Shadowlands (Part 3)

[days_unfolding]

Which brings me to the movie Shadowlands. I saw it years ago and remember really liking it, so I bought it on VHS. A few weeks ago, I decided that I wanted to watch a triple feature of Moonstruck, Hannah and Her Sisters, and Shadowlands. I ran out of time to watch Shadowlands until I was on leave. A voice stopped me from watching it when I was at my worst, but I watched it when I started to improve.

As a love story/tearjerker, it's a cut above average. However, a reviewer on Amazon.com called it "watered-down C. S. Lewis" and I can see how it could have been a much more challenging movie (although a much less commercial one). I can see how his faith could have and should have been central to the story. There was one luminous line. C. S. Lewis' wife Joy had been very ill, but showed some improvement, and a friend said that Lewis had been praying so hard for her recovery, and God was now answering. The Lewis character said (roughly):

I pray because I have no choice. I pray because I'm helpless. I pray because it oozes out of me waking and sleeping. It hasn't changed God. It's changed me. (italics added)

Is that really C. S. Lewis? I doubt it, but that quote describes a theology that I can see my way to. How much would my relationship with my aunt (for example) improve if I prayed for her every day for a year? I had a meditation practice for a while, and found that when I meditated on certain people, my relationship with them would improve.

The following quote is C. S. Lewis (from A Grief Observed):

My idea of God is not a divine idea. It has to be shattered time after time. He shatters it Himself. He is the great iconoclast. Could we not almost say that shattering is one of the marks of his presence?

Hmmm...there has been a lot of shattering in my life in the past few years.

So I'm reading C. S. Lewis' Christian books, as well as those by other authors (Richard J. Foster, Robert Ellwood). I've also ordered a Quaker book on simplicity.

To me, that's a lot, but the voice continues to push me out of my comfort zone. When I was looking at the headlines the other night, the voice told me to pray for Tookie Williams. (That really freaked me out.) So I did, feeling more than a bit foolish.

I'm both anxiously waiting and fearing what might happen next....