C. S. Lewis on Friendship at First Sight

I consistently enjoy Spiritual Friendship, but this one struck a special chord with me. One of the deep themes of The Unaccountable Death of Derelict Frobisher is the sense of isolation that comes from thinking there’s nobody else in the world who really gets you or likes what you like.

These glimpses of another person who understands—these moments of friendship at first sight—cut through that isolation. I suspect introverts may experience this particularly strongly. When it’s hard to connect in general, a deep and instant connection is a precious gift, especially when it proves to have staying power over the years. I love this reminder to honor the depth and reality of those friendships.

Plus I’m a sucker for C. S. Lewis and Narnia. But who isn’t?

Spiritual Friendship

I have visiting nieces and nephews at the moment, which means I’ve been reading more children’s literature recently. As I was reading, I was struck by this passage in C. S. Lewis’s The Voyage of the Dawn Treader:

All morning on the following day they sailed in fairly shallow water and the bottom was weedy. Just before midday Lucy saw a large shoal of fishes grazing on the weed. They were all eating steadily and all moving in the same direction. “Just like a flock of sheep,” thought Lucy. Suddenly she saw a little Sea Girl of about her own age in the middle of them—a quiet, lonely-looking girl with a sort of crook in her hand. Lucy felt sure that this girl must be a shepherdess—or perhaps a fish-herdess—and that the shoal was really a flock at pasture. Both the fishes and the girl were quite close to the…

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