Saved by Grace. Husband, Girl Dad, Son, Brother and Friend. Unceasingly Curious.

I’m a seminary dropout currently working as an investor and manager of private companies. I try to be a mile wide and am therefore forced to be an inch deep; interested in sports, cooking, politics, photography, music, fiction, distance running and seeing God’s beauty in these things. Originally from Baltimore, living in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. I tried this once before but, man, it’s a lot of work! I’ll post as I am able.

The Inklings were an informal literary discussion group at the University of Oxford for nearly two decades between the early 1930s and late 1949. Literary enthusiasts, they praised the value of narrative in fiction and encouraged the writing of fantasy. C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien and Charles Williams were among the most notable participants. Often over beers at a local Oxford pub, they talked about life and reviewed each other’s work. During this period, the Inklings wrote some of the most beloved fantasy novels of all time.

In speaking of friendship with Lewis, Tolkien wrote:

“Friendship with Lewis compensates for much, and besides giving constant pleasure and comfort has done me much good from the contact with a man at once honest, brave, intellectual–a scholar, a poet, and a philosopher–and a lover, at least after a long pilgrimage of Our Lord.”

In a letter from 1959, C. S. Lewis wrote of Tolkien:

"No one ever influenced Tolkien — you might as well try to influence a bandersnatch.

While Lewis was himself a skeptic of the Christian faith throughout his youth, he came to faith in part through his realization that the Gospel is the fairy tale to which all fairy tales point, probably motivating his claim that “Some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again.” Through their famous friendship and discussions, Tolkien also came to faith.

It’s my hope that these writings, my inkling-s as it were, can spark conversations fractionally as rich as those the Inklings no doubt shared. I would like that we could all be honest, brave, intellectuals–scholars, poets and philosophers. If we can’t achieve that, may our posture in discussion can’t be better than that of bandersnatches. Otherwise, may the diamonds that result from the pressure be as rich as Tolkien’s works.