What Would It Be Like to Be with the Inklings?

This post starts with a dream I had about being an Inkling, and ends with I don’t know what.

For those who are not full blown sufferers of Anglo-Catholic Fiction Disorder, the Inklings were an informal discussion group with Lewis and Tolkien and a number of others at various times.

I dreamed I was ripped through time and woke up in the Oxford area in the 30s.

The dream was a jumble of images and events.  My first thought on arriving naturally was to inflict my beastly company on the Inklings, which I did.  I got some kind of job and wrote on the side until I was able to get a career as a children’s author.  On the strength of this and by generally always turning up like a bad penny, I more or less became a minor Inkling, though I mostly felt myself a less educated hanger on because I was.  I also generally felt myself younger than everyone else, which in my dream I also was.  Still, it was awesome.  I congratulated myself on my good fortune every day.  Tolkien didn’t take to me much but he sometimes got interested in something I brought up when I did bring something up, I kept my mouth shut a lot.  I rubbed along pretty well with Lewis though my strange Mormon* beliefs annoyed him.  (Now, writing this, I think it would probably be me not drinking that would most annoy him, and would probably make my attempts to insinuate myself a complete failure, but everything went swimmingly in my dream.  One characteristic of egoistic wish-fulfillment dreams, which this one is at least in part, is you skip over the details.  Its much more pleasant to imagine yourself being one of the Inklings if you don’t ask yourself why they would treat you as one of them.)

*In a piece of authentic period detail, my dream used the term Mormon throughout.

The religion thing was an interesting part of the dream.  I went to Anglican services a lot apparently, morning and evening ones involving a lot of singing, and in fact got in an argument with Lewis about hymns.  But on Sundays I went to the small local branch, which at some points in the dream consisted of a few other people already there and at other points in the dream consisted of me and whatever missionaries happened to be passing through.  At first there was an issue about my ordination, prompted a bit by me apparently doing the sacrament wrong?  I don’t think the prayer has changed since then, but perhaps there were differences in the methods of administration.  My dream was vague on the details but anyhow something was off.  They wanted to see my ordination certificate and I had to tell the District President I was ordained by my father and had lost it and all other records in an accident.  By this point in the dream it had become the case that it was some kind of car wreck that had catapulted me to the past, so I congratulated myself on this technically true statement.  This smoothed over all difficulties.  Later, on a book tour of the US, I met President Grant.

One day we were strolling and Tolkien was arguing with me a bit about religion.  I was taking the position that all metaphysical claims are full of holes, which brought Lewis in – he wanted to know what the holes in creedal metaphysics were with the merry grin of a man who loves to argue and has just scented the beginning of one – and the discussion went from there.  It eventually wound to around to Lewis saying genially but firmly that great minds and holy men had been working at the creeds and the deposit of the faith for thousands of years and who were me and an odd lot of bumpkins in the American west to say otherwise.  What I wanted to say in reply was that the presence of the messenger was more important than elaborating the message.  So I picked up a rock from side of the lane.  It was very vivid in my dream, gray but very small specklings, disc shaped except oval instead of round, a bit like a smushed football.  It was about 8 inches on its long axis.  I hove the rock into a little placid pond surrounded by thick dark green turf.  It plopped hard and sent ripples running all over.  This seemed to communicate my point quite neatly and to everyone’s satisfaction.  Lewis nodded.  He wasn’t converted but he had respect for where I was coming from.

That’s where the dream ended

Outside the dream, I can’t make out why the rock into the pond communicated something.

I have been reading Acts lately, which is a book like the title suggests,  very very active.  Peter and John and their fellows explode all over Jerusalem and beyond.  Which is probably why my mind suggested a rock crashing down into still waters as an image for the gospel.  Peter and the Apostles did not whisper.

I say, let the rocks keep crashing.  Adam’s altar crashing down into the water—Abraham’s pillars—Moses’ tablets of stone—the Cornerstone – the rough stone rolling – let not the water be smooth but let it troubled like an angel has passed there.  Let it be as the Spirit brooding upon the waters.  Let it be stone after stone until the water overflows the banks and rushes down to the river to the sea.