Dec 2023: No meeting

Our reading group doesn’t meet in December. Our next meeting will be in January 2024.

Meanwhile, for Advent the C. S. Lewis Institute is offering a digital Advent Calendar. Here’s a description from the C. S. Lewis Institute website:

We invite you to join us this Advent season as we draw upon the music and biblical lyrics of Handel’s Messiah to help us prepare to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ. Each daily devotion will include a biblical text drawn directly from Messiah, a meditation written by one of our gifted CSLI authors, classical artwork for reflection, and music of Messiah performed by The Falls Church Anglican Choir under the musical direction of Simon Dixon, all of which can be experienced on our Website. You can also subscribe for daily devotionals with the music delivered to your inbox.

Central Texas C. S. Lewis is a reading group that meets in Austin, Texas.
To request meeting details, please use our Contact Form. Thank you.

Nov 2023: Letters to Malcolm: 17-22

In November 2023, we continue our discussion of Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer. Our focus will be Letters 17-22. Here’s a excerpt from Letter 17, paragraph 13:

We—or at least I—shall not be able to adore God on the highest occasions if we have learned no habit of doing so on the lowest. At best our faith and reason will tell us that He is adorable, but we shall not have found Him so, not have “tasted and seen.” Any patch of sunlight in a wood will show you something about the sun which you could never get from reading books on astronomy. These pure and spontaneous pleasures are “patches of Godlight” in the woods of our experience.

Arend Smilde's Lewisiana site has helpful notes for quotations and allusions in Letters to Malcolm.

Central Texas C. S. Lewis is a reading group that meets in Austin, Texas.
To request meeting details, please use our Contact Form. Thank you.

Oct 2023: Letters to Malcolm: 11-16

In October 2023, we continue our discussion of Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer. Our focus will be Letters 11-16.

Arend Smilde's Lewisiana site has helpful notes for quotations and allusions in Letters to Malcolm.

Central Texas C. S. Lewis is a reading group that meets in Austin, Texas.
To request meeting details, please use our Contact Form. Thank you.

Sept 2023: Letters to Malcolm: 6-10

In September 2023, we continue our discussion of Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer. Our focus will be Letters 6-10. Here are passages we might discuss:

Letter 6: “This department of life, labelled “sacred,” can become an end in itself'; an idol that hides both God and my neighbours” (p30).

Letter 7: Petitionary prayer is “recommended to us both by precept and example. Our Lord in Gethsemane made a petitionary prayer (and did not get what he asked for)” (p35).

Arend Smilde's Lewisiana site has helpful notes for quotations and allusions in Letters to Malcolm.

Central Texas C. S. Lewis is a reading group that meets in Austin, Texas.
To request meeting details, please use our Contact Form. Thank you.

Aug 2023: Letters to Malcolm: 1-5

In August 2023 we will discuss Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer. We will focus on the first five letters. Here's a description from The C. S. Lewis Readers' Encyclopedia, entry by Peter Schakel:

This is the last book Lewis wrote; written in April and May of 1963, it was published in 1964, several months after his death. He began a book on prayer in 1952 and worked at it in 1953, but he gave it up early in 1954. A decade later he thought of constructing the book as a series of letters to an imaginary correspondent. Once he found the right form, the book came easily and successfully—indeed many readers regard it as the best of his theological works.

The C. S. Lewis Foundation has a study guide to Letters to Malcolm.

Arend Smilde's Lewisiana site has notes for quotations and allusions in Letters to Malcolm.

Central Texas C. S. Lewis is a reading group that meets in Austin, Texas.
To request meeting details, please use our Contact Form. Thank you.