There Is No Other Stream

Evangel's favorite Narnia passage and one of mine too....

Jill, a young girl, has been transported to another world, and nears a stream to satisfy her thirst—but sees a lion, a lion that frightens her. And then, the lion speaks: “If you’re thirsty, you may drink.”

Anyway, she had seen its lips move this time, and the voice was not like a man’s. It was deeper, wilder, and stronger; a sort of heavy, golden voice. It did not make her any less frightened than she had been before, but it made her frightened in rather a different way.
“Are you not thirsty?” said the lion.
“I’m dying of thirst,” said Jill.
“Then drink,” said the lion.
“May I—could I—would you mind going away while I do?” said Jill.
The Lion answered this only by a look and a very low growl. And as Jill gazed at its motionless bulk, she realized that she might as well have asked the whole mountain to move aside for her convenience.
The delicious rippling noise of the stream was driving her nearly frantic.
“Will you promise not to—do anything to me, if I do come?” said Jill.
“I make no promise,” said the Lion.
Jill was so thirsty now that, without noticing it, she had come a step nearer.
“Do you eat girls?” she said.
“I have swallowed up girls and boys, women and men, kings and emperors, cities and realms,” said the Lion. It didn’t say this as if it were boasting, nor as if it were sorry, nor as if it were angry. It just said it.
“I daren’t come and drink,” said Jill.
“Then you will die of thirst,” said the Lion.
“Oh dear!” said Jill, coming another step nearer. “I suppose I must go and look for another stream then.”
“There is no other stream,” said the Lion.

—C. S. Lewis, The Silver Chair

Joker 1

On recommendation from the Acton blog I just finished reading "Joker 1" a story of Marine action in Ramadi during its most spasmodic and violent days in 2004. The story is told from the one Platoon leader's view.

I don't usually read such books but was taken in (and not disappointed) with Acton Blog's review:


This book is receiving considerable press attention and Campbell’s ability to convey love the way he does has to be a big reason for the popularity of the book. Campbell movingly says about his own Marines in the opening chapter, “And I hope and pray that whoever reads this story will know my men as I do, and that knowing them, they too might come to love them.”

Campbell’s account looks at the seven and a half months in which he serves as a platoon leader in some of the fiercest fighting of the Iraq war, which occurred in Ramadi in 2004. Before the Marine Corps, Campbell was an undergraduate at Princeton who spent a summer completing the Marine Corps Officer Candidate School (OCS) because he thought it would look good on his resume. Campbell says he hated the entire program, and didn’t think twice about joining since he hadn’t taken any money from the Corps, and therefore didn’t owe them anything. He would ultimately change his mind however as graduation approached.

If love and leadership are recurrent themes, it is often discussed from a faith perspective, and Campbell is somebody who has thought seriously about his own faith and what that means for him and his men. Campbell talks about how before each combat mission he huddles up with his platoon for prayer, which often included reciting the twenty-third Psalm. “I had a responsibility to my men to provide for all their needs, and those included their spiritual as well as their material ones,” says Campbell. He also discusses some of his early thoughts on the prayer ritual before each mission:

Deep in my heart, I believed that prayer would work without fail, that if together Joker One prayed long and hard enough, God would spare us all from Mac’s fate [another Marine seriously wounded by a road side bomb]. What I know now, and which didn’t occur to me then, was that by praying as I prayed, and hoping what I hoped, and believing what I believed, I was effectively reducing God to a result-dispensing genie who, if just fed the proper incantations, would give the sincere petitioner (me) the exact outcome desired.

This book is masterful at tracing the growth and experience of Campbell’s theological progression just as it does concerning his leadership skills, decision making ability, and the moral questions he asks himself. Where prayer before was focused more on personal safety, He says it changed even more as the chaos and random violence surged. “To those who sought it, the prayer also provided some comfort that God was in control, that their lives had worth and meaning stemming from an absolute source,” says Campbell.

A Book For the Reading List

I am ashamed to say that I don't think I ever read, Dante's Inferno. I think I was supposed to but for one reason or another I did not.
Anthony Esolen, English professor at Providence College has a new translation out that I cannot put down. It has actually been out for quite some time but I just got around to giving it a look (another embarassing revelation)
"a substantive Introduction, extensive notes, and appendixes that reproduce Dante's key sources and influences," pretty much hits the nail on the head as a description.

I fell in love with Esolen's writing over at Mere Comments and really enjoyed his, "The Politically Incorrect Guide to Western Civilization," but while I enjoy poetry I was hesitant to take the chance on this book. My only regret is that I waited so long. I will never hesitate to buy another of his books. I think this is readable by anyone and most will enjoy it.

Book Review

In case you didn't notice in the comments of my June 16 posting on Theodicy there is a review of David Bentley Hart’s The Doors of the Sea: Where Was God in the Tsunami? The review can be found here over at The Wonders For Oyarsa blog site, which is a much better blog than I can ever hope to produce and well worth a visit.

There Is a God: How the World's Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind.

A review of the Book, "There Is a God":
When preeminent philosophical atheist Antony Flew announced in 2004 that he had come to believe in God's existence and was probably best considered a deist, the reaction from both believers and skeptics was "off the chart." Few religious stories had this sort of appeal and impact, across the spectrum, both popular as well as theoretical. No recent change of mind has received this much attention. Flew responded by protesting that his story really did not deserve this much interest. But as he explained repeatedly, he simply had to go where the evidence led. (full review)

Top 20 Books Nobody Reads

Back in 2007, over at the Touchstone blog Mere Comments:
..So that has set me to wondering if I could come up with a top 20 list of great underrated or underread books. The problem these days would be in limiting them to 20. My criterion is not greatness simply, or oblivion, but the degree to which a book has been neglected and doesn't deserve to be. Here's the list:

And I've tried to find as many as I could and linked them on the right. I'll be starting my summer reading early this year.