A Birth Announcement, Part 2
Screwtape's Toast and the best of book news
Welcome to my newest readers, fellow bibliophiles, and educators! A special welcome to those who have joined in the past few weeks!
A rich feast of ideas to weigh and ponder.
At the Society for Classical Learning conference in June, I met old friends and new. A special highlight was meeting members of my Upper School leaders’ cohort in person (previously Zoom) from across North America. From Ontario to Louisiana, we learned a lot about ourselves as leaders as well as helping faculty and families!
This year was such a rare national conference for me in that I received meaty content at every plenary and session I attended. Not once did I feel the urge to get up and walk out! I know that sounds rude, but at national events years ago, I learned pretty quickly how painful it was to hear a poor speaker or to sit through a workshop that offered different content than the workshop description. There are too many good choices to waste time or money on something that doesn’t fit!
At SCL, I also enjoyed leading a “book club” session on C.S. Lewis’s “Screwtape Proposes a Toast.” You can read the toast in the archives at the Saturday Evening Post as it appeared in 1959 or possibly find it at the end of The Screwtape Letters in most editions.
For context, the original Screwtape Letters were written to war-time Britain, to an almost post-Christian culture. In those letters, Satan attempts to destroy humanity’s faith, virtue, and reason.
Dr. Louis Markos writes, “As Screwtape carefully explains to Wormwood in his letters, humans are easier to tempt and seduce when they are kept in a perpetual state of hazy, imprecise abstraction. Despite the fact that atheists nearly always point to reason as the Bedrock of their atheism, clear, rational thinking, when it is carried out to its logical and proper end, always leads back to the One who created human reason in the first place and who gave it to us as a gift.”
In 1941, the British education system published the Norwood Report which resulted in the 1944 Education Act. Children were assigned to categories: academically inclined students went to grammar schools; scientifically inclined went to technical schools; remaining students attended secondary. The Norwood Report also included ideas like removing examinations from the English curriculum. The theory was that an external exam could not test a pupil’s appreciation of books studied.
C.S. Lewis responded, “. . . the questions were never supposed to test appreciation; the idea was to find out whether the boy had read his books. It was the reading, not the being examined, which was expected to do him good.” The division caused great public concern, and Lewis wrote several essays denouncing the ideas in “Is English Doomed?” and “Democratic Education.” **I also highly recommend “Lilies That Fester” found in The World’s Last Night and Other Essays.
In 1959, Lewis chose to write to an American audience. Written twenty years after the original, Lewis seemed to see the potential for a downward turn for America.
Rather than a letter, we have a toast at a graduation banquet. More than the original Screwtape Letters, the “Toast” is an incisive public critique of education, social politics, and cultural shifts in worldview. Screwtape encourages these young demons to use mankind’s demand for democracy and fairness to their best ends:
“Democracy is the word with which you must lead them by the nose. The good work which our philological experts have already done in the corruption of human language makes it unnecessary to warn you that they should never be allowed to give this word a clear and definable meaning.”
On my desk
In this Substack space, I’ve written a lot about personal hope this spring.
It’s not something I mustered but rather constant glimpses, situations God has created for me like I described in Growing Hope: returning to the cello, Mozart, and Shakespeare or a concrete sense of something imminent in Burgeoning: writing retreats, teaching, and reviews.
Maybe you’re new here and wonder what this imminent thing is. I took a huge step on September 1, 2023, a flying leap for me, and published A Birth Announcement: a humble invitation. I had a book in me and invited my readers to the messy labor and delivery room!
It now becomes a longer story of writerly connections from years ago. I reached out, not in the usual eloquent letter to editors and strangers in publishing houses but to long-time friends who could make an introduction, and after more than 18 months of shopping my non-fiction book proposal, I have a book contract in hand!!
In God’s amazing timing, the final signature came through on July 1 while I was on vacation with my whole family. We have not been ALL together in thirteen months, and they surprised me with cheesecake and champagne!
The Sycomore-Fig Tree: Biblical Botany and Scriptural Truths will be coming in to the world through Stone Tower Press in 2026.
And I renew my invitation to you here. Would you pray for me and for these words? I have 17,000 words written with 20,000 to go. I hope to have a three-day writer’s retreat at the end of July somehow, and by God’s grace, will squeeze in time in the evenings and wee hours to finish my research and draft.
As always, thanks for reading! Don't forget that the List Library at my website is always available to you, my readers.
Christine
Perfect for beginners, this handy study guide for C.S. Lewis's novel is a blend of summary and scholarly commentary. The second edition includes leading commentary from Lewis scholars as well as key parallels from Lewis’s other works like The Four Loves, Surprised by Joy, and An Experiment in Criticism. Each chapter includes discussion questions designed for students, teachers, book clubs, and church groups. Available at multiple online stores or at Amazon.
Congratulations on your book contract. May the Lord bless your remaining work. I hope you enjoy finishing it!
praying now, I know how hard writing and making music is!