True understanding is unattainable without both love and detachment.
– Owen Barfield, History in English Words
In the summer of 1980, I was responsible for a Kettering Foundation symposium in Woodstock, VT, that brought together scientists, theologians, psychologists, and others to explore the subject “Recovery of Wholeness.”
At an evening picnic near a local ski hill, I found myself stuck for an hour on a broken ski lift sitting next to the author and lawyer Owen Barfield. I had read several of Barfield’s books, including Saving the Appearances and Poetic Diction. Barfield was C.S. Lewis’s closest friend, and they were part of the literary group called the Inklings, founded by Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien at Oxford University in the 1930s.
After sitting quietly for an extended period high above the green slopes waiting for the ski lift to start, I asked Barfield whether it was true what Lewis had said of him, that “Owen reads all the right books and gets all the wrong things out of them!” Barfield laughed in self-effacing agreement, then added, “I read all the wrong books and got the right things out of them.”
The conversation that Barfield and I had that day suspended 30 feet in the air detached us from time and from ourselves enough to share, human to human, for a moment. How grounded Barfield was to laugh at himself. He understood that there is no right or wrong place for understanding. Love is in both.
Rob Lehman
I worked at the Kettering Foundation from 1973 – 1989. From 1989 to today, I have served at the Fetzer Institute, where I am currently trustee and president emeritus. I am also, importantly, a grandfather.
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