The Idea of a Sabbatical
Joel D. Heck

     The idea of a sabbatical comes from the Old Testament, where God told the Israelites to allow the land to lie fallow in the seventh year so that the land could enjoy “a Sabbath of rest” (Lev. 25:1-7), even as His people enjoyed a Sabbath day each week. They could work the land for six years and gather their crops, but the seventh year was a Sabbath to the Lord. They would not sow fields or prune vineyards. That which grew was to be available to the poor and to animals, whether domestic or wild (Lev. 25:5-7). The sabbatical year not only provided rest for the land; it helped to care for the poor and for animals (Exod. 23:10f.), to forgive debts (Deut. 15:1-3, 9), and to free slaves (Exod. 21:2, Deut. 15:12-15). Just as the land was to rest and be refreshed, so also those who serve in an academic setting have the opportunity to rest and be refreshed every seven years. During my sabbatical, I pursued my interest in C. S. Lewis in the two most important places in the world for Lewis studies—the Marion E. Wade Center in Wheaton, Illinois, and Oxford University in Oxford, England. I found much rest and refreshment in the pursuit of this academic interest, learning firsthand the value of this biblical principle.

    The Marion E. Wade Center was endowed by the founder of the ServiceMaster Company, Marion E. Wade. The Wade Center contains the world’s largest collection of writings by and about these seven British authors—Owen Barfield, G. K. Chesterton, C. S. Lewis, George MacDonald, Dorothy Sayers, J. R. R. Tolkien, and Charles Williams. Oxford University was the place to which Lewis matriculated at University College (one of the forty-two halls and colleges of Oxford University) and the place where he taught and lived for more than forty years at Magdalen College.

     While living in Oxford, I visited the Kilns (Lewis’s home from 1930 until his death) and Belfast, Northern Ireland, where I saw Lewis’s childhood home (of which he wrote in his autobiography Surprised by Joy, “I am a product of long corridors, empty sunlit rooms, upstairs indoor silences, attics explored in solitude, distant noises of gurgling cisterns and pipes, and the noise of wind under the tiles. Also, of endless books.”). I toured Holy Trinity (where Lewis worshipped, and the site of the gravestone in the churchyard where he and his brother are buried), the Eagle and Child (where his group of Oxford friends, the Inklings, met), the Lamb and Flag (where the Inklings went when the Eagle and Child could not accommodate them), and other Lewis sites. I also attended meetings of the Oxford University C. S. Lewis Society. My trip to Belfast also took me to the Holywood Road Library, in front of which appears a sculpture (photo) in recognition of a scene from his best known Narnian Chronicle, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, a sculpture commissioned for the celebration of the centenary of Lewis’s birth (he was born on November 29, 1898).

     Living in Oxford included much more than a sabbatical, however. It included attending Evensong at Christ Church and Magdalen Colleges, singing in the Oxford Bach Choir (one of whose members has decided to spend a month in New Zealand this summer in a bit part in the movie “The Hobbit,” as a result of meeting us), dining at High Table at Somerville College, the opportunity to travel to London, Warwick, Coventry, Stratford, Bristol, and Wales, to fellowship with students at the Oxford Centre for Mission Studies and the Oxford Lutheran Society, touring some of the colleges of Oxford University, singing in concert in the Sheldonian Theatre, attending free organ and choir concerts, and seeing many sights. We saw the Martyr’s Memorial, the Rhodes House (where Rhodes Scholars hang their hats), Blenheim Palace (where Winston Churchill was born), Bladon (where Churchill is buried), the Bates Musical Instrument Museum, the Ashmolean Museum, and other sites. I also interviewed people who knew Lewis, such as Prof. Peter Bayley, former English Fellow at University College, and Prof. Basil Mitchell, Philosophy tutor at Keble College and second President of the Socratic Club (after Lewis himself).

     Most colleges and universities across the country carry on the practice of sabbaticals, not just those in the Concordia University System. One college described the purpose of a sabbatical in this way: “A sabbatical should provide the individual a significant opportunity for new, or renewed, intellectual achievement and growth through study, research, writing, creative work and travel so that teaching and professional effectiveness may be enhanced, scholarly usefulness increased, and the institution’s academic and service programs strengthened.”

     While in Oxford, I worked with Walter Hooper, former private secretary to C. S. Lewis. Walter now lives in a very active retirement in north Oxford, in the apartment in which British novelist Graham Greene once lived. A sabbatical provides not just rest and restoration; it also allows a faculty member to explore an area of interest that will enhance his or her ability to teach and bring recognition back to the university. This sometimes results in a publication or two, as it will eventually in my case. My work with Walter Hooper assisted him in his editorial work on Volume III of Collected Letters, the third and last volume of the complete letters of C. S. Lewis. I transcribed numerous letters from the handwriting of Lewis, solved some handwriting questions (Lewis did not always write in a legible handwriting), and searched for letters that might be in the Wade Center or the Bodleian Library but not in both places. I put Walter in touch with some previously unknown letters, including some written by Lewis to J. O. Reed of Manchester, England, a former undergraduate of Lewis’s college, Magdalen. My own research and writing will eventually result in a book on Lewis, which puts all of Lewis’s writings in the context of the academic life of Oxford and Cambridge Universities during the Lewis years (1925–1963). My first book on Lewis will be published this summer by Concordia Publishing House under the title, Irrigating Deserts: C. S. Lewis on Education.

     Walter told me numerous stories, including one about his attempt to get biographical sketches from various people who are mentioned in the letters of Lewis. In one case, Pauline Baynes, the illustrator of the Chronicles of Narnia, was too humble to reply, so he had no information about her life or her family. Finally, Walter wrote to her, telling her that he intended to include something about her, so he had done some creative guessing. Could she please correct it, if anything was wrong? He began his biographical sketch with these words: “Pauline Baynes was born in 1898. Her father was a slave-trader, and her mother was a prostitute.” She wrote back, correcting the birth date (she was not that old, of course!) and telling Walter what her father and mother had actually done. The biographical sketch was now complete and accurate.

     One evening, at supper in Walter’s apartment, my wife Cheryl and I met Priscilla Tolkien (in the photo with the author, Joel Heck), who appreciated being talked to as an individual in her own right rather than as the daughter of the famous Lord of the Rings author J. R. R. Tolkien. She attended Oxford University and then later the London School of Economics, where she studied Social Work, and she now lives in retirement in north Oxford. Walter Hooper told us about meeting Priscilla in 1967 at a public relations event that was to unveil a new book by her father. The publisher, Sir Alan Unwin, was also there, and neither Tolkien nor Unwin had been told that the press was invited. Unhappy with these unexpected guests, Tolkien refused to cooperate with the press, who wanted Tolkien to sit in a corner and play to the crowd. Instead, he simply sat down and remained quiet, because he was a private man.

     I have borrowed the title for this article from John Henry Newman’s book, The Idea of a University. Newman’s book, published in 1854, eloquently advocated knowledge as its own end, the search for truth, and the study of the liberal arts, all of this as part of the purpose of higher education. A sabbatical aims for much the same—seeking knowledge as its own end, searching for truth, and often very much involved with the liberal arts, as was my sabbatical. A sabbatical does for the educator what C. S. Lewis once said that the educator ought to do for the student: “The task of the modern educator is not to cut down jungles but to irrigate deserts.” An education in the tradition of the liberal arts, basic to the Concordia University System, especially provides the fundamentals of higher education, including communication skills, appreciation of the Fine Arts, basic mathematical skills, critical thinking, moral sensibility, scientific understanding, and the integration of these and other bodies of knowledge.