I was raised on the Chronicles of Narnia, both from having the books read aloud to me by my father and from watching the old BBC mini-series based on them, but until I was an adult I only actually knew three of the books: The Lion, the Witch, and The Wardrobe, Prince Caspian, and The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. It wasn't until I was in my 20s, and devouring every C.S. Lewis book I could get my hands on, that I finally read the rest of the series. And if you had asked me as a child who my favorite character was, I probably would have said Reepicheep, the most heroic mouse literature has ever known, or perhaps Mr. Tumnus the Faun or Mr. and Mrs. Beaver. Even if I had known the whole series and every character during my childhood, my answer to that question would probably still have been very different than it is now. But as a grown adult, who's own temperament tends towards the melancholic, there is only one true love for me in Narnia: Puddleglum the Marsh Wiggle.  Puddleglum is one of the main characters in The Silver Chair, along with the human children Eustace Scrubb and Jill Pole (I'll admit a special love for Eustace, as well). Eustace and Jill are tasked by Aslan to seek and rescue Prince Rillian, who has been missing for ten years, and Puddleglum is chosen to be their guide as they travel to the wastelands of the north. Puddleglum is a Marsh Wiggle, depressive creatures who live isolated even from each other and who take a pessimistic view on just about everything. Think...

For years I have been fascinated and enthralled by the love story of C.S. Lewis and Joy Davidman. It is not a typical one, not one that would set most young hearts a-flutter, but I’ve always found it beautiful. When they met for the first time in person in 1952, Lewis was already in his mid-fifties, a confirmed bachelor with no intention to marry, an established professor at Oxford, and a world-famous Christian author. Joy Davidman Gresham was a Jewish American, fifteen years younger than Lewis, former Communist, Christian convert, who was (unhappily) married, with two young sons. She was a poet and accomplished writer in her own right, though life circumstances perhaps prevented her from achieving the full potential of her intellect. Lewis and Joy had begun a correspondence when Joy and her first husband, Bill Gresham, converted to Christianity and were seeking guidance. This relationship in letters allowed for a depth of communication on an intellectual level that both Joy and Lewis must have been craving their entire lives, a matching of wits of two unique and brilliant minds. To severely abbreviate a story with many complicated motivations and circumstances: just a few months after returning from her first trip to England, in 1953 Joy moved to England permanently with her two boys, and it wasn’t long after that she obtained a divorce from her first husband, partly so that he could marry Joy’s cousin with whom he had been having an affair during Joy’s first trip abroad....

I recently had my first article published on the blog of Well-Read Mom, a national book club group whose tagline is "Read More. Read Well" which is something I can very much get behind. I've been participating in Well-Read Mom for about six years now and I absolutely love their mission and the books that I have read as part of the group, and so it was a real thrill to have one of my submissions featured on their blog. Be sure to check it out! I began attending Well-Read Mom meetings a little more than six years ago. At the time, I was contentedly single and had just entered my 30s. I was not actively pursuing marriage or family. Still, the friend who invited me to the group assured me it wasn’t “just for moms.” Upon looking at the year’s book list, my heart fluttered with interest. Some of the books I had already read but were favorites worth re-reading, some books I had heard of but never had a chance to read before, and some were unfamiliar but seemed intriguing. Though I was an English/Creative Writing major in college and have been a lifelong reader and writer, I had never belonged to a book club before. However, I was nearly a decade post-college and craved not only the stimulation of good discussions but also the guidance about what books were actually worth reading. Earlier that same year, I had begun deleting my social media accounts after recognizing the detrimental effect they had on my mental health and also my productivity as a writer. With the banishment of...

This article was originally published in The Catholic News Herald of the diocese of Charlotte. There are so many things clamoring for our attention these days, in all different kinds of ways. We are assaulted by advertisements, which are practically unavoidable on every video we watch, on billboards, on the radio and on our social media feeds. Our calendars are filled with appointments, obligations, and tasks that require more of our time and energy than we even have the chance to realize. We strive to live up to the expectations and standards of the culture around us, whether the culture at large or perhaps just the culture of our parish or our family. We take in what we see around us, and that shapes how we live our lives and how our minds are formed. The poet William Blake is credited with the phrase “We become what we behold,” but it’s an idea that echoes throughout Scripture, as well. What are today’s idols? In Psalm 115, while describing the idols made by human hands, the psalmist says, “Those who make them become like them; so do all who trust in them.”We make idols out of lifeless things and then give ourselves over to them as if they had real power, but all we achieve is to become lifeless and malleable like those very things we made. This doesn’t apply just to idols like the Golden Calf in the Exodus story, because even today we fall into worshiping the various technologies that were invented and built by ordinary men and women. We worship institutions, political...