so few of us will really rest all on Him /if He leaves us any other support

[soso]

TO BEDE GRIFFITHS: On fortitude and trust in God in the face of war; and on ecumenical differences.

29 April 1938

I have been in considerable trouble over the present danger of war. 

Twice in one life—and then to find how little I have grown in fortitude despite my conversion. 

It has done me a lot of good by making me realise 

how much of my happiness secretly depended on the tacit assumption 

of at least tolerable conditions for the body: 

and I see more clearly, I think, [the necessity (if one may so put it) which God is under] of allowing us to be afflicted

—so few of us will really rest all on Him /if He leaves us any other support.

*  I see [the necessity //which God is under] /of allowing us to be afflicted]

About our differences: 

I feel that whenever two members of different communions succeed in sharing the spiritual life 

so far as they can now share it, and are thus forced /to regard each other as Christians,

they are really helping on reunion by producing the conditions //without which official reunion would be quite barren. 

I feel sure that this is the layman’s chief contribution to the task, and some of us here are being enabled to perform it. 

You, who are a priest and a theologian, are a different story: 

and on the purely natural and temperamental level there is, and always has been,

 a sort of tension /between us two //which prevents [our doing much mutual good. 

We shall both be nicer, please God, in a better place. 

Meanwhile you have my daily prayer and good wishes.

From The Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis, Volume II
Compiled in Yours, Jack