Lewis writes his statement of faith with precision, humor, and grace. The old life, the jokes, the drinks, the arguments, the lovemaking, the tiny, heartbreaking commonplace.” Writing A Grief Observed as “a defense against total collapse, a safety valve,” he came to recognize that “bereavement is a universal and integral part of our experience of love.” “I know that the thing I want is exactly the thing I can never get. “We are under the harrow and can’t escape,” he writes. Written in longhand in notebooks that Lewis found in his home, A Grief Observed probes the “mad midnight moments” of Lewis’s mourning and loss, moments in which he questioned what he had previously believed about life and death, marriage, and even God. It gives us permission to admit our own doubts, our own angers and anguishes, and to know that they are part of the soul’s growth.” Lewis, who has been such a successful apologist for Christianity, should have the courage to admit doubt about what he has so superbly proclaimed. This is a part of a healthy grief which is not often encouraged. In her introduction to this new edition, Madeleine L’Engle writes: “I am grateful to Lewis for having the courage to yell, to doubt, to kick at God in angry violence. Lewis’s wife, the American-born poet Joy Davidman. Written with love, humility, and faith, this brief but poignant volume was first published in 1961 and concerns the death of C.
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