On Addison’s Walk

Lewis, the second-person perspective, and the places that still remember

We walked it this afternoon—my wife, our daughter, and me…..Addison’s Walk…..the footpath that is connected to C.S. Lewis and Tolkien. This is the path where Tolkien would walk and listen to Lewis debate and discuss the finer truths about his atheist and agnostic positions about God. The path where Lewis finally gave his mind and heart to the reality of the Jesus Christ. I wonder what trees are here from that day more than 90 years ago. If only places could recall past events and reveal to us (those of us living) the deeds and actions of by gone eras. It would be incredible to hear the stories from this particular space.

We traveled to Oxford because I was invited to speak at a conference to future leaders from the United States and Great Britian. I came a few days early so that I could make this walk. But first we walked the grounds of Magdalen College itself. We stood among the hydrangeas in the cloisters, then stepped inside the empty dining hall with its long tables and portraits looking down. A few classrooms and offices were visible. I found myself wondering: is this where Lewis held conversations with his students? What would it have been like to hear him lecture? It was strange and good to be in the very place where he taught and walked and thought.

Then we took the path itself—the long dry gravel trail that runs beside the college. Halfway along there is a small round plaque set into the stone. Lewis’ poem is on it:

What the Bird Said Early in the Year - CS Lewis

I heard in Addison’s Walk a bird sing clear:
This year the summer will come true. This year. This year.
This year time’s nature will no more defeat you.
Nor all the promised moments in their passing cheat you.
This time they will not lead you round and back
To Autumn, one year older, by the well worn track…..

I stood there longer than I meant to. Reading the words in the place where he heard the bird. It is one thing to meet Lewis on the page. It is another to stand in the spaces that actually shaped him—the particular light, the sound of the river, the wind between the trees.

I recall suddenly and somewhat unexpectedly Eleonore Stump’s work. Dr. Stump has written about something she calls the second-person perspective. We are used to thinking in two directions. First-person: what it is like to be me. Third-person: facts about someone else. But there is a third way of knowing. It happens when one conscious person is directly aware of another conscious person as a person. Not just observing them from the outside. Not merely reflecting on one’s own inner life. Attending to them in an I–You way.

This kind of knowledge cannot be reduced to propositions. You can know every available fact about someone and still not know them in this second-person sense. Something more is given in the encounter itself. Stump is especially interested in how narratives can re-present that kind of knowledge, and how it matters for our knowledge of God. But the same insight applies to ordinary human presence, and even to places that still carry the memory of a person.

Standing on Addison’s Walk is different from reading about it. You are not just collecting third-person information about Lewis. You are attending, however imperfectly, to the man who once walked here, heard the bird, and wrote the poem now carved on a marker. The path becomes a way of being present to him. Limited/Partial….But real in a way that biography alone is not.

I first picked up Lewis in the eleventh grade. His work was clear, honest and unafraid of reason. God used Lewis to help secure my faith and kindle a long life affirming love for knowledge. Over the years his books still invite me to the deeper waters of my Christian faith.

We walked back the way we came. Same trees. Same light. My wife on one side, our daughter on the other. Nothing finished. Nothing forced. Just the ordinary grace of being there together on ground that still remembers.