Dear Mr Lewis

I have my nose in all your books and look forward to moving from Aslan to the Discarded Image and back again this year, but I read something someone else read in Anne and Martin Kilmer's letters. It is a bit odd to be reading those, but particular wisdom comes from being particular people.

You wrote him that having Latin was a great advantage and you were delighted he had got it.

How does one get it?

At this point, I'm afraid I'm inoculated against it. Four or five years in early school, a bit again in college, and then, I taught it.

I can conjugate and decline roughly, and read textbook sentences. I'm comfortable reading a text, but I can not comprehend it.

I would like to read Virgil in his own words, or Boethius. I would like to have my brain reshaped by language.

Mr Wheelock says Latin is good for shell shock, which isn't my problem, but I would like to be less modern, to have less of a reservoir system of language and more of a lakebed.

Is this where to start?

Mrs Myers

P.S. Did you know that the Brittanica boys didn't put Boethius in their 5 ft shelf of classics? Maybe they were saying he didn't shape us enough, but it seems an oversight.

P.P.S. I began Mr Williams books this week. He is like staring into the eyes of a wild man.

Nesbit, E. Five Children and It

"It was not really a pretty house at all; it was quite ordinary, and mother thought it was rather inconvenient, and was quite annoyed at there being no shelves, to speak of, and hardly a cupboard in the place. Father used to say that the ironwork on the roof and coping was like an architect's nightmare. But the house was deep in the country, with no other house in sight, and the children had been in London for two years, without so much as once going to the seaside even for a day by an excursion train, and so the White House seemed to them a sort of Fairy Palace set down in an Earthly Paradise."

Christmas 2022

In every second an eternity

Across six billion lives, and more

The heaving song,a voice, in fierce cacophony.

And looking up from our small dance, a door

As spheres in time, present their heraldry.

A moment’s gift, an instant gone

Glass smashed; drink done.

Another.

In every life an eternity

Across six billion moments unfathomed.

The tune, a theme, carried generationally

Father, Son, father, son, father, son.

This theme turns down to ants suzerainty

And up to the sea, in surging courses run.

All parts of lives, realms, and principalities.

In seventy or eighty years, done.

Another.

In all times, and works, and seasons majesty

Spills out resounding gifts unseen or sung.

They turn and shape and mold our reality

And bring the world towards our final home.

In one second, the Child kindled

In one life, Your will be done.

No other.

Christ born. All time turns in wild abandon

To ring out the leaven of the living Word.  Peace on earth. All creation rings in tune.

Giver and Gift surrounded by shepherds.

We count the days till coming Son.

And again,until he said, “Your will be done.”

With surging hearts we pull at our resources,

Gather in three hundred long spent days,

Half a dozen or ten thousand gifts ,

to echo half a drop of our Redeemer’s praise.

For one moment, we unleash in our best efforts an onslaught of gifts, until we can’t raise

A grateful heart for the full measure.

Just then we catch a glimpse of his grace.

We fall short. Our best efforts undone.

Another.