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“A Grief Observed”

“A Grief Observed”

Last updated on: May 5, 2026 at 4:20 pm by Dan Peterson

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“A Grief Observed” 2026-05-05T16:20:47-06:00 Dan Peterson

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Joy Davidman, for roughly three years the wife of C. S. Lewis, who died in 1960 at just forty-five years old. (Wikimedia Commons public domain photograph)

Tonight, we attended a performance of Shadowlands at the Aldwych Theatre in the West End, starring Hugh Bonneville as C. S. Lewis and Maggie Siff as Joy Davidman. It’s based, ultimately, on the story behind Lewis’s A Grief Observed, which was pseudonymously published in 1961 by Faber and Faber. (T. S. Eliot, who was one of the company’s directors at the time, is said to have found the book intensely moving.)

Apart from a few points in the play where the dialogue was difficult to hear, it was an excellent production and an affecting and powerful one. I thought Maggie Siff was superb. Hugh Bonneville was also very good, but I was already familiar with him. Unfortunately, the production has a strictly limited engagement, closing this coming Saturday, on 9 May.

Lewis, who himself died relatively young on 22 November 1963 — the same day as Aldous Huxley and John F. Kennedy Jr. — placed this epitaph on Joy’s grave:

Here the whole world (stars, water, air,
And field, and forest, as they were
Reflected in a single mind)
Like cast off clothes was left behind
In ashes, yet with hopes that she,
Re-born from holy poverty,
In lenten lands, hereafter may
Resume them on her Easter Day.

The story told in Shadowlands makes poignantly clear the hope offered by Christianity and, in particular, the covenants and promises of the temple.

A 1920 postcard of the old Salt Lake Theatre, which was built in 1862 and razed in 1928.

I suspect that Brigham Young’s tastes in theater may have been more overtly didactic than mine are, and we certainly disagree on his distaste for tragedies, but I’m grateful that he gave such strong support to drama from the very earliest days of Latter-day Saint settlement in Utah. (So, too, is my wife, who was a theater major.)

“If I were placed on a cannibal island and given a task of civilizing its people,” Brigham is said to have remarked, “I should straightway build a theatre.”

And, very plainly, history and his actions bear him out on that claim. Soon after they arrived in the Salt Lake Valley in 1847, the Latter-day Saints erected a temporary shelter made from tree boughs on a frame structure that came to be called “The Bowery.” It stood on the southeast corner of what we now know as Temple Square. The forerunner of the Tabernacle, it was used for religious services — but also for concerts, plays, and dances.

In 1853, not much more than five years after the arrival of the Mormon pioneers in the valley, Salt Lake City’s Social Hall was formally dedicated. The non-LDS lawyer and federal territorial official Benjamin G. Ferris (1802-1891), a native of New York who was no friend to “Mormonism,” compared the theatrical performances held there favorably to dramatic presentations along the eastern seaboard.

A 1917 photo of the interior of the Salt Lake Theatre, which could seat an audience of 1500. (Wikimedia Commons public domain photograph)

Thereafter, in 1862, Brigham Young dedicated the Salt Lake Theatre, which was one of the finest theater buildings of its time anywhere in the United States. He had been enthusiastic about the project and once called himself the “designer and general dictator of the whole affair.” The exterior was actually designed by William H. Folsom, who, shortly thereafter, became the architect of the Salt Lake Temple. The interior was modeled after London’s Drury Lane Theatre. Said Brother Brigham,

Upon the stage of a theater can be represented in character, evil and its consequences, good and its happy results and rewards; the weakness and the follies of man, the magnanimity of virtue and the greatness of truth. The stage can be made to aid the pulpit in impressing upon the minds of a community an enlightened sense of a virtuous life, also a proper horror of the enormity of sin and a just dread of its consequences. The path of sin with its thorns and pitfalls, its gins and snares can be revealed, and how to shun it (Discourses of Brigham Young, 243).

I believe that Brigham would have been awed at the even greater potential of film to reach people, though he would likely be dismayed and even disgusted by many if not most of the movies that have been made since the birth of the cinema. I hope, if he’s paying any attention to such things, that he’s pleased by our efforts with the Witnesses Initiative and with Becoming Brigham.

The Ka‘ba in Mecca. (Wikimedia Commons public domain photo). Although dating to pre-Islamic times, it has been the center of the Muslim world since the early seventh century.

From the Deseret News: “‘The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives Orange County’ and what do words even mean any more? Is show’s title a harbinger of a language that has a vocabulary without definitions?” Is anybody else looking forward, as I am, to the rumored forthcoming series that will expose The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives: Mecca and Medina?

And, by the way, no Interpreter Funds were used and no Interpreter donors were harmed in connection with this trip.

The London England Temple is actually located quite a distance to the south of the city of London. Once again, alas, we almost certainly won’t see it during this visit to the United Kingdom. I’ve only been to it two or three times, I think. (LDS Media Library image)

In a way, drawing materials from the Christopher Hitchens Memorial “How Religion Poisons Everything” File™ is a bit like taking care of dairy cattle: Even if you’re traveling, you need to make sure that they’re not left untended. So I continue, dreary as my assigned mission is, to try to chronicle at least some of the evils done by religion and religious people, even while on the road fleeing vegetables, gobbling down country-fried steaks, and swilling chocolate malts (unknown in Utah County but famously plentiful here in the United Kingdom). Here, for instance, is a case of a pair of religious zealots from other theological factions praising the societal impact of a third theological faction: Plainly, despite whatever differences there may be in the details, the cause of damaging humanity unites them: “Religious community can solve societal ills better than top-down policy changes, says philosopher Carl Trueman: Podcast host Jonah Goldberg gives a shout-out to Latter-day Saints for their willingness to nurture children and cultivate healthy communities”

Unasked question, based on an objection raised elsewhere: Does Peterson believe that unbelievers can’t be morally good? Answer: No, Peterson does not. As Peterson has said here and elsewhere on numerous occasions, they certainly can be, and that isn’t even remotely the issue he’s raising.

Second unasked question, based on an objection raised elsewhere: Does Peterson believe that religious belief never does harm? Answer: No, Peterson does not. Even he knows just barely enough history to understand that religion has been used to justify evils, and that some dysfunctional and unhealthy religious beliefs (and what might be called religious manias) can foster bad behavior, oppression, injustice, and still worse effects. On the whole, though, Peterson judges that religious belief is most commonly a positive factor in the health of both individuals and societies (and that the overwhelming body of historical, social scientific, medical, and other relevant data demonstrates this to be the case) and that instances where religion appears to cause evil effects are, very often, better understood as cases of religion being used as a vehicle or a disguise for other, more fundamental motivations. (Human lust, avarice, ambition, and mental illness can operate quite well under the cover of religion and, indeed, without it.)

I’m asking Peterson these questions for others who never ask him about them but who nonetheless assume that they already know his answers to them.

Posted from London, England

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May 4, 2026

A very memorable story