Chaplain portrays suffering from the Shadowlands

The Rev. Dr Peter Oliver, chaplain at John Hunter Hospital, New Lambton, [Newcastle NSW] is having a tragic love affair with an American poet.

Or rather, as C. S. Lewis in the Newcastle Theatre Company’s production of Shadowlands he is.

Shadowlands, by William Nicholson, is the poignant story of Lewis, the celebrated theologian, academic and creator of the Narnia series, and Joy Gresham, whom he befriends and eventually marries.

The story, which has been the subject of a TV play and an Academy Award winning film starring Anthony Hopkins and Debra Winger, depicts a deeply intimate time in the latter years of Lewis’ life. What was initially a meeting of intellect in 1952 developed into a deep love, which transcended loss.

Shadowlands also deals with Lewis’ struggle with personal pain and grief. Lewis believed God “wants us to suffer”, to “get out of the nursery and to grow up”, and that one should endure suffering with patience.

But, when Joy became afflicted with cancer and eventually died, he found that the simple answers he taught no longer applied.

Peter Oliver performed in his first play 21 years ago and has appeared in a play every few years since.

If it hadn’t been for his theatrical life, he says, he wouldn’t have been invited to Hamilton Wesley Church by a fellow actor, would not have grown in his faith and would not have met his wife.

His acting career has included the docudrama Courage to Care, telling the heart-wrenching stories of the ordinary people who risked their lives to save others amid the Nazi Holocaust, and a 40-minute performance in church, imagining Dietrich Bonhoeffer in prison.

Shadowlands is significant, he says, because it shows Lewis’ personal torment, documented in A Grief Observed, a book whose honesty has been a great help for many people.

Peter says he personally has been affected by Lewis because Lewis originally had an intellectual appreciation of faith which eventually opened up because of the influence of grief. “In the play he moves from a theoretical understanding of suffering to understanding the reality of it.”

As a hospital chaplain Peter says he can relate to scenes in the play where Lewis is frustrated with the doctors and by the limitations of humanity. He experiences this in his own work as a chaplain, attempting to answer questions about where God is in people’s suffering.

In the play Lewis says at first that it’s the blows of God’s chisel that make people perfect, but later he is less certain about that, hoping that God understands the depth of suffering. “He gives up his pat answers and is able to live with the grey areas but still have faith,” says Peter.

Peter first encountered Lewis when he was an egocentric teenager and was introduced to the concept of psychological inheritance as opposed to moral superiority. It knocked his egocentricity for six.

More… http://nsw.uca.org.au/news/2009/shadowlands_20-08-09.htm