I'm a fiend for iTunesU. That little jewel allows you to essentially audit college courses from all sorts of disciplines. Currently I'm hooked on a doctrine course and a hermeneutics course at Concordia Seminary.
I was saddened, though, by a recent question in the doctrine class. The professor asked a room full of students (this is a graduate level course, by the way) to raise their hands if they had ever read any of the C. S. Lewis Space Trilogy. In the entire room only one guy had read any part of it. Pathetic! They may as well have admitted to not ever having read anything by Paul, or to confusing Martin Luther with Martin Luther King (Concordia is Lutheran).
Sure, I'm being hyperbolic here, but ... c'mon! ... we're talking about the great one here -- our boy, Clive!
Despite all that, you guys should check out the free educational stuff on iTunesU. It's addictive. I'm addicted. I admit it.
- G.K. Chesterton
Trackback URL: http://thinklings.org/bloo.trackback.php/4710.
In the forum where I do most of my playing now...a woman said she was "a Lord of the Rings geek" but had not read the books because they were too much for her.
I told her that she was NOT a Lord of the Rings geek. She then also admitted that she got totally lost trying to read The Hobbit.
Ay de mi.
Aw, c'mon, Space Trilogy is something I read only because it has Lewis' name on it, and frankly it wasn't one of his best, y'know.
[Blo briefly manifests as a corporeal being, shaking his fist in approbation, before being wafted away on the wind]
[The Fisher quickly dons a Groucho Marx nose as a disguise and slips away into the crowd ... ]
[Bill looks up while whipping a torches and pitchforks mob into a frenzy]
Hey, where'd Weekend Fisher go?
[Bird catches a wiff of pizza and puts his shotgun down]
Is anybody else hungry?
Blest slaps the pizza out of Bird's hands, snatches up the shotgun and resumes hunting the Fisher.
When she finds him...she'll hold him at gunpoint, delivering a few swift strokes with the butt-end of the rifle as needed, until he rereads the trilogy as many times as required to make him recant. He'll get nothing but whole wheat bread and green gatorade until his reprogramming is over...
Plus, blest, I'm pretty sure Weekend Fisher is a chick.
(not meant as a slam - I'm serious - seems like I went to WFs site and - definitely a female)
WF - please come out of the shadows and verify this for us. We promise (snicker) we won't (suppressed and somewhat evil-sounding guffaw) hurt you.
I'm pretty sure Weekend Fisher is a chick
Bill, since the complete profile says "female"...I'm pretty sure you might be right...
;-)
Yep, I was ready to take off the Groucho Marx nose and figure you'd never spot me anyway if you were looking for a guy. I'm definitely female. Redhead, while we're on the subject.
And I'll take off the nose and come out of hiding if the pizza has pepperoni. [they knew how to bait the trap ... looks around worriedly ... ]
Hah, y'all made me laugh. A couple of space trilogy factoids:
Lewis long thought Perelandra was his best work; although toward the end of his life he said his best work was "Til We Have Faces."
That Hideous Strength was significantly influenced by Lewis's friendship with Charles Williams and Lewis's fascination with Williams's thinking.
My name? Ooh, now, I'm not sure I've ever explained that publicly. Hm.
Short version: Christ's promise to make us fishers of men + how I hope I'm using my blog + when I have time to post (mostly weekends).
Not that I mind fishing in the literal sense it's just that I'm lousy at it. When I was a kid my brother used to say I was just along to feed the crabs. (They always got my bait.)
There is an entire course at Concordia Seminary dedicated to finding the Gospel in C.S. Lewis, and it's a very popular course. Books covered last spring: Silver Chair, Last Battle, Perelandra, That Hideous Strength, Poems, Pilgrim's Regress.
If students don't come to the seminary with knowledge of the Space Trilogy, they sure matriculate with it.
Pathetic, perhaps, but not surprising. Nearly everyone literate knows of if they have not read Brave New World and 1984. These even have culturally common xrefs and phrases. But few understand the despair which drove the two authors, a despair born of realizing what communism aka socialism would bring. Even fewer realize Lewis' work That Hideous Strength provided a far more profound analysis.
I had never heard of THS until a friend recommended it. He remarked that outside of the Bible the two books that he thought most influenced his course of study were Atlas Shrugged and THS (talk about different perspectives). That eventually led (about 30 yrs ago) to my reading the space triology of which THS is the third volume. FWIW, since some readers may recognize the friend, his name is Gary North.