A Grief Observed by C.S. Lewis
Week 5: Section Four — "How wicked it would be to call her back"
Read Section Four (Notebook 4) of A Grief Observed by C. S. Lewis.
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In the final notebook, Lewis does not arrive at a tidy conclusion — but he does arrive at something: a hard-won, clear-eyed faith that has been tested by fire and found to be, at its core, still real.
Discussion Questions
7 questions1.Lewis ends the book with a striking realization: that to call H. back — if he could — would be a kind of selfishness. "How wicked it would be, if we could, to call the dead back!" he writes. What has shifted in his thinking to make this possible? What does this tell us about what love, at its best, actually wants for the beloved?
2.Near the end of the book, Lewis describes a moment — fleeting but real — in which he seemed to sense H.'s presence, not as a ghost or a vision but as a kind of quality: "a sort of unobtrusive but wholly cheerful solicitude about me." He is careful and almost skeptical about it. How do you think about such experiences? What makes Lewis's description trustworthy rather than wishful?
3.Lewis reflects that his faith, having been put through the fire of grief, is not destroyed but clarified — he knows now what he really believed versus what he only believed he believed. Has any experience in your life tested your beliefs in a similar way? What survived? What turned out to be scaffolding rather than foundation?
a.Lewis suggests that a faith that cannot be shaken was perhaps never real faith — it was only comfort. Do you agree? What is the difference?
b.What does it mean to "own" a belief, rather than simply to have inherited or repeated it?
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