One of the things I love about The Dock is that there’s no rest for the little grey cells.  Some absolutely fascinating chats over the past few weeks about faith, life, love, conversation, forgiveness, ‘the other’, inheritance…  I just love being part of this huge and invigorating dialogue about why faith matters, and what it might look like, in the new era we’re living through.  I’m sure some of the creaking movements of my brain-cogs will be making their way onto this blog over the next few weeks…

In the meantime, I’m here to tell you about one of the gatherings that has been hugely helpful in getting these conversations started:  Dock Book Group.  Over recent months as we’ve looked at Love Wins, Reasons For God and Mere Christianity we’ve been challenged and stretched (and drunk lots of coffee).  So we’re going to stick with the local boy:  C.S.Lewis is our choice again for next Book Group, and we’re going to look at Surprised By Joy when we meet again on Saturday 27th Aug, 9:30am at the Premier Inn.

The consensus on Mere Christianity was that we loved it, loved the idea, loved Lewis’s writing style, his clarity and intelligence – but that the whole enterprise did occasionally have the air of a pipe-smoking Oxford intellectual who had never strayed far outside his little bubble; oh and that his “back in the kitchen woman!” treatment of gender politics was a bit…. “of its time”!  So, did the love of a good woman change him?  (Surprised By Joy was written after his late-in-life marriage to Joy Gresham and her heartbreaking battle with cancer.)  How does Lewis’s deep theology connect with his joyful and painful experiences of real life?  Lots to chat about next Saturday!