Will Vaus

Three days ago I posted my remembrance of Walter Hooper, C. S. Lewis' secretary in the last year of his life and later editor of many of Lewis' works. Walter passed away on December 7, 2020, as a result of complications from Covid-19. He was 89 years old. My last meeting with Walter took place during a C. S. Lewis tour I led, along with Russ Head, in 2016. Walter met with our group at the Kilns, Lewis' former home outside of Oxford. Thankfully, Rev. David Beckmann, who was then working for the C. S. Lewis Foundation as the warden of the Kilns, filmed our conversation with Walter. So I thought I would share that below...

A mother and her young son were driving home from church one Sunday and the mother asked her son, “What did you learn in Sunday School today?”   The young boy responded, “Well, Mom, today we learned about the time when Moses was leading the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt across the Red Sea. They got to the water and Moses knew his people couldn’t make it over. So, he asked some of his men if they would build a bridge over the Red Sea, and all the people of Israel walked over the bridge. But when the Egyptians got there, they had their tanks and guns and they just sank in the mud. So, Moses asked his air force to fly over and bomb the heck out of them and they wiped out all the Egyptians.”   “Is that really what they taught you in Sunday School this morning?”   “Well, not exactly. But if I told you what our teacher really said, you wouldn’t believe it!”   The story of the first Christmas is, like the parting of the Red Sea, an unbelievable story, humanly speaking....

  As many of you may know already, Walter Hooper passed away today at the age of 89. He served as C. S. Lewis' secretary for a brief period of time in 1963. He later served as one of the executors of C. S. Lewis' literary estate. Walter edited many volumes of Lewis' work and wrote some of the most important secondary works on Lewis. I will leave it to the experts to evaluate Walter's accomplishments in the arena of Lewis studies. I simply wish to take this moment to record my debt to Walter as a friend. My correspondence with Walter began in 1996 as I was preparing to lead a C. S. Lewis Tour of England for the first time. Walter graciously met with our tour group in Oxford. The photo above was taken at the Eastgate Hotel in the summer of 1997. My wife Becky and I sat at table with Walter and Lewis' step-son, Douglas Gresham. My next meeting with Walter took place in the summer of 2000. I was in Oxford taking a summer course in religious studies. I contacted Walter t...

Christmas is a challenge. For example, there is the challenge of finding just the right gifts for each of the special people in our lives. In my family of origin, my father was always the most difficult person for whom to buy Christmas gifts. The best job I ever did, of giving my father a Christmas gift he enjoyed, happened the year that my car broke down. I was nineteen years old, and one day driving down the freeway in California, the engine in my little Renault Le Car blew up. I had failed in a very simple maintenance task—that of putting oil into the engine. My father payed to have the car repaired. I decided in response, at Christmas, that I would wrap up all the burnt-out engine parts as a gift for my father. Then I put a check with the gift—the first installment in my pay-back plan. He loved it.   Christmas poses the challenge of finding just the right gifts for those special people in our lives. Christmas poses some other challenges as well, some challenges that we share wi...

Helen Hayes, though she was a great actress, was not a great cook. So, on Thanksgiving Day her family would traditionally go out for dinner. Finally, after many years, her family decided that they would give Thanksgiving dinner at home a try.     The day having arrived, Helen told her husband and son, “Now, I’ve cooked a turkey for the first time and I’m going to bring it to the table. If it’s not good, I don’t want anyone to say a word. We’ll just quietly get up from the table, and without any negative comments, we’ll just go to a restaurant and have a Thanksgiving meal there.”   So, Helen went into the kitchen to get the turkey. When she came back out to the dining room, her husband and her son were both sitting at the table with their hats and coats on.   Giving thanks isn’t always easy, even on Thanksgiving Day. Perhaps that is why the Apostle Paul, writing to the church in Thessalonica, penned these words of encouragement:  “give thanks in all circumstances...