Will Vaus

My day began with breakfast in the dining room of The Kilns with the sunlight streaming through the windows. I then walked into Central Oxford as C. S. Lewis did many times. As I saw a bus going up Headington Hill, I could not help but think of these lines from Surprised by Joy about a double-decker bus.... "I was going up Headington Hill on the top of a bus. Without words and (I think) almost without images, a fact about myself was somehow presented to me. I became aware that I was holding something at bay, or shutting something out. Or, if you like, that I was wearing some stiff clothing, like corsets, or even a suit of armour, as if I were a lobster. I felt myself being, there and then, given a free choice. I could open the door or keep it shut; I could unbuckle the armour or keep it on. Neither choice was presented as a duty; no threat or promise was attached to either, though I knew that to open the door or take off the corslet meant the incalculable. The choice appe...

  On Day One of my trip to Oxford, England I received my key to the kingdom .... That is, C. S. Lewis' former home, the Kilns, where I am staying for the next five nights. Here is the view from my bedroom, which happens to be the room where Lewis died on November 22, 1963. I wonder, will I see and hear his ghost tonight in a dream?  And here's the kitchen, where I had a cup of tea this afternoon whilst conversing with friends on Facebook. I also obtained my Bodleian Reader's Card today to do some research while I am residing in the city of dreaming spires. I went for a hike up Shotover Hill today just as Lewis often did. And had dinner in the same place where Oliver Cromwell once sat, the Victoria Arms Pub in Marston.... With my friend Jason Lepojarvi, the new president of the Oxford C. S. Lewis Society. All in all, it was quite a day!

I will be traveling to Chattanooga, Tennessee tomorrow ... but not on the Choo-Choo! I will be speaking to the C. S. Lewis Society of Chattanooga on Friday night, so I hope all my friends in the neighborhood can make it out for the event. You can find more information about it here: The Chattanoogan and here: C. S. Lewis Society of Chattanooga

My newest book is now available on Amazon as well as on my web site. Click here for more info: Amazon

My newest book just arrived today! To learn more about it and order a signed copy click here:  Open Before Christmas .

On Monday, September 24 at 7 pm, I will be speaking to the C. S. Lewis Society of Frederick, Maryland about Lewis' Reading of George MacDonald. The lecture is open to the public and will be held at All Saints Episcopal Church in downtown Frederick. For more information, click here:  Frederick CSL Society . I will also be signing copies of my books, including my newest:  Open Before Christmas .

My newest book, Open Before Christmas: Devotional Thoughts for the Holiday Season , is now available for pre-order. It will be in print later this month. To learn more, and to obtain your signed copy, click here:  Open Before Christmas . Here is more information and an endorsement from the back cover: If you ask most people, “What is Advent?” they will probably not be able to give a correct answer. At best, they might tell you that when they were children they opened the doors of an Advent Calendar in the days leading up to Christmas. Similarly, if you asked the average person in the street, “What are the Twelve Days of Christmas?” they might only be able to sing a few lines from the song of the same name.   In this book, author Will Vaus seeks to deepen the reader’s knowledge of Advent and the Twelve Days of Christmas leading up to Epiphany. However, this book goes even further than that. Readers are provided with devotional thoughts for each...

The first of a series of guest posts by yours truly is now up on the  Road Trips for Readers Blog . In this first installment you can enjoy walking with Lewis in Ireland....

My newest book is in the works. It is a devotional that will offer the reader insights on key biblical texts appropriate to the Advent and Christmas seasons. Open Before Christmas: Devotional Thoughts for the Holiday Season  will be available for pre-order in September and will be in print in October.

A neat little discovery was made during my recent visit to the Ed Brown Collection at Taylor University. While looking at a British first edition of C. S. Lewis' epic poem  Dymer , I found an envelope inside the front cover. When Professor David Neuhouser of Taylor opened the envelope, we found inside a proof of the design for the spine of this book. Most likely this proof dates back to the time of publication, 1926, and was perhaps, sent to C. S. Lewis for his approval. Images Copyright Lancia E. Smith 2012. Click here to view her web site:  Lancia Smith

My friend Lancia Smith took some beautiful photographs at the recent C. S. Lewis & Friends Colloquium at Taylor University in Upland, Indiana. You can see all of her photos here:  Lancia Smith Photography Here are some of Lancia's photos in which yours truly figured prominently.... Standing outside the Ed Brown Collection at Taylor Reading the opening lines from the British first edition of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe Holding a copy of Wilfrid Cumbermede  by George MacDonald. This copy belonged to C. S. Lewis' friend, Arthur Greeves. It was read by Lewis while sitting naked under a willow tree near Parson's Pleasure, a men only "swimming hole" along the Cherwell River in Oxford. Discussing with David Neuhouser and Devin Brown whether the book got wet while Lewis was reading at Parson's Pleasure Closeup of Wilfrid Cumbermede Arthur Greeves signature inside With Charlie Starr, author...

My newest book, Keys to Growth: Meditations on the Acts of the Apostles , is now in print. It's my largest book yet, at 300 pages. But the price is still good at $14.99. To read more about it and order a signed copy click here:  Keys to Growth .

Arthur Greeves In light of recent developments in the United States on the issue of gay marriage, I thought it would be interesting to revisit what C. S. Lewis thought about homosexuality. Lewis, who died in 1963, never wrote about same-sex marriage, but he did write, occasionally, about the topic of homosexuality in general. In the following I am quoting from my book, Mere Theology: A Guide to the Thought of C. S. Lewis . For detailed references and footnotes, you may obtain a copy from Amazon, your local library, or by clicking on the book cover at the right.... In Surprised by Joy , Lewis claimed that homosexuality was a vice to which he was never tempted and that he found opaque to the imagination. For this reason he refused to say anything too strongly against the pederasty that he encountered at Malvern College, where he attended school from the age of fifteen to sixteen. Lewis did not rate pederasty as the greatest evil of the school because he felt the cruelty displa...

I have a new post over at the Harper One C. S. Lewis Blog. Check it out here:  C. S. Lewis' Appealing Christianity .

I was interviewed recently about C. S. Lewis' essay, "The Seeing Eye". You can listen to that interview here:  The Seeing Eye

My newest book will be available soon. Here's the information from the back cover: Description: Every living thing or person requires certain ingredients in order to grow, and if a thing or person is not growing, it is dying. What is true in the physical realm is also true in the spiritual arena. In order to grow spiritually, individual Christians, and the whole Church in fact needs certain fundamental ingredients. The Acts of the Apostles is a book that is all about growth. Will Vaus has been meditating and preaching on Acts for many years. In this volume, he offers the reader forty-one keys from the entire book of Acts to unlock spiritual growth in everyday life. Endorsements: In his book, Keys to Growth, Meditations on the Acts of the Apostles, Vaus has given a timely gift to all students of Luke’s second New Testament book. A rich feast awaits those who think they already have the clues necessary to understand how Jesus taught his discipl...

"The 'Resurrection' to which they bore witness was, in fact, not the action of rising from the dead but the state of having risen; a state, as they held, attested by intermittent meetings during a limited period (except for the special, and in some ways different, meeting vouchsafed to St. Paul). This termination of the period is important, for, as we shall see, there is no possibility of isolating the doctrine of the Resurrection from that of the Ascension. "The next point to notice is that the Resurrection was not regarded simply or chiefly as evidence for the immortality of the soul. It is, of course, often so regarded today. I have heard a man maintain that 'the importance of the Resurrection is that it proves survival .' Such a view cannot at any point be reconciled with the language of the New Testament. On such a view Christ would simply have done what all men do when they die: the only novelty would have been that in His case we were allowed t...

God made him who had no sin to be sin   for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. (2 Corinthians 5:21) Now what was the sort of “hole” man had got himself into? He had tried to set up on his own, to behave as if he belonged to himself. In other words, fallen man is not simply an imperfect creature who needs improvement: he is a rebel who must lay down his arms. Laying down your arms, surrendering, saying you are sorry, realizing that you have been on the wrong track and getting ready to start life over again from the ground floor—that is the only way out of our “hole.” This process of surrender—this movement full speed astern—is what Christians call repentance. Now repentance is no fun at all. It is something much harder than merely eating humble pie. It means unlearning all the self-conceit and self-will that we have been training ourselves into for thousands of years. It means killing part of yourself, undergoing a kind of death. In fact, it needs...