Shakespeare & Sons

A few years ago I discovered this really great group called Mumford & Sons. I was awed by the blue-grassy sound to their music and the fact that they were so popular; I love music that has a blue-grass/folk sound to it, but generally find that that isn't what gets played on the radio. Being the avid Shakespeare fanatic that I am, I immediately connected the title of their debut album Sigh No More with the song "Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more" from Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing. I wondered if the reference had been intentional, or if Mumford & Sons had just hit on the name themselves and the album had nothing to do with Shakespeare.

However, in a recent performance of Shakespeare's play that I attended, I recognized the line "man is a giddy thing" as being quoted in the title track of Sigh No More. After that I returned to the song, convinced now that Mumford & Sons had been fully intentional in quoting Much Ado. What I found this time around was very exciting for the English Major in me: The song "Sigh No More," after which their first album is named, quotes about six lines from Much Ado About Nothing. And it gets better. Mumford & Sons quotes lines from other Shakespeare plays in at least two other songs on the album. At this point, my literary analysis brain had gone into fifth gear and my esteem for Mumford & Sons had gone through the roof. It isn't everyday you find out one of your favorite bands quotes Shakespeare in three separate songs. I don't know how many people have noticed this; maybe I'm just a latecomer to the party and everyone is laughing at me right now because they all figured this out years ago. But I'm going to assume that the average casual listener hasn't noticed this trend in Mumford & Sons, so join me, if you feel inclined, as I delve a little more deeply into the content of Mumford & Sons' poetic masterpiece Sigh No More.

The opener: "Sigh No More"

Firstly, consider the first stanza of Shakespeare's poem of the same name, which appears as a song in his comedy Much Ado About Nothing:

Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more.

    Men were deceivers ever,

One foot in sea, and one on shore,

    To one thing constant never.

Then sigh not so, but let them go,

    And be you blithe and bonny,

Converting all your sounds of woe

    Into hey nonny, nonny.

(As a side note, we might ask ourselves how the Mumford & Sons' song would have turned out differently if the band had decided that the line "hey nonny, nonny" was a must have.)

A little background

This is not the time or place for an in-depth summary of Much Ado About Nothing, but the play centers on two of Shakespeare's most beloved characters, Beatrice and Benedick, who have forsworn love and engage in witty and insulting repartee whenever they meet. At one point, Benedick exclaims that marriage is like "thrust[ing] thy neck into a yoke, wear the print of it and sigh away Sundays" (1.1.). As you've probably already guessed, the two end up falling madly in love and declare their intent to marry each other at the play's conclusion. When his friends tease him for entering into marriage after he has spent his whole life bashing it, Benedick protests that "man is a giddy thing" or rather, man is changeable, and his past opinions should not be held against him. (5.4.)

The song

Mumford & Sons' "Sigh No More" opens with the line "Serve God, love me, and mend," a direct quote from Much Ado About Nothing. About mid-play, when things are at their darkest, Benedick asks Beatrice how she is holding up. When she replies that she is "very ill," he replies, "serve God, love me, and mend" (5.2.). 

The rest of the verse proceeds:

This is not the end
Live unbruised we are friends
And I'm sorry
I'm sorry

 In the final scene of Much Ado, Benedick and his best friend, Claudio, make up after having been set at odds through a miscommunication. Benedick tells Claudio that he would have beaten him if the duel they previously scheduled had taken place, but as it is, he tells him to "live unbruised." The two have a bit of sporting repartee after which Benedick exclaims, "Come, come, we are friends" (5.4.).

Though I'm not sure that any of the characters in Much Ado ever utter directly the line "I'm sorry," it applies to at least half of them and is implicit in many of the things they say in the play's final scenes. This apology could be that of Claudio and Don Pedro, who suspected the innocent young Hero of being untrue to her fiance; or that of Benedick and Claudio to each other after a turn of events renders their previously scheduled duel irrelevant. Possibly Benedick and Beatrice speak it to each other when they agree to put their history of quarreling and insulting behind them. There are multiple other characters who stand in a position to apologize as well, but the point is that the line is very fitting where it stands in the song.

The second verse runs:

Sigh no more, no more
One foot in sea, one on shore
My heart was never pure
You know me
You know me 

The first two lines may sound familiar, and if you take another look at the Shakespeare poem I've quoted above, you'll see why:

Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more.
    Men were deceivers ever,
One foot in sea, and one on shore,
    To one thing constant never.

 Obviously, the first two lines of this verse borrow from Shakespeare's poem. But I think the lines that follow are also very apt in the context of Much Ado. I like to think they could be spoken by Benedick to Beatrice - she knows him well, and in knowing him perhaps knows that his heart was never pure. As Benedick says to Beatrice in the play, "Thou and I are too wise to woo peaceably" (5.2.).

The song continues:

And man is a giddy thing
Oh man is a giddy thing
Oh man is a giddy thing
Oh man is a giddy thing

Continuing the theme of the preceding verse, this line isolates and calls attention to the changeability of man and his opinions, "to one thing constant never." If the speaker is the same as that of the previous verse, he seems to be apologizing for his past behavior, citing his fallible nature - which was never wholly devoted to one thing - and man's tendency towards inconstancy. And, of course, this line comes directly from the play (Act 5. Scene 4.).

But the line "man is a giddy thing," standing as it does at the crux or turning point of the song, could also signify the speaker's changing attitudes towards love, especially since this line transitions us from a tragic apology to a more upbeat celebration of love. "Man is a giddy thing" might mean that man is capable of changing his behaviors and attitudes; hence this line moves us out of the speaker's apology for his past behavior and into a declaration that he is now putting all that behind him.

If you were wondering when the song was finally going to pick up - it's now. We have the characteristic Mumford & Sons decisive plucking of a chord followed by a slow upward swing in tempo, and that moves us into the chorus, or climax, of the song:

Love will not betray you
Dismay or enslave you
It will set you free
Be more like the man
You were made to be.
There is a design
And alignment to cry
Of my heart to see
The beauty of love
As it was made to be.

I think the subdued but heartfelt opening of this song followed by the exuberant climax makes this possibly Mumford & Sons' most rousing song. And by rousing I mean it takes the listener on a journey that begins in fallibility and regret and ends in jubilation and freedom. At least, it has that effect on me; call me melodramatic if you like, I don't care. If we return to Much Ado for one final moment of analysis, we might note that the song's climax mirrors Benedick's and Beatrice's transformation in the play. Though initially scorning marriage and fearing that it will "enslave" or "betray" them if they give it rein, the lovers find in the end that love, far from enslaving them, has set them free.

Other tracks on the album

Needless to say, I was pretty ecstatic when I figured all this out, but that's just a beginning. I'd long suspected that the title of the song "I Gave You All" on the same album was borrowed from Shakespeare's King Lear, but I couldn't find any other lines from the play in that song (I'm still hopeful - I just haven't found them yet). However, when I discovered a direct quotation from Macbeth in another song on the album, I figured I had proof enough to decide that "I Gave You All" was in fact a reference to Shakespeare.

"I Gave You All" is, with the exception of "Dust Bowl Dance" - which can be truly scary and always seems to come on whenever I'm in a particularly stressful situation, or maybe it's just that the song renders everything stressful (don't get me wrong I love it) - the most "angry" song on the album. But it's not just a screaming rant; it's a brilliantly crafted song that moves the listener through a series of emotions and leads her gradually up to the song's high point and then back down, and it ends with a low moan of loss and betrayal. The song's lyrics and structure seem to echo Shakespeare's great tragedy King Lear, in which the title character divides his kingdom up between his two older daughters, who proceed to misuse, abuse, and abandon him. Exasperated, Lear cries to his daughters, "I gave you all!" (2.4.) When his daughters refuse to invite him into the house in the wake of nightfall and a coming storm, Lear rages upon the heath in the midst of thunder, lightning, and rain. The scene upon the heath seems suggested by several lyrics in Mumford & Sons' song, such as the opening, "Rip the earth in two with your mind," which seems especially apt since Lear begins to lose his sanity at this point in the play. The song thus draws from the tragedy, anger, and bewilderment of King Lear in order to tap into the play's moments of darkness and tempest and achieve a deeper sense of loss. One final observation: the line "your tears feel warm as they fall on my forearms" from the song seems to echo the moment when Lear, towards the end of the play, awakes to find his young and faithful daughter Cordelia at his side. In the initial confusion of waking, Lear states, "mine own tears / do scald like molten lead" and when he recognizes his daughter Cordelia he asks, "be your tears wet?"

The quotation from Shakespeare's Macbeth appears in the song "Roll Away Your Stone" on the same album (Sigh No More). In Act 1, Scene 4, Macbeth, the title character, states, "Stars, hide your fires; / Let not light see my black and deep desires." Similarly, Mumford & Sons' song states, "Stars, hide your fires / These here are my desires / And I won't give them up to you this time around." The rest of the song, with its emphasis on darkness and man's inner character, or soul, seems particularly relevant to Macbeth.


The rest of the songs on the album are spectacular, but I have yet to discover any more Shakespeare lyrics in them, and I don't think there are any on the band's second album, Babel, which is, nevertheless, brilliant. I'll be on the lookout, however, and if you happen to find any, let me know! Their newest album, Wilder Mind, was just released earlier this week, so there's plenty more opportunity for analyzing Mumford and Sons' lyrics.

Thanks for taking this ride with me, and here's to lots more Mumford & Sons listening - and Shakespeare reading/watching - in the future!

A Middle-Earth (sort-of) Romance for Valentine's Day

“Farewell sweet earth and northern sky,
for ever blest, since here did lie
and here with lissom limbs did run
beneath the Moon, beneath the Sun,
Lúthien Tinúviel
more fair than Mortal tongue can tell.
Though all to ruin fell the world
and were dissolved and backward hurled;
unmade into the old abyss,
yet were its making good, for this―
the dusk, the dawn, the earth, the sea―
that Lúthien for a time should be.”  

- J.R.R. Tolkien, The Silmarillion

So, for Valentine's Day, I was going to write a post about the romance of J.R.R. Tolkien and his wife Edith, but then I found this Wikipedia article that says everything I wanted to say and even has some awesome quotes that I never would have found on my own. It is very interesting. If you've read the story of Beren and Luthien in the Silmarillion but don't know the "real" story, it's definitely worth reading. I think you'll enjoy it. It's like something from a romantic idyll or from this one book I read that had this story of these two people who fell in love but they couldn't get married right away because one of them was an elf and one was - wait, that was the Silmarillion.

So how about this (since it is Valentine's Day) : Instead of writing up the facts in prose, seeing as Wikipedia has already beat me to it, I will render them in poetry. Everything's better in poetry, right? I mean Tolkien himself taught us that (see my post on Tolkien's poem "Mythopoeia").

For better or for worse (and entirely avoiding any thoughts on what Tolkien would say about it), I submit "Beren and Luthien":

In the spring of the world when you danced

Time stood still within my breast

Your eyes were bright as the sea of white stars

That swirled around your feet

But your hair was as dark as the valley of death

And filled with innumerous shadowings

I thought upon the days of our youth

When routed from my mother's house

Heavy with the scent of death

I came upon you sorrowing

Our tender hearts, o'er eager for love

Met once for all beneath the leaves

Long I sought you wandering far

As ever nearer out of reach

I chased your hem by the light of stars

We found each other all for once

And to each one clung quivering

You cast away your other life, to be but mine forevermore

We passed through dark and out of day

In woods of nightshade morrowless

And once we met in the valley wide

Amidst the war-death clamoring

And then it was my heart stood still

When you danced in the white stars sorrowless

When I returned from fog of war

We met again beneath the leaves

To cherish our eternity

And raise our children by the light of stars

And though your eyes were not as bright

As when you danced in the white sea-foam

My love for you could never dim

Our hearts danced once across the years

The story has gone crooked now

And I cannot plead to the moon-high gods

But into the stone of forevermore

I carve this word as immense as the sea

For me it contains the spring of the world

Held fixed in a clearing of white snow-flowers

As bright as the light that stood in your eyes

And your hair all shadowed with stars

New Year's Resolutions

It's that time of year again. Or rather, the end of that year and the beginning of a new one. We stay up until midnight and then go to bed. We light fireworks and bang pots and pans. We watch the ball drop (just kidding - I've never done that and I bet you probably haven't either). We make resolutions.

We make resolutions that we completely forget about once February hits (if, indeed, our resolutions last until February). Then New Year's rolls around again and we make more resolutions we know we won't carry out. So what's the point?

My New Year's resolution for 2015 is to make only resolutions that I can in no way fulfill - even if I manage to remember them past February. For inspiration, I've drawn on my blog posts of 2014. I hope my list inspires you to make your own resolutions that you won't carry out. Good luck.




1. Go to Narnia.


















2. Free the unicorns.











3. Persuade Tolkien to finish The Fall of Arthur.

4. Time travel to the age of the dinosaurs.



5. Find this landscape.











6. Overthrow the monarchy.














7. Figure out how to format these posts correctly.

Happy New Year. Here's to lots of happy reading in 2015.

Your early Christmas present: Le Petit Prince

Happy December, everyone! I hope your plans for the Holidays are going well, and that you aren't drowning in finals and/or Christmas shopping. Now down to business.

If you haven't yet, watch this trailer NOW:



The Little Prince 

Premieres October 7th, 2015 in France.

Apparently they are also planning on making a version in English, but I'm kind of thinking I'd rather watch the French one. I don't know when the movie will be released in the U.S.

For (slightly) more info, head over to this article by the Verge:
The Little Prince could be one of the most beautiful animated films of 2015

“The most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or touched, they are felt with the heart.”   

  - Antoine de Saint-Exupery, The Little Prince

Mythopoeia: Tolkien's argument for the power of myth

Hi. Remember that post three ages of men ago about five semi-obscure works by Tolkien that are really cool? They were:

1. The Tolkien Reader
2. Smith of Wooton Major
3. Letters from Father Christmas
4. Mythopoeia
5. The Fall of Arthur

(Here is a link to that post, where I go into depth about The Tolkien Reader: http://woodbtwntheworlds.blogspot.com/2014/05/5-works-by-tolkien-you-may-not-have.html).

Anyway, I'd like to talk about another of the works on that list. This is the poem "Mythopoeia."

"Mythopoeia" (I spelled it right twice now, I should win something) was the product of an argument between Tolkien and his friend C.S. Lewis. Lewis argued that myths were ultimately "worthless" because they weren't true, but Tolkien argued that myths were valuable in their own right. Apparently he didn't manage to convince Lewis in conversation, but he went home and wrote a poem about it, which he dedicated to Lewis and then showed to him. The poem must have done the trick; it reportedly convinced Lewis that myths had value and weren't just a pack of worthless lies. The moral we learn from this little story is that, if in prose you don't succeed, try, try a poem. "Mythopoeia" also functions as a great defense of fantasy literature, especially taken along with Tolkien's essay "On Fairy Stories," which you can find in The Tolkien Reader.

Because "Mythopoeia" can be difficult to come across, I've reproduced it below, taken from this website. When you're done, you might want to listen to this analysis of the poem by Dr. Corey Olsen - but all, of course, at your own choosing.

To one who said that myths were lies and therefore worthless,

even though "breathed through silver"

PHILOMYTHUS TO MISOMYTHUS 

You look at trees and label them just so,

(for trees are `trees', and growing is `to grow');

you walk the earth and tread with solemn pace

one of the many minor globes of Space:

a star's a star, some matter in a ball

compelled to courses mathematical

amid the regimented, cold, Inane,

where destined atoms are each moment slain.

At bidding of a Will, to which we bend

(and must), but only dimly apprehend,

great processes march on, as Time unrolls

from dark beginnings to uncertain goals;

and as on page o'erwitten without clue,

with script and limning packed of various hue,

and endless multitude of forms appear,

some grim, some frail, some beautiful, some queer,

each alien, except as kin from one

remote Origo, gnat, man, stone, and sun.

God made the petreous rocks, the arboreal trees,

tellurian earth, and stellar stars, and these

homuncular men, who walk upon the ground

with nerves that tingle touched by light and sound.

The movements of the sea, the wind in boughs,

green grass, the large slow oddity of cows,

thunder and lightning, birds that wheel and cry,

slime crawling up from mud to live and die,

these each are duly registered and print

the brain's contortions with a separate dint.

Yet trees and not `trees', until so named and seen -

and never were so named, till those had been

who speech's involuted breath unfurled,

faint echo and dim picture of the world,

but neither record nor a photograph,

being divination, judgement, and a laugh,

response of those that felt astir within

by deep monition movements that were kin

to life and death of trees, of beasts, of stars:

free captives undermining shadowy bars,

digging the foreknown from experience

and panning the vein of spirit out of sense.

Great powers they slowly brought out of themselves,

and looking backward they beheld the Elves

that wrought on cunning forges in the mind,

and light and dark on secret looms entwined.

He sees no stars who does not see them first

of living silver made that sudden burst

to flame like flowers beneath the ancient song,

whose very echo after-music long

has since pursued. There is no firmament,

only a void, unless a jewelled tent

myth-woven and elf-patterned; and no earth,

unless the mother's womb whence all have birth.

The heart of man is not compound of lies,

but draws some wisdom from the only Wise,

and still recalls him. Though now long estranged,

man is not wholly lost nor wholly changed.

Disgraced he may be, yet is not dethroned,

and keeps the rags of lordship one he owned,

his world-dominion by creative act:

not his to worship the great Artefact,

man, sub-creator, the refracted light

through whom is splintered from a single White

to many hues, and endlessly combined

in living shapes that move from mind to mind.

Though all the crannies of the world we filled

with elves and goblins, though we dared to build

gods and their houses out of dark and light,

and sow the seed of dragons, 'twas our right

(used or misused). The right has not decayed.

We make still by the law in which we're made.

Yes! `wish-fulfilment dreams' we spin to cheat

our timid hearts and ugly Fact defeat!

Whence came the wish, and whence the power to dream,

or some things fair and others ugly deem ?

All wishes are not idle, not in vain

fulfilment we devise - for pain is pain,

not for itself to be desired, but ill;

or else to strive or to subdue the will

alike were graceless; and of Evil this

alone is dreadly certain: Evil is.

Blessed are the timid hearts that evil hate,

that quail in its shadow, and yet shut the gate;

that seek no parley, and in guarded room,

through small and bare, upon a clumsy loom

weave rissues gilded by the far-off day

hoped and believed in under Shadow's sway.

Blessed are the men of Noah's race that build

their little arks, though frail and poorly filled,

and steer through winds contrary towards a wraith,

a rumour of a harbour guessed by faith.

Blessed are the legend-makers with their rhyme

of things nor found within record time.

It is not they that have forgot the Night,

or bid us flee to organised delight,

in lotus-isles of economic bliss

forswearing souls to gain a Circe-kiss

(and counterfeit at that, machine-produced,

bogus seduction of the twice-seduced).

Such isles they saw afar, and ones more fair,

and those that hear them yet may yet beware.

They have seen Death and ultimate defeat,

and yet they would not in despair retreat,

but oft to victory have turned the lyre

and kindled hearts with legendary fire,

illuminating Now and dark Hath-been

with light of suns as yet by no man seen.

I would that I might with the minstrels sing

and stir the unseen with a throbbing string.

I would be with the mariners of the deep

that cut their slender planks on mountains steep

and voyage upon a vague and wandering quest,

for some have passed beyond the fabled West.

I would with the beleaguered fools be told,

that keep an inner fastness where their gold,

impure and scanty, yet they loyally bring

to mint in image blurred of distant king,

or in fantastic banners weave the sheen

heraldic emblems of a lord unseen.

I will not walk with your progressive apes,

erect and sapient. Before them gapes

the dark abyss to which their progress tends -

if by God's mercy progress ever ends,

and does not ceaselessly revolve the same

unfruitful course with changing of a name.

I will not treat your dusty path and flat,

denoting this and that by this and that,

your world immutable wherein no part

the little maker has with maker's art.

I bow not yet before the Iron Crown,

nor cast my own small golden sceptre down.

In Paradise perchance the eye may stray

from gazing upon everlasting Day

to see the day-illumined, and renew

from mirrored truth the likeness of the True.

Then looking on the Blessed Land 'twill see

that all is as it is, and yet may free:

Salvation changes not, nor yet destroys,

garden not gardener, children not their toys.

Evil it will not see, for evil lies

not in God's picture but in crooked eyes,

not in the source but in the tuneless voice.

In Paradise they look no more awry;

and though they make anew, they make no lie.

Be sure they still will make, not been dead,

and poets shall have flames upon their head,

and harps whereon their faultless fingers fall:

there each shall choose for ever from the All.

There you have it: Tolkien's "Mythopoeia." Are you convinced? 



Musings on Thanksgiving (with special appearances by C.S. Lewis, Victor Hugo, Thorin Oakenshield, and William Shakespeare)

(Wouldn't it be cool if we could change the background of this blog to match the seasons? Yeah, I don't know how to do that. Then again, the Wood between the Worlds probably doesn't have seasons. Anyway, here is a picture that looks like it could have been taken in the Wood between the Worlds in autumn, you know, if the Wood had an autumn.)

The weather is turning colder, the trees losing their leaves, and the stores displaying Christmas merchandise - which must mean that Thanksgiving is upon us.

I have nothing against listening to Christmas music once November hits, but let's make sure we don't rush over Thanksgiving in our excitement for Christmas to come; this holiday deserves its own time in the spotlight.

What's Thanksgiving about? Pilgrims and Indians? The Mayflower? The founding of America? Maybe, but if we want to find the true heart of Thanksgiving, all we need to do is remember the name of this holiday. Giving thanks is a sweet, joyous, and plentiful harvest in and of itself. C. S. Lewis, in Reflections on the Psalms, wrote:

“I think we delight to praise what we enjoy because the praise not merely expresses but completes the enjoyment; it is its appointed consummation. It is not out of compliment that lovers keep on telling one another how beautiful they are; the delight is incomplete till it is expressed. It is frustrating to have discovered a new author and not to be able to tell anyone how good he is; to come suddenly, at the turn of the road, upon some mountain valley of unexpected grandeur and then to have to keep silent because the people with you care for it no more than for a tin can in the ditch; to hear a good joke and find no one to share it with. . . . The Scotch catechism says that man’s chief end is ‘to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.’ But we shall then know that these are the same thing. Fully to enjoy is to glorify. In commanding us to glorify Him, God is inviting us to enjoy Him.”

Are you ever struck by the incredible beauty of this world? Now is the time to express your delight, wonder, and gratitude for the glorious things around you. And our gratitude shouldn't be confined to the subject of the beauty of nature; there are so many things to be grateful for that it's staggering. Even in our darkest moments, there is something amazingly beautiful or wonderful or helpful for which we can express thanks. And this thanksgiving shouldn't be confined to Thanksgiving. We can express gratitude all year long. But this is the time to focus on our gratitude and reflect upon it. If you're unsure of how to express your gratitude and to whom, take a cue from the words of Victor Hugo:

"To give thanks in solitude is enough. Thanksgiving has wings and goes where it must go. Your prayer knows much more about it than you do."

Whether its in prayer to God, in conversation to your friends or family, or in complete solitude in your journal or private thoughts, find some time to give thanks this Thanksgiving.  

But also find some time to enjoy good food, because that too is an important part of this holiday, and, after all, as Thorin says to Bilbo in The Hobbit:

"If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world."

So from the depths of my heart I truly hope you have a wonderful Thanksgiving and find both something to be thankful for and some food to enjoy. And I pray, with William Shakespeare:
 

"O Lord, that lends me life, lend me a heart replete with thankfulness."
                                      (Henry VI, Part II)

The case for Christianity: Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis

Title: Mere Christianity

Author: C. S. Lewis

Original Date of Publication: 1952

Original Publisher: Geoffrey Bles (UK); MacMillan Publishers (US)

Number of Pages: 190 - 227 (depending on edition)

Purchase: Amazon, Barnes & Noble, ebay, The Book Depository, Abe Books

What Goodreads has to say:

Mere Christianity is C.S. Lewis's forceful and accessible doctrine of Christian belief. First heard as informal radio broadcasts and then published as three separate books - The Case for Christianity, Christian Behavior, and Beyond Personality - Mere Christianity brings together what Lewis saw as the fundamental truths of the religion. Rejecting the boundaries that divide Christianity's many denominations, C.S. Lewis finds a common ground on which all those who have Christian faith can stand together, proving that "at the centre of each there is something, or a Someone, who against all divergences of belief, all differences of temperament, all memories of mutual persecution, speaks the same voice."

What I have to say:

Everyone is born with an innate sense of right and wrong. This sense is the thing that prompts us to help someone in need, apologize to someone we have wronged, treat others with courtesy, and so on. All humans share this sense; we may have different cultures and belief systems, but everyone agrees that it is wrong to do certain things (such as stealing, committing murder, double-crossing someone who has been good to you) and that it is right to do other things (such as telling the truth, keeping your promises, and thinking of others before yourself).

The fact that we all have this same sense of right and wrong shows that there must be something out there from which we received this sense - something or someone greater than us who wants us to behave in a certain way. But we have all failed to live up to this standard that has been set for us; we sometimes put ourselves before others, and we sometimes are dishonest or lose our patience with someone who loves us, and so we must be at odds with this greater something or someone who wanted us to behave in this way.

With this basic argument, C.S. Lewis opens Mere Christianity, a book adapted from the broadcast talks which he gave on the radio during WWII. Logical, straightforward, and convincing, Mere Christianity starts at the very beginning, neither assuming nor even suggesting the presence of a God, and gradually works its way up to Christianity through flawless reasoning mixed with scatterings of humor and wit. From the simple fact that all human beings share a sense of right and wrong, Lewis deduces that there must exist some greater power who has endowed us with this sense and wants us to act in a certain way. This power could be a presence who is beyond good and evil and constitutes the universe (this is the Pantheistic view) or a distinct being who loves good and hates evil (this is the Theistic view). However, the fact that this higher power has endowed us with a distinct sense of right and wrong tells us that he does believe in a right and wrong, and is therefore not "beyond" good and evil. From here, after some further reasoning, Lewis eventually reaches the God of Christianity. This God is a distinct entity who believes in right and wrong and has commanded men to act according to this system. But, because men have made themselves God's enemies through failing to live up to His standard, He has provided a way for us to be reconciled to him: namely, He has sent His son to atone for our sins. Christ, who is the son of God, has suffered and surrendered for us, so that we, by sharing in his sacrifice, can become forgiven and at one with God.

I've never read a book that made a more convincing case for Christianity. Lewis' argument is so methodical and logical - it's as if he reasons his way to Christianity. Reading this book, I realized for the first time just how much sense Christianity makes. The second half of the book lays out the teachings and values of Christianity, opening them up in new ways and making sense of things that many people (myself included) often have trouble understanding. However, there is a section where he talks about the Trinity and the Nature of God, and since Lewis was an Anglican, his beliefs on this subject differ from mine. But I still give him full credit for doing the best he could with what he had, and the rest of the book should align almost entirely with the beliefs of any Christian from any denomination.

I've also found that this book lays the groundwork for an understanding of all of Lewis' other writings: it's like a jumping off place where he articulates his ideas in detail, and then his other works connect to these ideas and play off of them in new ways. Many of the ideas he articulates elsewhere are given fuller form in this book, and I've found that it's a helpful starting place for tracing his ideas.

This book is probably Lewis' most quotable work; his single liners blew me away. Here are some of my favorites:

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"True humility is not thinking less of yourself; it is thinking of yourself less."

"Nothing you have not given away will ever really be yours."  

"Faith, in the sense in which I am here using the word, is the art of holding on to things your reason has once accepted, in spite of your changing moods."  

"Do not waste time bothering whether you ‘love’ your neighbor; act as if you did. As soon as we do this we find one of the great secrets. When you are behaving as if you loved someone, you will presently come to love him."

"We see only the results which a man's choices make out of his raw material. But God does not judge him on the raw material at all, but on what he has done with it."

"If I find in myself desires which nothing in this world can satisfy, the only logical explanation is that I was made for another world."  

If those didn't persuade you to read Mere Christianity, than nothing I can say will do so. I think the last one alone would persuade me. So if you want to be spiritually edified and enlightened, and if you want to spend some quality time with C.S. Lewis, pick up Mere Christianity and give it a try. You won't regret it.

If you still need convincing (and even if you don't) here's a picture of Jack (alias C. S. Lewis) for you:

He wants you to have a good day.