The Kilns 2005 – Part I

May 27, 2011 by Lancia E. Smith

In 2005 I was given an extraordinary gift by my husband Peter “ a trip to England to take part in a program by the C.S. Lewis Foundation. The program was their Summer Seminar at The Kilns, the former home of C.S. Lewis and now a remarkable study center owned and maintained by the Foundation.

Yesterday I found myself needing to remake the slide show I had made originally of that trip because technology has changed in the intervening years and the slide show needed to be updated accordingly. I didn’t go seeking this task as it came by request of someone else but God used it so graciously with me never-the-less. Sometimes we only really see the truth of things when looking through the lens of time. In this case with every image I re-processed a refreshing of my memories occurred along with something else. Perspective.

We’ve often heard the term life changing glibly bandied about when people talk about exciting experiences so I am reluctant to ever use that term but in truth it is accurate when I apply it to this particular trip. It is a sober thing for me to contemplate, even momentarily, how close I came to not going and what my life would be like now if I had not.

My desire to go was based certainly on decades of a passionate interest in Lewis’ writing but it was also tied to something deeper. It was not just the clarity of Lewis’ writing or the soundness of his theology that moved me. There is laced through every passage I have ever read by him a soundless but irresistible call to something larger than I see just now and an unmistakable invitation to enter it. Nearly as much as I have heard this call through Scripture I have heard it also in Lewis’ writing, though it has a different tone to it. That desire to go was – and still is, I believe – God’s “still, small voice” calling me to follow Him and though in my heart I knew that, I also feared that I was just finding an excuse to fulfill the longings of my own heart. It was hard to believe and to accept that God’s will for me could actually be something so beautiful.

There were many legitimate reasons that year not to go. They were all based on being responsible. My husband could not join me and it would be unfair for me to do something wildly fulfilling if he had to stay home and work. Our daughter Pahtyana was getting married in the fall and we certainly were faced with large expenditures in the months ahead. She was also facing major surgery before the wedding and would be staying with us during recovery “ I should stay home to prepare for that. We had just moved into a beautiful new home only months before and I should be attending to getting the house settled. I had never traveled to Europe alone and didn’t know anyone at The Kilns or in England for that matter. I am president of a company and summer is our peak season, so I should be responsible to be working during the busy months. All these reasons were based in reality and had some grounding on fact. You can hear that well worn thread interwoven into all of them. But for reasons I can no longer remember “ probably Peter’s urging “ I booked the non-refundable tickets for my flight and there was no turning back. Regret followed, of course. All kinds of things happened that seemed like signs that I shouldn’t be going “ all of them tinged with guilt. Finally the week before I was to leave I got sick with what I thought was a bad cold and possibly a sinus infection, something all too common for me. Still Peter championed the trip and told me to go with all my heart. And by God’s grace I did. The results of that single choice to follow God’s voice though I was afraid to go have set me on a path that has already outstripped my imagination of that time and sent us both into new pursuits, new encounters, new circles of service new fields of Joy.