Over six decades ago, I was a student worker in the library of Wisconsin State University at Superior. Student workers had access to the bookshelves (aka stacks), although other students generally did not. I was putting a shelf to order, or some such, when I saw Tolkien’s The Fellowship ot the Ring. I checked it out, and read it. I became so deeply involved with it that I took the book home to Birchwood, WI, for the weekend, and read the chapter on Gandalf’s battle with the Balrog to some or all of my three younger brothers. I eventually read the other two books of the trilogy. I don’t know what my brothers thought of this, or if all three of them heard it.
A few years later, while I was a graduate student at the
University of Wisconsin, Madison, I was exploring the children’s fantasy
section of the library – they were less restrictive on access to the
collection than Superior had been – I found The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C. S. Lewis. I don’t remember the details of finding Lewis’s other works, including
the other Narnia volumes, but I eventually read nearly all of his published books,
both fiction and religion.
As a character from Lewis’s The Silver Chair put it, “There
are no accidents.”
I thank God for the two encounters described above, and for
the experiences that followed them. I learned something of honor, wisdom,
self-sacrifice, worship, faith, loyalty and other virtues from Tolkien and
Lewis.
