"St. Clive's Day"

Of course, today is the day that we remember the assassination of JFK. It is also, as many already know, the day that C.S. Lewis (and Aldous Huxley) died. I heard once--and it may well be more legendary than factual--that Lewis had always prayed that he would die in anonymity. With JFK's being struck down here in Dallas, he was granted that prayer. I don't necessarily doubt that this story is true. Lewis knew that at the heart of all reality there is a fundamental self-denial and humility--a giving up of a lesser good for a greater. Here's one of my favorite quotations by the Oxford don:

For in self-giving, if anywhere, we touch a rhythm not only of all creation but of all being. For the Eternal Word also gives Himself in sacrifice; and that not only on Calvary....From before the foundation of the world He surrenders begotten Deity back to bgetting Deity in obedience...From the highest to the lowest, self exists to be abdicated and, by that abdication, becomes more truly self, to be thereupon yet the more abdicated, and so on forever. This is not a heavenly law we can escape by being saved. What is outside the system of self-giving is not earth, nor nature, nor 'ordinary life,' but simply and solely Hell.