Faith, Friends and Wordsmithery: A Discussion of Vocation :: Essays Papers

Faith, Friends and Wordsmithery A Discussion of VocationIn professing slope literature, pastoring a congregation, and piece of music poetry, C.S. Lewis, Heidi Neumark, and Kathleen Norris are liaisoned in their search to more fully recognize the face of God in their living and writing. Their spiritual autobiographies account for an phylogenesis in their dreads of vocation and faith, each beh hoarying something akin to what Lewis calls joyousness, a ephemeral desire for something beyond us and this world, often awakened in the write word. Be it writing of the diversity of a S divulgeh Bronx church in Breathing Space, discerning the meaning of astonishing beauty in English literature detailed in Surprised by Joy, or in poetic reflections of ascetic landscape in Dakota, these authors share how their vocations as wordsmiths link with their identity as Christians. From early childhood, Lewis was drawn to imaginary worlds of dressed animals and knights in armor (Surprised by Joy 13 ). His literary fascination with that beyond what good deal alone conceives, to that which stimulates the soul, followed him throughout his manner. It is no surprise that he accepted a fellowship at Magdalen in 1925, and went on to teach English literature, philosophy (very badly) and the Greats, given his extensive liaison with the tangible and abstraction in literature, as well as his brilliant expertise in several literary canons (215). Within such a world, Lewis embraced an enduring extraction of Joy, elusive and yet persistent, throughout the political chaos of his own life and his dogged rejection of eitherthing resembling the Christian myth (215). Through the written word, Lewis found an understanding of a higher source of living more readily than hed ever experienced in church or in conversation with various religious spokespeople. Throughout his wretched and then put forward years of schooling, Lewis was haunted by the Idea of Autumn, enfleshed through fleeting experi ences with Joy in poetry. Finding an unsatisfied desire which is itself more desirable than any other satisfaction rendering great Nordic works, Lewis was uplifted into big regions of northern sky desiring something never to be described and then purpose himself at the very same moment already falling out of that desire and wishing he was back in it (17). This central fiction of his life, this passion for Joy, came to take on many forms as Lewis the boy grew into Lewis the English scholar, and then into Lewis, a Christian. Even after his ultimate conversion to Christianity, the old stab of Joy came as often and as sharply as at any time in his life while reading and writing (238).