The Kilns: Where C. S. Lewis Lived and Wrote

On January 19, 2021January 19, 2021 By Tim ValentinoIn General1 Comment

Below are a few pictures from the scores I took during our 2019 visit to the “The Kilns,” the adult home of scholar and author C. S. Lewis, located on the outskirts of Headington Quarry, Oxford, England. The place is named for a brick-making operation that had two large kilns on site. The house today is a study center, so reservations for tour times are required. Our guide was a doctoral student from the United States, and we had about 20 minutes before the tour began to talk about the research he was doing for his dissertation. The best tour guides are those who share the stories we don’t read about in books, and our guide had plenty of those woven into his presentation. In the end, it was great to finally see where so many of Lewis’ treasured thoughts were put to paper.

Departing for “The Kilns” on a double-decker bus like this, which are common in Oxford (and throughout England).

Walking the lane to get to the Lewis home.

Coming around the corner to the front of the house.

The upstairs study, where Lewis did much of his reading and writing.

The writing desk in the upstairs study. All evidence suggests that the Narnia tales were written here.

Lewis at his writing desk in the upstairs study.

“Jack” as Lewis was better known, slept in the upstairs bedroom, the smallest and most inconvenient room to access. When his college roommate Paddy Moore was killed in World War I, Jack befriended Paddy’s mother, Mrs. Janie King Moore, and her adolescent daughter Maureen. In 1920, after completing his first degree, Lewis decided to share lodgings with them (in fulfillment of a vow he had made to Paddy during the war) so he could more carefully look after their needs.

Lewis gave Mrs. Moore the larger bedroom, which he had to pass through to get to his own. That would have been inappropriate, so Leiws had an external staircase built off his room so he could access it another way. If he needed to use the bathroom in the middle of the night, he would use this staircase, putting himself out for the sake of his friend’s mother, who could be quite demanding. Lewis patiently lived what he wrote in The Four Loves.

Lewis’ modest bedroom. The small size of the room made it hard to get an unobstructed shot.

The ladder stairs built so Lewis could access he bedroom without having to go through Mrs. Moore’s bedroom.

The kitchen table, where Jack and his wife, Joy Davidman, often played Scrabble. They allowed themselves to play words in *any* language, including Elvish languages, as long as the word could be found in any book in the house.

The typewriter of Warnie Lewis, Jack’s brother, who also lived at the Kilns. (Jack wrote all his manuscripts by hand.)

The downstairs library and gathering room.

Bidding farewell to the Kilns, and the other people we met on the tour.

The simplicity of the Kilns was quite a contrast to the ornate houses, palaces, and castles we visited during our time in England. It just goes to show that we don’t need to be wealthy or live in luxury to have a great impact. We just need to have an openness to the beauty, truth, and goodness of God as revealed in Christ—a willingness to be enchanted by wonder.

Awash in Wonder: What Artistic Beauty Tries to Teach Us

On October 8, 2020February 22, 2021 By Tim ValentinoIn Bible & TheologyLeave a comment

Do they not have bones? Does gravity not apply? Are they not even human? The Chinese State Circus performance of Swan Lake is beyond amazing. I have never seen such daunting ballet lifts on stage before. Check out this 4-minute video clip and stand in awe. Then ask why it is you might be standing in awe.

I am awash in wonder every time I see this routine. But why? The German poet Rilke once went to a museum and effused over an ancient statue of Apollo. He was so captivated by the sculpture that when he got home, he wrote in his diary, “I must change my life.”

I find it significant that he didn’t write, “Wow, that was a great aesthetic experience I just had,” though it was. He didn’t write, “I was awestruck by the artistry of that piece,” though he was. No, he wrote, “I must change my life.”

Christian author Tim Keller argues that what Rilke was really saying—and what he went on to write in a poem containing the same expression—was this:

“Anything that really moves you, any great insight you ever get, any experience of beauty that really gets you at your core—it always makes you aware of the fact that you’re just a shadow of what you should be. You’re just a fraction of what you know you ought to be.”

While Rilke may have overstated his point a bit, most of us realize—when we’re completely honest with ourselves—that our lives would benefit by a series of significant changes. In the presence of great art, that realization is highlighted anew. We get a sense that we’re a long way away from what we could be as human beings.

At the same time, we’re not so far away that we can’t recognize flashes of beauty when we see them, or even consider what those flashes of beauty might be trying to teach us. Abraham Kuyper, the Dutch theologian, put it like this:

“If you confess that the world once was beautiful, but by the curse has become undone, and by a final catastrophe is to pass to its full state of glory, excelling even the beautiful of paradise, then art has the mystical task of reminding us in its productions of the beautiful that was lost and of anticipating its perfect coming luster.”

Art’s task, says Kuyper, is to remind people where we came from and where we’re going. Our origin was the creative hand of God, and our destination is a complete and perfect restoration in him through Christ. In the meantime, all of us can enjoy the sheer beauty of a good performance, whatever our theological commitments may be.

With visions of those incredible Swan Lake dance moves in our minds, we can luxuriate in the grace of God that motivated King David to write:

“I will exalt you, O Lord, for you lifted me” (Psalm 30:1).

Surely God’s “lifts” are at least as good as those of the Chinese State Circus.

C. S. Lewis: A Willingness to Be Enchanted

On September 19, 2020November 2, 2020 By Tim ValentinoIn GeneralLeave a comment

From Alan Jacobs, The Narnian: The Life and Imagination of C. S. Lewis (New York: HarperOne, 2005), xxi.

“Lewis’s mind was above all characterized by a willingness to be enchanted. . . . It was this openness to enchantment that held together the various strands of his life–his delight in laughter, his willingness to accept a world made by a good and loving God, and (in some ways above all) his willingness to submit to the charms of a wonderful story, whether written by an Italian poet of the sixteenth century, by Beatrix Potter, or by himself.

“What is ‘secretly present in what he said about anything’ is an openness to delight, to the sense that there’s more to the world than meets the jaundiced eye, to the possibility that anything could happen to someone who is ready to meet that anything. For someone with eyes to see and the courage to explore, even an old wardrobe full of musty coats could be the doorway into another world.”