Good morning! Or if you read this later... good afternoon and good evening! (Truman Show reference).

I'm back at home in Florida (finally not feeling cold any more). While I was on the road, I re-read a great book. I'm mentoring a young adult who went through the Truth and Beauty immersion experience in Rome (more on that below). This student had chosen to read this book, on my recommendation, and so I read it again so that I will be able to discuss it.

The book is: Out of the Silent Planet - the first book in CS Lewis' "Space Trilogy."

Anything by CS Lewis is always worth reading more than once, but especially the ones that have allegory in them - you always get more out of it the second time around. In this case, I think that I read it the first time simply as a sci-fi story, and I DO love stories about space travel that were written before anyone had actually traveled in space, or before we knew what the surface of Mars looks like. There is so much more room for speculative description, and Lewis is THE master at that.

But of course this is one of his allegorical stories as well. And in that sense, the Space Trilogy is prophetic - the faith vs. science debate was already raging, of course, in the mid-twentieth century, and it was already apparent that many people were not only choosing to trust science over religion, they were making science into a religion that would replace religion.

And Lewis sees where all that was going, and the third book in the series could have been written as an insider's indictment of twenty-first century academia. In any case, I won't get into the details of the allegory, but Lewis can see that it's not just about science vs religion, it's science vs morality, and he calls out the hypocrisy of a supposed altruism of science (for the good of humanity) that allows for the willingness to sacrifice individual humans for the cause (and he didn't even have abortion in mind yet). In this way, Lewis anticipates the question posed in the Star Trek films - the needs of the one vs the needs of the many - and if you answer that question by saying that you can kill some for the greater good of the species (or the environment), you have sold the soul of collective humanity. It's all summed up in a comment made at the end of the book, where the tension between science and faith is referred to as a tension between space versus heaven.

So I highly recommend the Space Trilogy - the first two books are short, and actually make a great intro to CS Lewis if you haven't read anything by him (though of course so does the Narnia series).

Regarding the Truth and Beauty Project. This is an immersion experience for young adults, focusing on art as a way into spirituality, that is, spiritual growth by making the connection between truth and beauty. It takes place in Rome, and it's run by my friends John and Ashley Norohna. If you know of any young adults who might be interested in this program, they are accepting applications for the next session right now - check it out, or send your young adults to:

https://www.truthandbeautyproject.com/