FACT OF THE DAY:
The sixth Screwtape letter was published on this day (6/6) in The Guardian in 1941. Topics include how to “weaken his (patient’s) prayers.”
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QUOTE OF THE DAY:
(Screwtape Boasts:) “There is nothing like suspense and anxiety for barricading a human’s mind against the Enemy [i.e. God].”
The Screwtape Letters VI
(Published in The Guardian on 6/6/1941)
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QUIZ OF THE DAY:
To whom did Lewis dedicate Out of the Silent Planet?
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(Click “Read More” to SEE Answer)
FACT OF THE DAY:
The first known letter that Lewis wrote to Arthur Greeves was on this date (6/5) in 1914. He wrote so many they filled a book!
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QUOTE OF THE DAY:
“I do not feel that one must never say one believes or understands anything: any morning a doctrine I thought I already possessed may blossom into this new reality…”
Letter to Sister Penelope 6/5/1951
(Published in The Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis, Volume III)
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QUIZ OF THE DAY:
What was Lewis’s response when a girl asked her about “Aslan’s other name?”
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(Click “Read More” to SEE Answer)
FACT OF THE DAY:
On this day (6/4) in 1954 Lewis accepted the Chair of Medieval and Renaissance Literature at Cambridge University.
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QUOTE OF THE DAY:
(Screwtape Advises Wormwood:) “Do not allow any temporary excitement to distract you from the real business of undermining faith and preventing the formation of virtues.”
The Screwtape Letters V
(Published in The Guardian on 5/30/1941)
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QUIZ OF THE DAY:
Finish the quote and name the source (five words):
“It is safe to tell the pure in heart that they shall see God, for only the ______ _______ ______ ______ ______ .”
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(Click “Read More” to SEE Answer)
FACT OF THE DAY:
Lewis wrote to Hila Newman, an eleven-year-old, on this date (6/3) in 1953 giving her clues about “Aslan’s other name”
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QUOTE OF THE DAY:
“After all, almost the main work of life is to come out of our selves, out of the little, dark prison we are all born in.”
Letter to Keith Masson 6/3/1956
(Published in The Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis, Volume III)
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QUIZ OF THE DAY:
What decision about his professional life that involved a major change did Lewis make sometime this month in what year?
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(Click “Read More” to SEE Answer)
FACT OF THE DAY:
“Membership,” a talk by Lewis given four months earlier, was published in the June, 1945 issue of Sobornost.
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QUOTE OF THE DAY:
“The real difficulty is, isn’t it, to adapt ones steady beliefs about tribulation to this particular tribulation; for the particular, when it arrives, always seems so peculiarly intolerable.”
Letter to Owen Barfield 6/2/1940
(Published in The Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis, Volume II)
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QUIZ OF THE DAY:
What is the first action of Prince Rilian in The Silver Chair when he is free of his enchantment?
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(Click “Read More” to SEE Answer)
The following is part of a series reflecting on the life of C.S. Lewis. This is accomplished by summarizing various events or happenings during his lifetime for the noted period and may include significant events related to him after his death.
Highlights for the first third of June (1st – 11th) include: two standout letters to children about Narnia, the acceptance of a new position late in his professional career and his most famous sermon.
Before the magic of Narnia started in 1950 C.S. Lewis had a magical year in 1941. In April he gave his first RAF talk, in May his first letter by Screwtape was published, in August he gave his first radio talk on the BBC and was asked to do a second series in September, then in December he gave a special series of lectures that became A Preface to Paradise Lost. But it is during the first part of June, 1941 that some would say was the best thing
FACT OF THE DAY:
Is History Bunk? by Lewis was first published today (6/1) in 1957 in The Cambridge Review. It’s reprinted in Present Concerns.
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QUOTE OF THE DAY:
“There will always be those who, on discovering that history cannot really be turned to much practical account, will pronounce history to be Bunk.”
Is History Bunk?
(Published on 6/1/1957 in The Cambridge Review)
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QUIZ OF THE DAY:
Complete the quote and name the source (2 words):
“Truth and falsehood _____ _____ ; but truth is the norm not of truth only but of falsehood also.”
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(Click “Read More” to SEE Answer)
FACT OF THE DAY:
Today (5/31) in 1951 Lewis was having dinner with Roger Lancelyn Green and it was on this occasion that he asked him to be his biographer.
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QUOTE OF THE DAY:
“I take our emotional life to be ‘higher’ than the life of our sensations – not, of course, morally higher, but richer, more varied, more subtle.
Transposition
(Sermon preached on 5/28/1944)
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QUIZ OF THE DAY:
What talk did Lewis give this month at the Oxford Socratic Club that had a question mark in the title?
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(Click “Read More” to SEE Answer)
FACT OF THE DAY:
The fifth Screwtape letter was published today (5/30) in The Guardian in 1941. It talked about Wormwood failing in his duties because of relying on anxiety caused by a war.
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QUOTE OF THE DAY:
(Screwtape on the Dangers of War:) “One of our best weapons, contented worldiness, is rendered useless. In wartime not even a human can believe he is going to live forever.”
The Screwtape Letters V
(Published in The Guardian on 5/30/1941)
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QUIZ OF THE DAY:
What was the title used when The Great Divorce was first published weekly in The Guardian?
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(Click “Read More” to SEE Answer)
FACT OF THE DAY:
Transposition is a sermon Lewis preached on 5/28/1944 at the chapel of Mansfield College. The text is in The Weight of Glory.
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QUOTE OF THE DAY:
“[God] made His own plan or plot of history such that it admits a certain amount of free play and can be modified in response to our prayers.”
Work and Prayer
(Published in The Coventry Evening Telegraph on 5/28/1945)
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QUIZ OF THE DAY:
Which Narnia book is the following passage from and who said it:
“I believe that was the sort of thing I was thinking of…But….I’ve an idea that all those circles and things are rather rot. I don’t think he’d like them. It would look as if we thought we could make him do things. But really, we can only ask him.”
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(Click “Read More” to SEE Answer)
