Saved by Grace. Husband, Girl Dad, Son, Brother and Friend. Unceasingly Curious.

I’m a seminary dropout currently working as an investor and manager of private companies. I try to be a mile wide and am therefore forced to be an inch deep; interested in sports, cooking, politics, photography, music, fiction, distance running and seeing God’s beauty in these things. Originally from Baltimore, living in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. I tried this once before but, man, it’s a lot of work! I’ll post as I am able.

The Inklings were a discussion group, of sorts, active during the 1930s and 1940s. They were literary enthusiasts who, together, praised the transformative power of narrative in fiction. C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien and Charles Williams were among the most notable participants. Often over beers at the Eagle and Child, they talked about life and reviewed each others’ work. During this period, the Inklings wrote some of the most beloved fantasy novels of all time, The Lord of the Rings and Narnia Tales among them. 

As the Inklings took their literary journey together, friendship between them grew. But that wasn’t all. God was also using their friendships to indelibly change them as people. 

A skeptic of the Christian faith throughout his youth, Lewis later came to believe in Jesus – in part through his realization that the Gospel is the true fairy tale to which all other fairy tales point. He came to see God as the ultimate Prince who saves the slumbering princess from an evil spell, as it were. This likely animated his claim that “Some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again.” In part, through discussions with his dear friend on this exact topic, Tolkien also came to faith in Jesus. There is no more indelible decision than that. 

On friendship with Lewis, Tolkien generously wrote:

Friendship with Lewis compensates for much, and besides  giving constant pleasure and comfort has done me much good from the contact with a man at once honest, brave, intellectual — a scholar, a poet, and a philosopher — and a lover, at least after a long pilgrimage of Our Lord.

C. S. Lewis more humorously wrote of Tolkien:

No one ever influenced Tolkien — you might as well try to influence a bandersnatch.

It’s my hope that these writings, my inkling-s so to speak, can spark conversations fractionally as rich as those the Inklings no doubt shared. I would like that we could all be honest, brave, intellectuals–scholars, poets and philosophers. If we can’t achieve that, maybe our posture in discussion can at least be better than that of bandersnatches.