Page 6 - St. Joseph Messenger November 2020

ence is that it is God’s myth, not man’s.
In addition to the Thursday night meetings, the
group also met informally at “The Eagle and
Child,” a pub in Oxford which is better known as
the “Bird and Baby.” They gathered on Tuesday
mornings from about A.D. 1940 to 1963 to drink
and talk; but, contrary to popular belief, they did
not read their manuscripts in the pub. The back
room of the “Bird and Baby” still displays photo-
graphs and other mementos of the Inklings.
A Little Background
C.S. Lewis became an avowed atheist when he
was just fourteen years old. He perceived at that
time that no one who wrote about or taught the
Classics gook the time to show how Christianity
was better than paganism. Since they appeared to
consider paganism mere nonsense, Lewis came to
the conclusion that Christianity must be just as
nonsensical. But this attitude was turned about-
face after a fateful discussion with Hugo Dyson, a
teacher. He showed Lewis that the story of Christ
is what he called a “true myth,” and that the differ- on a project to write mythopoeic tales (stories hav-
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Lewis thus concluded that “Christianity is God
expressing Himself through what we call “real
things” . . . Namely, the actual incarnation,
crucifixion, and resurrection. From that point on
he became what some consider one of the leading
apologists for the Christian faith.
Tolkien, on the other hand, was a devout Catholic
even before he met Lewis. He became a Catholic
following his widowed mother’s conversion, an
act which estranged her from her family and made
life much more difficult for them; but thanks to his
mothers’ sacrifices, Catholicism became an inte-
gral part of Tolkien’s life. It also had a deep effect
on his writing. He commented on the interplay be-
tween a writer’s life and his works. “Only one’s
guardian angel or indeed God Himself, could un-
ravel the relationship between” the two.
The last surviving member of the Inklings, Owen
Barfield, died in 1997 at the age of 99. The spiritu-
ality of Christianity pervaded his life as it did the
others’. This spirituality
influenced his writing as
well, but not until later in
his life. Because he could
not find a publisher for his
first novel, Barfield became
discouraged, gave up writ-
ing for a time, and joined
his father’s law firm. He
was such a good friend of
C.S. Lewis that Lewis dedi-
cated his children’s book, The Owen Barfield
Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe to Barfield’s
daughter Lucy.
Mythopoeic Tales
In the early 1930s the Inklings had a “delightful
time” reading early drafts of The Hobbit, the first
work by an Inkling to become a classic. Lewis and
Tolkien were not at all satisfied with what they
found in the stories of the time so they embarked