Showing posts with label remembrance. Show all posts
Showing posts with label remembrance. Show all posts

Friday, November 23, 2018

November 22, 1963 - In Remembrance

From the archives (updated) and a day late!:

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Today Yesterday marks the 55th. anniversary of the passing of a great man. One who left his mark on his country and his culture. One who is still quoted to this day. On November 22, 1963, the world little noted his passing in the shock and outpouring of grief over the assassination of JFK. That man was Clive Staple Lewis…oddly enough, like JFK, ”Jack” to his friends.

C. S. Lewis, author of The Screwtape Letters, Mere Christianity and The Chronicles of Narnia, was a contemporary and friend of J. R. R. Tolkien. He was also an atheist who came to Christianity, in his own words, “kicking and screaming”, who became one of its strongest apologists.

You must picture me alone in that room in Magdalen, night after night, feeling, whenever my mind lifted even for a second from my work, the steady, unrelenting approach of Him whom I so earnestly desired not to meet. That which I greatly feared had at last come upon me. In the Trinity Term of 1929 I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps, that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England.
-Surprised by Joy

His books have been translated into dozens of languages and sold millions of copies over the years. Anthony Hopkins portrayed him in the movie Shadowlands (1993), the story of his romance with American poet Joy Gresham, who died of cancer a mere handful of years after they met.

His life was rich and varied. His sorrows deep and vast. His legacy is enduring.

In our remembrance of those who passed this day, one might do well to remember what can be accomplished with just a pair of Jacks!

Sunday, December 7, 2014

"Praise the Lord, and Pass the Ammunition"

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It was 73 years ago today.

The USS Arizona Memorial, located at Pearl Harbor in Honolulu, Hawaii, marks the resting place of 1,102 of the 1,177 sailors killed on the USS Arizona during the Attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 by Japanese imperial forces and commemorates the events of that day. The attack on Pearl Harbor and the island of Oʻahu was the action that led to United States involvement in World War II.

The memorial, dedicated in 1962 and visited by more than one million people annually, spans the sunken hull of the battleship without touching it. Since it opened in 1980, the National Park Service has operated the USS Arizona Memorial Visitor Center associated with the memorial. Historical information about the attack, boat access to the memorial, and general visitor services are available at the center. The sunken remains of the battleship were declared a National Historic Landmark on 5 May 1989.


If you've been to the Arizona Memorial, as I have, you know it is a solemn, moving experience. If you're visiting the island of Oahu, be sure to pay your respects when you go. It's well worth the trip.
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from 2009, updated