, and take the scales from mine eyes, that as these are truths, they may be truthIf you read history, you will find that the Christians who did the most for the present world were just those who thought the most of the next.--C.S. Lewis
If Darwin´s theory of Evolution was correct, cats would be able to operate a can-opener by now. --C.S. Lewis
One reason why people find [Life-Force religion] so attractive is itgives one much of the emotional comfort of believing in God and none of the less pleasant consequences. When you are feeling fit and the sun is shining and you do not want to believe that the whole universe is a mere mechanical dance of atoms, it is nice to be able to think of this great mysterious Force rolling on through the centuries and carrying you on its crest. If, on the other hand, you want to do something rather shabby, the Life-Force, being only a blind force, with no morals and no mind, will never interfere with you like that troublesome God we learned about when we were children. The Life- Force is a sort of tame God. You can switch it on when you want, but it will not bother you. All the thrills of religion and none of the cost. Is the Life-Force the greatest achievement of wishful thinking the world has yet seen? ~C.S. Lewis, "Mere Christianity".
We are quite ignorant of the real power of our habits until we try to give them up. --Clive Staples Lewis (1898-1963) _Letter to Mrs. Percival Wiseman_ [May 26, 1942]
Jill transported to the land of Aslan is stranded in a strange forest because of pride and foolishness. She becomes extremely thirsty, finds a stream but a lion is there. The Lion bids her to come and drink. The voice was not like a man's but "deeper, wilder, and stronger" - a "sort of heavy golden voice". "May I - could I - would you mind going away while I do?", said Jill. The Lion answered this only by a look and a very low growl. And as Jill gazed at its mountainous bulk, she realized that she might as well have asked the whole mountain to move aside for her convenience. The delicious rippling noise of the stream was driving her nearly frantic. "Will you promise not to - do anything to me if you do come?", said Jill. "I make no promise, " said the Lion. Jill was so thirsty now that, without noticing it, she had come a step nearer. "Do you eat girls?", she said. "I have swallowed up girls and boys, women and men, kings and emperors, cities and realms", said the Lion. It didn't say this as if it were boasting, nor as if it were sorry, nor as if it were angry. it just said it. 'I daren't come and drink", said Jill. "Then you will die of thirst", said the Lion. "Oh dear!", said Jill coming a step nearer. "I supposed I must go and look for another stream then." "There is no other stream", said the Lion. C. S. LEWIS, Silver Chair
In the chapter, "Farewell to Shadowlands," the children are afraid of being sent away from Narnia. Aslan assures them that they will not - and a wild hope rises in them. Aslan tells them that there was a real railway accident. "Your father and mother and all of you are -- as you used to call it in the Shadowlands -- dead. The term is over: the holiday has begun. The dream is ended. This is the morning...things that began to happen after that were so great and beautiful that I cannot write them. And as for us, this is the end of all stories, and we can most truly say that they all lived happily ever after. But for them it was only the beginning of the real story. All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia have only been the cover of the Great Story which none on earth has read; which goes on forever, in which every chapter is better than the one before." C. S. LEWIS, Last Battle
I am a democrat because I believe in the Fall of Man. I think most people are democrats for the opposite reason. A great deal of democratic enthusiasm descends from the ideas of people like Rousseau, who believed in democracy because they thought mankind so wise and good that everyone deserved a share in the government. The danger of defending democracy on these grounds is that they are not true....Mankind is so fallen that no man can be trusted with unchecked power over his fellows. Aristotle said that some people were only fit to be slaves. I do not contradict him. But I reject slavery because I see no men fit to be masters. CS Lewis
He's [God] a hedonist at heart...He makes no secret of it; at His right hand are pleasures forevermore...He's vulgar, Wormwood. He has bourgeois mind. There are things for humans to do all day long...sleeping, eating, drinking, making love, playing, praying, working. Everything has to be twisted before it's of any use to us. C. S. LEWIS, Screwtape Letters
Cowardice, alone of all the vices, is purely painful -- horrible to anticipate, horrible to feel, horrible to remember; Hatred has its pleasures. -- _The Screwtape Letters_
In a sense it (Christianity) creates, rather than solves, the problem of pain, for pain would be no problem unless side by side with our daily experience of this painful world, we had received what we think a good assurance that ultimate reality is righteousness and loving. C. S. LEWIS, THE PROBLEM OF PAIN
We may think God wants actions of a certain kind, but God wants people of a certain kind. C. S. LEWIS, Mere Christianity
Autumn is really the best of the seasons; and I'm not sure that old age isn't the best part of life. But of course, like autumn, it doesn't last. --Clive Staples Lewis (1898-1963) _Letters of C.S. Lewis_ [1966], "27 October 1963"
What we have been told is how we men can be drawn into Christ - can become part of that wonderful present which the young Prince of the universe wants to offer to His Father that present which is Himself and therefore us in Him. It is the only thing we were made for. And there are strange, exciting hints in the Bible that when we are drawn in, a great many other things in Nature will begin to come right. The bad dream will be over: it will be morning. ... C. S. Lewis (1898-1963), Mere Christianity [1952]
It does not matter how small the sins are, provided that their cumulative effect is to edge the man away from the Light and out into the Nothing. Murder is no better than cards if cards can do the trick.~C.S. Lewis 1898-1963, The Screwtape Letters (1941)
We ought to give thanks for all fortune: if it is "good," because it is good; if "bad" because it works in us patience, humility and contempt of this world and the hope of our eternal country. --Clive Staples Lewis (1898-1963)_Letter to Don Giovanni Calabria_ [August 10, 1948]
We ought to give thanks for all fortune: if it is good, because it is good; if bad, because it works in us patience, humility, contempt of this world and the hope of our eternal country.- C.S. Lewis
It is only when you are asked to believe in Reason coming from non-reason that you must cry Halt. Human minds. They do not come from nowhere. ~ C.S. Lewis 1898-1963 , Miracles (1947)
Chastity is the most unpopular of the Christian virtues. There is no getting away from it; the old Christian rule is, "Either marriage, with completely faithfulness to your partner, or else total abstinence. --Clive Staples Lewis (1898-1963) _Mere Christianity_ [1952], Book III, Chapter 5
We must never speak to simple, excitable people about "the Day" without emphasizing again and again the utter impossibility of prediction. We must try to show them that that impossibility is an essential part of the doctrine. If you do not believe our Lord's words, why do you believe in His return at all? And if you do believe them, must you not put away from you, utterly and forever, any hope of dating that return? ... C. S. Lewis (1898-1963), The World's Last Night
God could, had He pleased, have been incarnate in a man of iron nerves, the Stoic sort who lets no sigh escape him. Of His great humility He chose to be incarnate in a man of delicate sensibilities who wept at the grave of Lazarus and sweated blood in Gethsemane. Otherwise, we should have missed the great lesson that it is by his will alone that a man is good or bad, and that feelings are not, in themselves, of any importance. We should also have missed the all important help of knowing that He has faced all that the weakest of us face, has shared not only the strength of our nature but every weakness of it except sin. --Clive Staples Lewis (1898-1963) _Letters of C.S. Lewis_ [1966], "23 February 1947"
What will you do with Jesus,
Neutral you can not be,
One day your heart will be asking,
What will He do with me.
C. S. LEWIS
I . . . strongly object to the tyrannic and unscriptural insolence of anything that calls itself a Church and makes teetotalism a condition of membership. Apart from the more serious objection (that our Lord himself turned water into wine and made wine the medium of the only rite He imposed on all His followers), . . . Don't they realize that Christianity arose in the Mediterranean world where, then as now, wine was as much part of the normal diet as bread? --Clive Staples Lewis (1898-1963) _Letters of C.S. Lewis_ [1966], "16 March 1955"
Our passions are not too strong, they are too weak. We are far too easily pleased. - C S Lewis
We are not necessarily doubting that God will do the best for us; we are wondering how painful the best will turn out to be. - C S Lewis
We don't pray to change God. We pray to change ourselves. --C S Lewis., 'The Pilgrim's Regress'
Atheists express their rage against God although in their view He does not exist. --C. S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain
In God you come up against something which is in every way immeasurably superior to yourself...As long as you are proud you cannot know God. --C. S. Lewis, _Mere Christianity_, Chapter 8, The Great Sin
When you are arguing against Him you are arguing against the very power that makes you able to argue at all. ~C.S.Lewis, Mere Christianity.
The process of living seems to consist in coming to realize truths so ancient and simple that, if stated, they sound like barren platitudes. They cannot sound otherwise to those who have not had the relevant experience: that is why there is no real teaching of such truths possible and every generation starts from scratch. C S Lewis - Letters, May 1939
The settled happiness and security which we all desire, God withholds from us by the very nature of the world; but joy, pleasure, and merriment, He has scattered broadcast. We are never safe, but we have plenty of fun, and some ecstasy. It is not hard to see why. The security we crave would teach us to rest our hearts in this world and oppose an obstacle to our return to God: a few moments of happy love, a landscape, a symphony, a merry meeting with our friends, a bathe or a football match, have no such tendency. Our Father refreshes us on the journey with some pleasant inns, but will not encourage us to mistake them for home. C S Lewis ( The Problem of Pain)
Never forget that when we are dealing with any pleasure ints healthy and normal and satisfying form, we are, in asense, on the Enemy's ground. I know we have won many a soulthrough pleasure. All the same, it is His invention, not ours. He made the pleasures: all our research so far has not enabled us to produce one. All we can do is to encourage the humans to take the pleasures which our Enemy has produced, at times, or in ways, or in degrees, which He has forbidden. Hence we always try to work away from the natural condition of any pleasure to that in which it is least natural, least redolent of its Maker, and least pleasurable. An ever increasing craving for an ever diminishing pleasure is the formula. It is more certain; and it's better style. To getthe man's soul and give him nothing in return--that is what really gladdens our Father's heart.--C. S. Lewis, _The Screwtape Letters_
One reason why people find [Life-Force religion] so attractive is itgives one much of the emotional comfort of believing in God and none of the less pleasant consequences. When you are feeling fit and the sun is shining and you do not want to believe that the whole universe is a mere mechanical dance of atoms, it is nice to be able to think of this great mysterious Force rolling on through the centuries and carrying you on its crest. If, on the other hand, you want to do something rather shabby, the Life-Force, being only a blind force, with no morals and no mind, will never interfere with you like that troublesome God we learned about when we were children. The Life- Force is a sort of tame God. You can switch it on when you want, but it will not bother you. All the thrills of religion and none of the cost. Is the Life-Force the greatest achievement of wishful thinking the world has yet seen? ~C.S. Lewis, "Mere Christianity".
The basic principle of the new education is to be that dunces and idlers must not be made to feel inferior to intelligent and industrious pupils. That would be "undemocratic." These differences between pupils &endash; for they are obviously and nakedly individual differences &endash; must be disguised. This can be done at various levels. At universities, examinations must be framed so that nearly all the students get good marks. Entrance examinations must be framed so that all, or nearly all, citizens can go to universities, whether they have any power (or wish) to profit by higher education or not. At schools, the children who are too stupid or lazy to learn languages and mathematics and elementary science can be set to doing things that children used to do in their spare time. Let, them, for example, make mud pies and call it modeling. But all the time there must be no faintest hint that they are inferior to the children who are at work. Whatever nonsense they are engaged in must have &endash; I believe the English already use the phrase &endash; "parity of esteem." An even more drastic scheme is now possible. Children who are fit to proceed to a higher class may be artificially kept back, because the others would get a trauma -- Beelzebub, what a useful word! &endash; by being left behind. The bright pupil thus remains democratically fettered to his own age group throughout his school career, and a boy who would be capable of tackling Aeschylus or Dante sits listening to his coeval's attempts to spell out A CAT SAT ON A MAT. --C.S. Lewis, Screwtape Proposes A Toast (1959)
No man knows how bad he is until he has tried to be good. There is a silly idea about that good people don't know what temptation means. --Clive Staples Lewis (1898-1963) _The Screwtape Letters_ [1941]
What in heaven's name is the idea of everyone sending everyone else pictures of stage-coaches, fairies, foxes, dogs, butterflies, kittens, flowers, etc.?... Imagine a Chinese man sitting at a table covered with small pictures. The man explains that he is preparing for the anniversary of Buddha's being protected by the dragons. Not that he personally believes that this is the real anniversary of the event or even that it really happened. He is just keeping up the old custom. Not that he has any pictures of Buddha or of the dragons. He doesn't like that kind. He says, "Here's one of a traction engine for Hu Flung Dung, and I'm sending this study of a napkin-ring to Lo Hung Git, and these jolly ones of bluebottles are for the children. ~C.S. Lewis, letter to his brother Warren (Christmas Eve 1939) -on the futility of celebrating the Nativity if one does not accept the Incarnation.
I believe a man is happier, and happy in a richer way, if he has "the freeborn mind." But I doubt whether he can have this without economic independence, which the new society is abolishing. For economic independence allows an education not controlled by Government; and in adult life it is the man who needs, and asks, nothing of Government who can criticise its acts and snap his fingers at its ideology. Read Montaigne; that's the voice of a man with his legs under his own table, eating the mutton and turnips raised on his own land. Who will talk like that when the State is everyone's schoolmaster and employer? -- C.S. Lewis
Anxiety is not only a pain which we must ask God to assuage but also a weakness we must ask Him to pardon &emdash; for He's told us to take no care for the morrow. - C. S.Lewis, letter ,NOVEMBER 27, 1953,
We have now for many centuries triumphed over nature to the extent of making certain secondary characteristics of the male (such as the beard) disagreeable to nearly all the females--and there is more in that than you might suppose. --Clive Staples Lewis (1898-1963) _The Screwtape Letters_ [1942], "Letter 20"
One needs the sweetness to start one on the spiritual life but, once started, one must learn to obey God for his own sake, not for the pleasure. -- C. S. Lewis, Letter of 11/9/1931
I do not believe that God created an egalitarian world. I believe the authority of parent over child, husband ever wife, learned over simple, to have been as much a part of the original plan as the authority of man over beast. I believe that if we had not fallen Filmer would be right, and patriarchal monarchy would be the sole lawful government. C. S. Lewis "Membership" Sobernost #31 (June 1945)
..there are two opposite reasons for being a democrat. You may think all men so good that they deserve a share in the government of the commonwealth, and so wise that the commonwealth needs their advice. That is, in my opinion, the false, romantic doctrine of democracy. On the other hand, you may believe fallen men to be so wicked that not one of them can be trusted with any irresponsible power over his fellows. ----C. S. Lewis "Membership" Sobernost #31 (June 1945)
What can you ever really know of other people's souls-- of their temptations, their opportunities, their struggles? One soul in the whole creation you do know: and it is the only one whose fate is placed in your hands. --C. S. Lewis, _Mere Christianity_, Chapter 10
I walk in wonders beyond myself. --C. S. Lewis
Power worship blurs political judgement because it leads, almost unavoidably to the belThe vice I am talking about is Pride or Self-Conceit: and the virtue opposite to it, in Christian morals, is called Humility. You may remember, when I was talking about sexual morality, I warned you that the centre of Christian morals did not lie there. Well, now we have come to the centre. According to Christian teachers, the essential vice, the utmost evil, is Pride. Unchastity, greed, drunkenness, and all that, are mere flea-bites in comparison: it was through Pride that the devil became the devil: Pride leads to every other vice: it is the complete anti-God state of mind. ... C. S. Lewis (1898-1963)
To be happy at home, said Johnson, is the end of all human endeavour. As long as we are thinking only of natural values we must say that the sun looks down on nothing half so good as a household laughing together over a meal, or two friends talking over a pint of beer, or a man alone reading a book that interests him; and that all economics, politics, laws, armies, and institutions, save in so far as they prolong and multiply such scenes, are a mere ploughing the sand and sowing the ocean, a meaningless vanity and vexation of spirit. ... But do not let us mistake necessary evils for good. The mistake is easily made. Fruit has to be tinned if it is to be transported, and has to lose thereby some of its good qualities. But one meets people who have learned actually to prefer the tinned fruit to the fresh. A sick society must think much about politics, as a sick man must think much about his digestion: to ignore the subject may be fatal cowardice for the one as for the other. But if either comes to regard it as the natural food of the mind - if either forgets that we think of such things only in order to be able to think of something else - then what was undertaken for the sake of health has become itself a new and deadly disease.--C. S. Lewis "Membership" Sobernost #31 (June 1945)
The long dull monotonous years of middle-aged prosperity or middle-aged adversity are excellent campaigning weather for the Devil.
C. S. Lewis (1898-1963) "The Screwtape Letters," 1941
Amiable agnostics will talk cheerfully about man's search for God. For me, they might as well talk about the mouse's search for a cat... C. S. LEWIS
It is only our bad temper that we put down to being tired or worried or hungry; we put our good temper down to ourselves.
C. S. Lewis (1898-1963) "Mere Christianity."
Man has held three views of his body. First there is that of those ascetic Pagans who called it the prison or the "tomb" of the soul, and of Christians like Fisher to whom it was a "sack of dung", food for worms, filthy, shameful, a source of nothing but temptation to bad men and humiliation to good ones. Then there are the Neo-Pagans (they seldom know Greek), the nudist and the sufferers from Dark Gods, to whom the body is glorious. But thirdly we have the view which St. Francis expressed by calling his body, "Brother Ass". All three may be---I am not sure--defensible; but give me St. Francis for my money. "Ass" is exquisitely right because no one in his senses can either rever or hate a donkey. It is a useful, sturdy, lazy, obstinate, patient, lovable and infuriating beast; deserving now the stick and now a carrot; both pathetically and absurdly beautiful. So the body. There's no living with it till we recognise that one of its functions in our lives is to play the part of buffoon. Until some theory has sophisticated them, every man, woman and child in the world knows this. The fact that we have bodies is the oldest joke there is....The highest does not stand without the lowest. There is indeed at certain moments a high poetry in the flesh itself; but also, by your leave, an irreducible element of obstinate and ludicrous unpoetry. If it does not make itself felt on one occasion, it will on another. Far better to plant it foresquare within the drama of Eros as comic relief than pretend you haven't noticed it.
C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves
Look for yourself and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin and decay. But look for Christ and you will find Him, and with Him everything else thrown in.-- C. S. LEWIS
Among the Jews there suddenly turns up a man who goes about talking as if He as God...Now let us get this clear. Among Pantheists, like the Indians, anyone might say that he was part of God, or one with God:There would be nothing very odd about it. But this man, since He was a Jew, could not mean that kind of God. God, in their language, meant the Being outsidethe world Who made it and was infinitely different from anything else. Andwhen you have grasped that, you will see that what this man said was, quite simply, the most shocking thing that has ever been uttered by human lips. C. S. Lewis
I believe in Christianity as I believe that the Sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.
C. S. Lewis (1898-1963), "Is Theology Poetry?"
Christianity, if false, is of no importance, and if true, of infinite importance. The only thing it cannot be is moderately important. CS Lewis
Courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point, which means at the point of highest reality. A chastity or honesty or mercy which yields to danger will be chaste or honest or merciful only on conditions. Pilate was merciful until it became risky.Among the oxen (like an ox I'm slow)
I see a glory in the stable grow
Which, with the ox's dullness might at length
Give me an ox's strength.Among the asses (stubborn I as they)
I see my Saviour where I looked for hay;
So may my beast like folly learn at least
The patience of a beast.
Among the sheep (I like a sheep have strayed)
I watch the manger where my Lord is laid;
Oh that my baa-ing nature would win thence
Some woolly innocence!
CS Lewis The Nativity
C.S. Lewis (1898-1963), The Screwtape Letters
If we really think that home is elsewhere and that this life is a 'wandering to find home,' why should we not look forward to the arrival?
C.S. Lewis letter:7 June 1959
Has this world been so kind to you that you should leave with regret? There are better things ahead than any we leave behind.
C.S. Lewis (1898-1963)
God cannot give us a happiness and peace apart from Himself, because it is not there. There is no such thing.
C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) Mere Christianity
Our Father refreshes us on the journey with some pleasant inns, but will not encourage us to mistake them for home.
C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) The Problem of Pain
The safest road to Hell is the gradual one--the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts. C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) The Screwtape Letters
"You come of the Lord Adam and the Lady Eve," said Aslan. "And that is both honour enough to erect the head of the poorest beggar, and shame enough to bow the shoulders of the greatest emperor in earth. Be content." C S Lewis Prince Caspian
Joy is never in our power and pleasure often is. C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) Surprised by Joy
There are two kinds of people: those who say to God, "Thy will be done," and those to whom God says, "All right, then, have it your way." C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) The Great Divorce
He that but looketh on a plate of ham and eggs to lust after it hath already committed breakfast with it in his heart. C S Lewis Letters to an American Lady
God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks to us in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: It is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world. -- C S Lewis - The Problem of Pain
The moment you wake up each morning, all your wishes and hopes for the day rush at you like wild animals. And the first job each morning consists in shoving it all back; in listening to that other voice, taking that other point of view, letting that other, larger, stronger, quieter life coming flowing in. C.S. Lewis (1898-1963)
Can a mortal ask question which God finds unanswerable? Quite easily, I should think. All nonsense questions are unanswerable. How many hours are there in a mile? Is yellow square or round? Probably half the questions we ask---half our great theological and metaphysical problems---are like that. And now that I come to think of it, there's no practical problem before me at all. I know the two great commandments, and I'd better get on with them. C. S. Lewis A Grief Observed
Has this world been so kind to you that you should leave with regret? There are better things ahead than any we leave behind. C.S. Lewis (1898-1963)
No man knows how bad he is until he has tried to be good. There is a silly idea about that good people don't know what temptation means. -- C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) The Screwtape Letters
The great thing, if one can, is to stop regarding all the unpleasant things as interruptions of one's 'own,' or 'real' life. The truth is of course that what one calls the interruptions are precisely one's real life--the the life God is sending one day by day: what one calls one's 'real life' is a phantom of one's own imagination. This at least is what I see at moments of insight: but it's hard to remember it all the time. C.S. Lewis, The Letters of C.S. Lewis to Arthur Greeves
The next best thing to being wise oneself is to live in a circle of those who are --C.S. Lewis, Selected Literary Essays
When we lose one blessing, another is often most unexpectedly given in its place.--C.S. Lewis , letter: 3 Aug 1959
An open mind, in questions that are not ultimate, is useful. But an open mind about the ultimate foundations either of Theoretical or of Practical Reason is idiocy.--C.S. Lewis The Abolition of Man
If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.
C S Lewis--Mere Christianity
An open mind, in questions that are not ultimate, is useful. But an open mind about the ultimate foundations either of Theoretical or of Practical Reason is idiocy.--C.S. Lewis The Abolition of Man
If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.
C S Lewis--Mere Christianity
Without the aid of trained emotions the intellect is powerless against the animal organism.--C.S. Lewis The Abolition of Man
This year, or this month, or, more likely, this very day, we have failed to practise ourselves the kind of behaviour we expect from other people.
C.S. Lewis The Case for Christianity
All men alike stand condemned, not by alien codes of ethics, but by their own, and all men therefore are conscious of guilt.-- C S Lewis --The Problem of Pain
If the universe is so bad...how on earth did human beings ever come to attribute it to the activity of a wise and good Creator? C.S. Lewis--The Problem of Pain
[God] is not proud...He will have us even though we have shown that we prefer everything else to Him. C.S. Lewis --The Problem of Pain
If God thinks this state of war in the universe a price worth paying for free will...then we may take it it is worth paying.-- C S Lewis--Mere Christianity
Sin is the dare of God's justice, the rape of His mercy, the jeer of His patience, the slight of His power, and the contempt of His love.-- John Bunyan
All men are frauds. The only difference between them is that some admit it. I myself deny it.-- H.L. Mencken
Without the aid of trained emotions the intellect is powerless against the animal organism.--C.S. Lewis The Abolition of Man
This year, or this month, or, more likely, this very day, we have failed to practise ourselves the kind of behaviour we expect from other people.
C.S. Lewis The Case for Christianity
All men alike stand condemned, not by alien codes of ethics, but by their own, and all men therefore are conscious of guilt.-- C S Lewis --The Problem of Pain
If the universe is so bad...how on earth did human beings ever come to attribute it to the activity of a wise and good Creator? C.S. Lewis--The Problem of Pain
[God] is not proud...He will have us even though we have shown that we prefer everything else to Him. C.S. Lewis --The Problem of Pain
If God thinks this state of war in the universe a price worth paying for free will...then we may take it it is worth paying.-- C S Lewis--Mere Christianity
Reality, in fact, is always something you couldn't have guessed. That's one of the reasons I believe Christianity. It's a religion you couldn't have guessed. -- C.S. Lewis--The Case for Christianity
'Safe?' said Mr. Beaver...'Who said anything about safe? 'Course he isn't safe. but he's good. He's the King, I tell you.'
C S Lewis--The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
Confronted with a cancer or a slum the Pantheist can say, "If you could only see it from the divine point of view, you would realize that this also is God." The Christian replies, "Don't talk damned nonsense." --C. S. Lewis, _The Case for Christianity_, 1943
[Pain] removes the veil; it plants the flag of truth within the fortress of a rebel soul. -- C.S. Lewis --The Problem of Pain
What makes some theological works like sawdust to me is the way the authors can go on discussing how far certain positions are adjustable to contemporary thought, or beneficial in relation to social problems, or "have a future" before them, but never squarely ask what grounds we have for supposing them to be true accounts of any objective reality. As if we were trying to make rather than to learn. Have we no Other to reckon with?... C. S. Lewis (1898-1963)
All [Christian churches] regard divorce as something like cutting up a living body, as a kind of surgical operation. Some of them think the operation so violent that it cannot be done at all; others admit it as a desperate remedy in extreme cases. They are all agreed that it is more like having both your legs cut off than it is like dissolving a business partnership or even deserting a regiment. What they all disagree with is the modern view that it is a simple readjustment of partners, to be made whenever people feel they are no longer in love with one another, or when either of them falls in love with someone else.
C S Lewis-- _Mere Christianity_
Now Faith...is the art of holding on to things your reason 'has once accepted, in spite of your changing moods. For moods will change, whatever view your reason takes. I know that by experience. Now that I am a Christian I do have moods in which the whole thing looks very improbable: but when I was an atheist I had moods in which Christianity looked terribly probable. This rebellion of your moods against your real self is going to come anyway. That is why Faith is such a necessary virtue: unless you teach your moods "where they get off," you can never be either a sound Christian or even a sound atheist, but just a creature dithering to and fro, with its beliefs really dependent on the weather and the state of its digestion. Consequently one must train the habit of Faith.
C S Lewis -- _Mere Christianity_
An "impersonal God"-- well and good. A subjective God of beauty, truth and goodness, inside our own heads -- better still. A formless life-force surging through us, a vast power which we can tap -- best of all. But God Himself, alive, pulling at the other end of the cord, perhaps, approaching an infinite speed, the hunter, king, husband -- that is quite another matter. There comes a moment when the children who have been playing at burglars hush suddenly: was that a real footstep in the hall? There comes a moment when people who have been dabbling in religion ("Man's search for God!") suddenly draw back. Supposing we really found Him? We never meant it to come to that! Worse still, supposing He had found us?
C. S. Lewis, "Miracles" (New York: Macmillan, 1960), p.94
No book is really worth reading at the age of ten which is not equally (and often far more) worth reading at the age of fifty and beyond.
LEWIS, CLIVE STAPLES (1898-1963)
Part of every misery is, so to speak, the misery's shadow or reflection: the fact that you don't merely suffer but have to keep on thinking about the fact that you suffer. I not only live each endless day in grief, but live each day thinking about living each day in grief. C S Lewis
We're not necessarily doubting that God will do the best for us; we are wondering how painful the best will turn out to be. -- C.S. Lewis, "Letters of C.S. Lewis", 29 April, 1959, para. 1, pg. 285.
I wish they would remember that the charge to Peter was "Feed my sheep", not "Try experiments on my rats", or even "Teach my performing dogs new tricks".. C. S. Lewis (1898-1963) Letters to Malcom: Chiefly on Prayer (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1964 , pp. 4-5.
The [Christian] "doctrines" are translations into our concepts and ideas of that which God has already expressed inlanguage more adequate, namely the actual incarnation, crucifixion, and resurrection.... C. S. Lewis (1898-1963), letter
We must sometimes get away from the Authorized Version, if for no other reason, simply because it is so beautiful and so solemn. Beauty exalts, but beauty also lulls. Early associations endear, but they also confuse. Through that beautiful solemnity, the transporting or horrifying realities of which the Book tells may come to us blunted and disarmed, and we may only sigh with tranquil veneration when we ought to be burning with shame, or struck dumb with terror, or carried out of ourselves by ravishing hopes and adorations. ... C. S. Lewis (1898-1963), God in the Dock
[Milton's] argument is (a) St. Augustine was wrong in thinking God's only purpose in giving Adam a female, instead of a male, companion, was copulation. For (b) there is a "peculiar comfort" in the society of man and woman "beside, (i.e. in addition to, apart from) the genial bed"; and (c) we know from Scripture that something analogous to "play" or "slackening the cords" occurs even in God. That is why the Song of Songs describes a thousand raptures...far on the hither side of carnal enjoyment. --C. S. Lewis, _Preface to Paradise Lost_,
I see only one thing to do at the moment. Your patient has become humble; have you drawn his attention to the fact? All virtues are less formidable to us once the man is aware that he has them, but this is specially true of humility. Catch him at the moment when he is really poor in spirit and smuggle into his mind the gratifying reflection, "By jove! I'm being humble", and almost immediately pride at his own humility will appear.--C. S. Lewis, _The Screwtape Letters_
It may be hard for an egg to turn into a bird: it would be a jolly sight harder for it to learn to fly while remaining an egg. We are like eggs at present. And you cannot go on indefinitely being just an ordinary, decent egg. We must be hatched or go bad. -- C.S. Lewis
If war is ever lawful, then peace is sometimes sinful.--C.S. Lewis
The very strength and facility of the pessimists' case at once poses us a problem. If the universe is so bad, or even half so bad, how on earth did human beings ever come to attribute it to the activity of a wise and good Creator? Men are fools, perhaps; but hardly so foolish as that. The direct inference from black to white, from evil flower to virtuous root, from senseless work to a workman infinitely wise, staggers belief. The spectacle of the universe as revealed by experience can never have been the ground of religion: it must have always been something in spite of which religion, acquired from a different source, was held.... C. S. Lewis (1898-1963), The Problem of Pain
There is one vice of which no man in the world is free; which every one in the world loathes when he sees it in someone else; and of which hardly any people, except Christians ever imagine that they are guilty themselves....The essential vice, the utmost evil, is Pride. Unchastity, anger, greed, drunkenness, and all that, are mere fleabites in comparison: it was through Pride that the devil became the devil; Pride leads to every other vice: it is the complete anti-God state of mind...As long as you are proud you cannot know God. A proud man is always looking down on things and people; and, of course, as long as you are looking down, you cannot see something that is above you...~ C.S Lewis, Mere Christianity
When I have learnt to love God better than my earthly dearest, I shall love my earthly dearest better than I do now.... When first things are put first, second things are not suppressed but increased. - C.S. Lewis , letter: 8 Nov 1952
My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust? If the whole show was bad and senseless from A to Z, so to speak, why did I, who was supposed to be part of the show, find myself in such violent reaction against it? A man feels wet when he falls into water, because man is not a water animal: a fish would not feel wet. Of course, I could have given up my idea of justice by saying that it was nothing but a private idea of my own. But if I did that, then my argument against God collapsed too--for the argument depended on saying that the world was really unjust, not simply that it did not happen to please my private fancies. Thus in the very act of trying to prove that God did not exist--in other words, that the whole of reality was senseless--I found I was forced to assume that one part of reality--namely my idea of justice--was full of sense. Consequently atheism turns out to be too simple. If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning: just as, if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never know it was dark. Dark would be without meaning.--C.S. Lewis _Mere Christianity_
We keep on assuming that we know the play. We do not even know whether we are in Act I or Act V. We do not know who are the major and who the minor characters. The Author knows. _The World's Last Night_, C. S. Lewis
I didn't go to religion to make me happy. I always knew a bottle of port would do that. If you want a religion to make you feel really comfortable, I certainly don't recommend Christianity. -- C. S. Lewis
Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up save in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket--safe, dark, motionless, airless--it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable. C.S. Lewis
I think we all sin by needlessly disobeying the apostolic injunction to "rejoice" as much as by anything else. -- C. S. Lewis, _The Problem of Pain_, 1944
Gambling ought never to be an important part of a man's life. If it is a way in which large sums of money are transferred from person to person without doing any good (e.g., producing employment, goodwill, etc.) then it is a bad thing. If it is carried out on a small scale, I am not sure that it is bad. I don't know much about it, becauseit is about the only vice to which I have no temptation at all, and I think it is a risk to talk about things which are not in my own make-up, because I don't understand them. If anyone comes to me asking to play bridge for money, I just say: "How much do you hope to win? Take it and go away." --Clive Staples Lewis (1898-1963) _God in the Dock_ [1948], "Answers to Questions on Christianity," Question 13
In most parts of the Bible, everything is implicitly or explicitly introduced with "Thus saith the Lord". It is... not merely a sacred book but a book so remorselessly and continuously sacred that it does not invite -- it excludes or repels -- the merely aesthetic approach. You can read it as literature only by a tour de force... It demands incessantly to be taken on its own terms: it will not continue to give literary delight very long, except to those who go to it for something quite different. I predict that it will in the future be read, as it always has been read, almost exclusively by Christians. ... C. S. Lewis (1898-1963), They Asked for a Paper
Never, never pin your whole faith on any human being: not if he is the best and wisest in the whole world. There are lots of nice things you can do with sand; but do not try building a house on it. --Clive Staples Lewis (1898-1963) _Mere Christianity_ [1952], Book 4, Chapter 7
I am delighted to hear that you have taken to Johnson. Yes, isn't it a magnificent style--the very essence of manliness and condensation. . . . I personally get more pleasure from the Rambler than from anything else of his and at one time I used to read a Rambler every evening as a nightcap. --Clive Staples Lewis (1898-1963) _The Letters of C. S. Lewis to Arthur Greeves_ [1986], "22 June 1930"
Your Hindus certainly sound delightful. But what do they deny? That's always been my trouble with Indians--to find any proposition they would pronounce false. But truth must surely involve exclusions? --Clive Staples Lewis (1898-1963) _Letters of C.S. Lewis_ [1966], "8 February 1956" (In a letter to Dom Bede Griffiths, O.S.B. who was in India at the time.)
Tuesday, November 21, 2017
FIVE REASONS WHY ‘NO-FAULT DIVORCE’ WOULD BE A DISASTER FOR MARRIAGE
Dear marriage supporter,
A group of MPs, campaigners and journalists are attempting to undermine marriage by making it legal for either party to abandon a marriage without giving a reason.
Last week Conservative MP Suella Fernandes led a Westminster Hall debate in which she called for the introduction of so called ‘no-fault divorce’. This would make divorce an administrative process that could not be defended in court by the abandoned party.
On Friday The Times newspaper gave its support to this campaign on its front page and through its leading article (£).
Trivialising marriage
These campaigners argue that their reforms are compassionate. Instead they place the weight of the state behind the party wishing to terminate a marriage, no matter how spurious the reason. We believe that if successful the reforms will:
Speak up
Weakening and trivialising an institution does not reform it, it breaks it. Marriage is too important to be treated in this way.
The Coalition for Marriage has been the leading organisation speaking out against this change. We have spoken at the Conservative Party Conference, on television and radio, and on a documentary to be broadcast next year.
If you are able to, please do consider writing either to your Member of Parliament or to The Times newspaper to voice your opposition to these unnecessary and harmful changes.
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Yours sincerely,
Thomas Pascoe
Campaign Director Coalition for Marriage (C4M) |
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