Tributes from Friends
October, 2003
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she awakens
easily
to the breath of love's King
stirring softly at her cheek
as He cradles her close
newborn to heaven
and kisses away the tears
that are all she brought of earth

speechless for a while - and mulling over the magnificently rounded forms of linden trees in all seasons and the play of light and shadow under heart-shaped leaves.

if we listen very closely, we can hear her "read His love aloud".

i'll never forget the sound of her heart's voice.

deb ketchum

I am just hearing on SpareOom and MereLewis about Kathryn's death. I never did get to meet her in person but always appreciated her email responses to me and the work that she did in publishing "The Lewis Legacy" and so many other materials on Lewis.

Two short comments: 1) I first read "The Lion of Judah in Never-Never Land" back in 1973 and then followed it with "C.S. Lewis: Mere Christian." It was in the afterward of Mere Christian that I first read about the various C.S. Lewis societies and that next year contacted and joined the groups in New York and Portland. I have been blessed ever since by this broader fellowship and am so grateful for being directed to them and others by Kathryn's work. 2) As much as I have been blessed by her articles and books on C.S. Lewis, I think that the book of hers that I have enjoyed reading the most was her three-volume prose translation of "The Divine Comedy." Never having read Dante before, her translation helped open up a new literary world for me.

Wishing that I had met her in person and continuing to pray for her family.

In Christ's love,
Richard James
http://www.crlamppost.org/cslewis.htm

---

Dear John and all on Wingfold,

Please allow me to add a peronal tribute to dear Kathryn, whose passing had been coming for so long yet was such a shock to us all this week. A passing which of course is always coming to us all: but few of us can face up with such eyes-wide-open courage as we saw from our much-loved friend.

I am going to miss Kathryn massively. I always enjoyed her e-mails, invariably well-informed and well argued, sometimes fiercely but yet never rudely. Kathryn knew literature better than most of us, understood George MacDonald well and, of course, C S Lewis even better. But she made me feel that , although I began from a less scholarly starting point and from second hand knowledge of what she knew first hand , she was interested in my ideas and intuitions. I remember her kindly sharing of my amateurish thoughts on certain questions where her knowledge was masterful and her letting me feel like it was a conversation of equals.

I think we all valued her deep spirituality, her inner closeness to God and the way it worked out in her respect for people everywhere. Kathryn never let different opinions separate her from her friends: in a way the possibilities of learning from each other is what flavoured the friendship. She could see what someone else was saying. But gosh she could, with grace and good manners, argue her corner assertively. No wonder we loved her wingfold contributions.

I appreciated the absence of phoniness in Kathryn. She was talented and clever and did not exercise any mock humility about her own scholarship and writings. She viewed them in just the same way that she viewed anyone else's work of the same quality, did not brag, did not deny. She was ill, in pain, frustrated and did not pretend it was a picnic. She told it as it was. And in her the light shone very bright.

Kathryn is of course irreplaceable. We have lost contact, not for ever but until the morning comes, with an amazing woman whose values and ideas will stay with us every day.

With thanks for memories of Kathryn, and love to John at this emotional time,

Jim

---

I know not what among the grass thou art, Thy nature nor thy substance, fairest flower, Not what to other eyes thou hast of power To send thine image through them to the heart; But when I push the frosty leaves apart, And see thee hiding in thy wintry bower, Thou growest up within me from that hour, And through the snow I with the spring depart.

I have no words. But fragrant is the breath, Pale Beauty, of thy second life within. There is a wind that cometh for thy death, But thou a life immortal dost begin, Where, in one soul, which is thy heaven, shall dwell They spirit, beautiful Unspeakable!

excerpt from: ''Seaboard Parish'' By George MacDonald

Submitted by Richard Rowan