Three men and Thanksgiving

By Jeff Long

This Thursday is Thanksgiving. Our family will spend it the way most who read this column will -- immersed in the smells of the feast to be enjoyed at day's end. My wife won't let me have a role in the cooking. Rarely has. Perhaps she fears the concoction I may create. Mostly, though, she sees this meal as her great annual culinary gift to our family. She's a good cook and I'm grateful. Later, we will put up the tree (live, not artificial) and hang the lights.

This Thursday is also Nov. 22, the 55th anniversary of the deaths of three famous men. One the world knows through his most important book, "Brave New World." Another is known due to his 1,000-day presidency cut short by an assassin's bullet. The last one has helped shape my approach to the Christian faith.

Aldous Huxley. John F. Kennedy. C.S. Lewis. All died on the same day, the 22nd of this month in 1963.

In Huxley's laudable work of prose one line comes to mind suitable for his time -- and I suspect, our time too:

"O brave new world, that has such people in it." My mind returns to that sentence often when thinking of the cruelty and barbarity of our planet.

In Kennedy's inaugural address on a bitterly cold day in Washington, he uttered these words, written for him by trusted speechwriter Ted Sorenson:

"Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country." Many were inspired to a life of public service by that sentence -- and many more from the mouth of JFK.

C.S. Lewis left a remarkable body of work: The Narnia Chronicles and his various apologetic (meaning Christian defense) works -- The Screwtape Letters, The Great Divorce, The Case for Christianity, to name a few. His life was spent as an academic dean and teacher, first at Magdalen College, then at Cambridge University in England. A one-time atheist who became an eloquent advocate for the Christian faith, Lewis thought he had pain and suffering all figured out. As a single man living with his brother, all their needs provided by a live-in housekeeper, Lewis embarked on a speaking tour of England during World War II. Speaking mainly to women who listened attentively to his words, Lewis would argue that pain is God's "megaphone to rouse a deaf world." Without suffering, he argued, we would all be doing parallel play in our own private sandboxes, never paying attention to others. Sounded good. His addresses brought him applause and attention. For a glimpse into his mindset at that time, read "The Problem of Pain" (1940).

Then C.S. Lewis' life changed suddenly and abruptly. He met a much younger American, a single mother with a son, and in his late middle age, Lewis fell in love. Joy Gresham had cancer. It went into remission for awhile, then returned with a vengeance and claimed Joy's life.

Lewis now understood pain and suffering very differently. Not merely as a revered academic mind, but as a bereaved husband with a stepson. Answers, which came so easily 20 years prior, fled him. He could be found sobbing in his office. Students who came to his office seeking the great old man's wisdom left in disappointment. He had no answers to offer just a recommendation: pray and believe. His revised philosophy, post-Joy, can be found in "A Grief Observed" (1961).

This year on Thanksgiving, as the turkey and stuffing are passed, I'll be with those closest to me in life. In the back of my mind, however, I'll recall three men who passed on the same November 22nd long ago: Huxley, Kennedy, and Lewis. Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours.