Dear all,
A friend in NZ has just sent me this registration page for a C.S.Lewis conference in Oregon this month, which also offers online participation.
Dates: 2026-09-24/27 (Online access through --10-05)
Location: Willamette Valley, Oregon, USA, George Fox University
Peter (Hyoi), good to hear from you after all this time. I assume you’re still holding down the fort in Germany? The conference looks interesting. Are you planning to attend (online)?
I’m re-reading The Magician’s Nephew, partly because a new movie based on this book, directed by Greta Gerwig, is scheduled to come out next year. Gerwig has said that she visualizes Aslan as a “cosmic lion”, which gives me some doubt about how faithful it will be to Lewis’s original. But we shall see.
Since I’m re-reading the book, I thought I’d share some thoughts. For me, the chapter, “The Wood Between the Worlds”, is one of my favorites from Lewis’s works – the peacefulness, where “you could almost feel the trees growing”. And, farther on, in the chapter, “The Deplorable Word”:
“Even after the war had begun, there was a solemn promise that neither side would use Magic…It had been known to the great kings of our race that there was a word which, if spoken…would destroy all living things except the one who spoke it.”
And, of course, the Queen (Witch) used that word, and destroyed all living things, besides herself. It brought to my mind that “deplorable” word in our time – nuclear weapons, except that the person who would “speak” (use) it, would also be destroyed, of course.
Dimitry