Week 1: Introduction — Madeleine L'Engle's Preface
Free — no cardRead Madeleine L'Engle's Introduction to A Grief Observed by C. S. Lewis.
Before entering Lewis's own words, L'Engle offers us a guide to reading them — and in doing so, reveals something important about what honest grief looks like from the outside.
1.L'Engle says she is grateful to Lewis for having "the courage to yell, to doubt, to kick at God in angry violence." What is your instinctive reaction to that phrase? Does it strike you as spiritually healthy, spiritually dangerous, or something else?
2.L'Engle suggests that Lewis's willingness to admit doubt "gives us permission to admit our own doubts, our own angers and anguishes." Have you ever needed someone else's honesty to give you permission to be honest yourself? What did that feel like?
3.Lewis is famous as a confident Christian apologist — the author of Mere Christianity, The Screwtape Letters, and The Problem of Pain. Why might it be particularly significant that it is Lewis, of all people, who writes a book like this? What does his reputation add to — or complicate — the book's message?
a.Does a person's public confidence in their faith make their private doubts more or less meaningful to you?
b.Have you ever experienced a gap between what you believed in your head and what you felt in your gut? How did you navigate it?