Death in Battle, a song

Open the gates for me
Open the gates of the peaceful castle
Rosy in the west
In the sweet, dim Isle of apples
Over the wide sea’s breast
Open the gates for me

Open the gates for me, open the gates for me

Sorely pressed have I been
And driven and hurt beyond all bearing
On this summer day
But the heat and the pain are all disappearing
Suddenly fallen away
All’s cool, all’s cool and green

But a moment agone
Among men cursing in fight and toiling
Blinded I fought
But the labor passed with a sudden recoiling
Like a passing thought
And now I’m all, I’m all alone

Open the gates for me, open the gates for me
Open the gates for me, open the gates for me

Ah, to be ever alone
In the flowery valleys among the mountains
And the silent wastes untrod
In the dewy uplands near to the fountain
of the Garden of God
This would, would this atone?

O Country of Dreams
Out beyond the tide of the ocean
Hidden and sunk away
Away from the sounds of smoke and commotion
Near to the end of the day
Full of dim woods and bright streams

Open the gates for me, open the gates for me
Open the gates for me, open the gates for me

The Floating Lands, a song

And you sweep me off of my unsteady feet
With the rising swell and the falling waves
Of your floating lands
And I can’t see over the coming crest
But you never move as we drift along
On your floating lands

I’m floating on
The ocean of your love for me
While waves of joy
Are washing down and drenching me

And the waves bow down to kiss your holy feet
When you lift your voice to calm the surging surf
Of your floating lands
While the current of your perfect will
Moves me a long as we ride the tide
Of your floating lands

I’m floating on
The ocean of your love for me
While waves of joy
Are washing down and drenching me

I can no longer see
The shore we left behind us
And I still haven’t seen
Just where we’re headed for
But the wake of where we’ve been
It stretches out behind us
And only you can say
When we’ll reach that distant shore

I’m floating on
The ocean of your love for me
While waves of joy
Are washing down and drenching me
I’m floating on
The ocean of your love for me
While waves of joy
Are washing down and drenching me

Postcards from Narnia (VI): New Creation and the Last Battle

In 1956 The Last Battle, the final book in the Narnia series, won the Carnige Medal, an award that celebrates outstanding new literature for children. It is, in my mind, a well deserved recognition. The Last Battle not only serves as a near-perfect conclusion for the seven-book series, but stands on its own as one of the most masterful combinations of high fantasy, Christian eschatology, metaphysical philosophy, classic fable and modern fairy tale that I’ve ever read, all of it distilled and clarified as a children’s story, but one that, as Mr. Tumnus said of Aslan’s country itself, is like an onion where every circle is bigger than the last as you continue to go in.

That said, I do admit that it was never my favorite of the books. Though it expanded my imaginative horizons every time I read it, and was, to be sure, the first book I ever read that got me to think seriously about what heaven was and would be like, still, the sense of closure it evoked was so complete that I hated to read the last page. As hopeful as it was to know that the Great Story went on, and goes on, forever, and that in it every chapter is better than the one before, still, that last page of The Last Battle always left me with an ache in my heart for this story to continue, regardless how wonderful the next one would be.

If you’ve never read it, here’s how it goes:

Soon they found themselves all walking together—and a great, bright procession it was—up towards mountains higher than you could see in this world even if they were there to be seen. But there was no snow on those mountains: there were forests and green slopes and sweet orchards and flashing waterfalls, one above the other, going up for ever. And the land they were walking on grew narrower all the time, with a deep valley on each side: and across that valley the land which was the real England grew nearer and nearer.

The light ahead was growing stronger. Lucy saw that a great series of many-coloured cliffs led up in front of them like a giant's staircase. And then she forgot everything else, because Aslan himself was coming, leaping down from cliff to cliff like a living cataract of power and beauty. ...

Then Aslan turned to them and said: "You do not yet look so happy as I mean you to be."

Lucy said, "We're so afraid of being sent away, Aslan. And you have sent us back into our own world so often."

"No fear of that," said Aslan. "Have you not guessed?"

Their hearts leaped and a wild hope rose within them.

"There was a real railway accident," said Aslan softly. "Your father and mother and all of you are—as you used to call it in the Shadow-Lands—dead. The term is over: the holidays have begun. The dream is ended: this is the morning."

And as He spoke He no longer looked to them like a lion; but the things that began to happen after that were so great and beautiful that I cannot write them. And for us this is the end of all the stories, and we can most truly say that they all lived happily ever after. But for them it was only the beginning of the real story. All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story, which no one on earth has read: which goes on for ever: in which every chapter is better than the one before.

I have a very vivid memory of reading that last chapter for the first time, and closing the book and just knowing, even as a 10-year-old child, that I had come into contact with something profoundly deep and beautiful. In other writings, Lewis talks about the “stab of northerness,” the pangs of “unsatisfied desire that are themselves more desirable than any other desire” that works of great literature awakened in him as a child. His own Last Battle, was I think, one of the first “stabs of northerness” to pierce my heart.

And yet it did hurt. However wonderful it was, it still stabbed. And this brings me to the point of this particular postcard from Narnia. Because the eschatological finality of The Last Battle—Father Time arises and crushes the sun to darkness; the stars literally fall to the earth; Peter, in the end is called upon to close the door on Narina for good—it all hurt to see the final end. No matter that on the other side of that closed door they would discover that the “true” Narina was there all along, and “true England,” too for that matter; still, the discontinuity between the lost old Narnia and the new-discovered Real Narnia, left an ache in the heart.

There are, actually deep philosophical roots here that a ten year old child could have known nothing about. In Plato, especially, and in the Neo-Platonic philosophers who followed him, the “real,” “solid,” “material” world of flesh and blood is actually not the “True” world. The “True World” is the world of “Ideas,” the world that exists, ostensibly, in the Mind of God and the world of which this concrete, light-and-matter-and-flesh-and-blood reality of ours is only a shadow. Platonically speaking, the chair you are sitting in is only a shadow of True Chair, the Real Idea of Chair, which exists in the Mind of God. You can read Plato’s fullest treatment of this in The Republic, and especially, most popularly, his “Allegory of the Cave.” In “Allegory of the Cave,” reality as we know it is only flickering shadows dancing on a cave wall, cast by “Real” objects that we cannot see.

Or if you've never read "Allegory of the Cave," just read the closing chapters of The Last Battle.  There is little doubt that Lewis had Plato, if not in mind, at least in his peripheries, when he wrote this:

"The Eagle is right," said the Lord Digory. "Listen, Peter. When Aslan said you could never go back to Narnia, he meant the Narnia you were thinking of. But that was not the real Narnia. That had a beginning and an end. It was only a shadow or a copy of the real Narnia, which has always been here and always will be here: just as our own world, England and all, is only a shadow or copy of something in Aslan's real world. You need not mourn over Narnia, Lucy. All of the old Narnia that mattered, all the dear creatures, have been drawn into the real Narnia through the Door. And of course it is different; as different as a real thing is from a shadow or as waking life is from a dream." His voice stirred everyone like a trumpet as he spoke these words: but when he added under his breath "It's all in Plato, all in Plato: bless me, what do they teach them at these schools!" the older ones laughed. It was so exactly like the sort of thing they had heard him say long ago in that other world where his beard was grey instead of golden. He knew why they were laughing and joined in the laugh himself. But very quickly they all became grave again: for, as you know, there is a kind of happiness and wonder that makes you serious. It is too good to waste on jokes.

It is as hard to explain how this sunlit land was different from the old Narnia, as it would be to tell you how the fruits of that country taste. Perhaps you will get some idea of it, if you think like this. You may have been in a room in which there was a window that looked out on a lovely bay of the sea or a green valley that wound away among mountains. And in the wall of that room opposite to the window there may have been a looking glass. And as you turned away from the window you suddenly caught sight of that sea or that valley, all over again, in the looking glass. And the sea in the mirror, or the valley in the mirror, were in one sense just the same as the real ones: yet at the same time they were somehow different—deeper, more wonderful, more like places in a story: in a story you have never heard but very much want to know. The difference between the old Narnia and the new Narnia was like that. The new one was a deeper country: every rock and flower and blade of grass looked as if it meant more. I can't describe it any better than that: if you ever get there, you will know what I mean.

It was the Unicorn who summed up what everyone was feeling. He stamped his right fore-hoof on the ground and neighed and then cried:

"I have come home at last! This is my real country! I belong here. This is the land I have been looking for all my life, though I never knew it till now. The reason why we loved the old Narnia is that it sometimes looked a little like this. Bree-hee-hee! Come further up, come further in!"

There are some points of contact between Plato and Christian theology, to be sure. In the Book of Hebrews, for instance, and certain parts of John, perhaps a passage in Colossians, or two, it sure sounds like the writers are working with Platonic paradigms—or, at least, paradigms informed by Platonic ideas. But in more broad strokes, there is a thread in Platonic philosophy that runs right against the grain of biblical theology. It's the idea that this world—this concrete world of flesh and blood and sunrises and child-births and rainfall and rush-hour traffic—is not real; or at least it is not as real as the spiritual, the world of ideas and angels and immaterial concepts that exists somewhere unseen. The logical corollary of this Platonic starting point is that the spiritual is thus somehow more important than the material, that it matters more and is of greater consequence to God.

Anyone fully steeped in a robust biblical theology of creation will see quickly how contrary to the narrative of the Christian Scriptures Platonic philosophy is in this regard. The fact that the Creator saw that the creation was good, and behold, it was very good, is axiomatic to the entire story arc of the Bible. That the word became flesh and made his dwelling among us, too, is axiomatic to Christian theology. The New Heavens and New Earth that John the Divine saw in his own Last Battle is, for all its being new, still continuous with the old (the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations, not their blotting out). Most biblical scholars these days would suggest that New Creation there means “re-newed Creation,” more than it means “Brand New.”

The last thing I would ever want to do is step up to bat with a pitcher like C. S. Lewis on the mound when game is philosophy, but I do humbly suggest that, to the extent it is influenced by Platonic categories, the eschatology of The Last Battle is not the best picture of what God has in store for his hurting world when the final battle is, at last, fought and won. A fuller picture, I think, would include an compelling affirmation that this creation—made and loved by the One whom Aslan symbolizes—is good and real and true, and that he intends, in the end not to discard it but to restore and redeem it.

This is maybe more than is fair to expect of a children's book, and who knows but that when it's all said and done if the redemption of this world won't look something like Father Time reaching up and squeezing the sun to darkness, or a page being closed on a beautiful but no longer necessary story.  After all, you usually have to pull down a lot of walls and tear up a lot of flooring when you're renovating.  Even so: because of our tendency to spiritualize our faith in unhealthy ways (popular evangelical views of heaven tend to be dripping with the worst kind of Platonism), and because of the escapism, apathy and disengagement from the world this so often results in, I would love it if we found a lost chapter of The Last Battle, one where, before the door was closed on Narnia for ever, Aslan healed the wounds of Calormen's tyranny and exposed the fraud of Shift the Ape, liberated the captives at Cair Paravel and renewed the stripped forests of Narnia, giving us a glimpse of what he had in mind when he created the world in the first place.

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Postcards from Narnia (V): When Aslan Speaks

One of the beautiful aspects of the Narnia books is the ethereal, almost mystical quality that pervades the conversations Aslan has with the various children of the stories. To the extent that Aslan is Lewis’s literary vehicle for reflecting on the nature of God, these conversations are, I expect, very much like what Lewis’s own conversations with God must have been like, condensed and distilled to a child-like precision, and presented in the literary framework of the Narnian world. Even when I was a child coming to Narnia for the first time, it struck me that when the Golden Lion spoke, there was mystery and wonder, paradox and clarity, wisdom and delight in his voice, unlike anything I’d ever encountered before. It was at once somber and joyful, playful and impassive, stern and tender. As a grown reader, it strikes me that few works of literature I’ve come across have captured so vividly and so simply the experience of speaking to God in prayer and actually hearing him speak in return.

Aslan never condemns, though at the same time, he entertains no self-deception. He insists on the truth, and yet so gently that the truth is only healing and transformative. He insists on full obedience, yet with such tenderness that obedience is a delight. He knows us fully, more truly than we know ourselves, yet he uses that knowledge never to shame or bully, but only to nurture us and strengthen us for his glory.

Every now and then as a pastor I get asked: does God really speak to us, and what is it like when he does? I’ve done my best to answer that question—his voice is one we learn to hear only by listening to it—but if one wanted to practice listening, one could do worse, I think, than to listen to how Aslan speaks to the children in Narnia, and what he says to them when he does.

Among the many samples I could turn to, consider:

Aslan on self-deception:

"Son of Adam," said the Lion. "There is an evil Witch abroad in my new land of Narnia. Tell these good Beasts how she came here."

A dozen different things that he might say flashed through Digory's mind, but he had the sense to say nothing except the exact truth.

"I brought her, Aslan," he answered in a low voice.

"For what purpose?"

"I wanted to get her out of my own world back into her own. I thought I was taking her back to her own place."

"How came she to be in your world, Son of Adam?"

"By—by Magic."

The Lion said nothing and Digory knew that he had not told enough.

"It was my Uncle, Aslan," he said. "He sent us out of our own world by magic rings, at least I had to go because he sent Polly first, and then we met the Witch ina place called Charn and she just held on to us when—"
"You met the Witch?" said Asian in a low voice which had the threat of a growl in it.

"She woke up," said Digory wretchedly. And then, turning very white, "I mean, I woke her. Because I wanted to know what would happen if I struck a bell. Polly didn't want to. It wasn't her fault. I—I fought her. I know I shouldn't have. I think I was a bit enchanted by the writing under the bell."

"Do you?" asked Asian; still speaking very low and deep.

"No," said Digory. "I see now I wasn't. I was only pretending."

Aslan on grief:

"Son of Adam," said Aslan. "Are you ready to undo the wrong that you have done to my sweet country of Narnia on the very day of its birth?"

"Well, I don't see what I can do," said Digory. "You see, the Queen ran away and—"

"I asked, are you ready?" said the Lion.

"Yes," said Digory. He had had for a second some wild idea of saying "I'll try to help you if you'll promise to help my Mother," but he realized in time that the Lion was not at all the sort of person one could try to make bargains with. But when he had said "Yes," he thought of his Mother, and he thought of the great hopes he had had, and how they were all dying away, and a lump came in his throat and tears in his eyes, and he blurted out:

"But please, please—won't you—can't you give me something that will cure Mother?" Up till then he had been looking at the Lion's great feet and the huge claws on them; now, in his despair, he looked up at its face. What he saw surprised him as much as anything in his whole life. For the tawny face was bent down near his own and (wonder of wonders) great shining tears stood in the Lion's eyes. They were such big, bright tears compared with Digory's own that for a moment he felt as if the Lion must really be sorrier about his Mother than he was himself.

"My son, my son," said Aslan. "I know. Grief is great. Only you and I in this land know that yet. Let us be good to one another.”

Aslan on Obedience:

A circle of grass, smooth as a lawn, met her eyes, with dark trees dancing all round it. And then—oh joy! For he was there: the huge Lion, shining white in the moonlight, with his huge black shadow underneath him. But for the movement of his tail he might have been a stone lion, but Lucy never thought of that. She never stopped to think whether he was a friendly lion or not. She rushed to him. She felt her heart would burst if she lost a moment. And the next thing she knew was that she was kissing him and putting her arms as far round his neck as she could and burying her face in the beautiful rich silkiness of his mane.

"Aslan, Aslan. Dear Aslan," sobbed Lucy. "At last."

The great beast rolled over on his side so that Lucy fell, half sitting and half lying between his front paws. He bent forward and just touched her nose with his tongue. His warm breath came all round her. She gazed up into the large wise face.

"Welcome, child," he said.

"Aslan," said Lucy, "you're bigger."

"That is because you are older, little one," answered he.

"Not because you are?"

"I am not. But every year you grow, you will find me bigger."

For a time she was so happy that she did not want to speak. But Aslan spoke.

"Lucy," he said, "we must not lie here for long. You have work in hand, and much time has been lost to-day."

"Yes, wasn't it a shame?" said Lucy. "I saw you all right. They wouldn't believe me. They're all so——"

From somewhere deep inside Aslan's body there came the faintest suggestion of a growl.

"I'm sorry," said Lucy, who understood some of his moods. "I didn't mean to start slanging the others. But it wasn't my fault anyway, was it?"

The Lion looked straight into her eyes.

"Oh, Aslan," said Lucy. "You don't mean it was? How could I—I couldn't have left the others and come up to you alone, how could I? Don't look at me like that ... oh well, I suppose I could. Yes, and it wouldn't have been alone, I know, not if I was with you. But what would have been the good?"

Aslan said nothing.

"You mean," said Lucy rather faintly, "that it would have turned out all right—somehow? But how? Please, Aslan! Am I not to know?"

"To know what would have happened, child?" said Aslan. "No. Nobody is ever told that."

"Oh dear," said Lucy.

“But anyone can find out what will happen," said Aslan. "If you go back to the others now, and wake them up; and tell them you have seen me again; and that you must all get up at once and follow me—what will happen? There is only one way of finding out."

"Do you mean that is what you want me to do?" gasped Lucy.

“Yes, little one," said Aslan.

"Will the others see you too?" asked Lucy.

"Certainly not at first," said Aslan. "Later on, it depends."

"But they won't believe me!" said Lucy.

"It doesn't matter," said Aslan.

Aslan on self-pity:

"Who are you?" Shasta said, scarcely above a whisper.

"One who has waited long for you to speak," said the Thing. Its voice was not loud, but very large and deep.

"Are you—are you a giant?" asked Shasta.

"You might call me a giant," said the Large Voice. "But I am not like the creatures you call giants."

"I can't see you at all," said Shasta, after staring very hard. Then (for an even more terrible idea had come into his head) he said, almost in a scream, "You're not—not something dead, are you? Oh please—please do go away. What harm have I ever done you? Oh, I am the unluckiest person in the whole world?"

Once more he felt the warm breath of the Thing on his hand and face. "There," it said, "that is not the breath of a ghost. Tell me your sorrows."

Shasta was a little reassured by the breath: so he told how he had never known his real father or mother and had been brought up sternly by the fisherman. And then he told the story of his escape and how they were chased by lions and forced to swim for their lives; and of all their dangers in Tashbaan and about his night among the Tombs and how the beasts howled at him out of the desert. And he told about the heat and thirst of their desert journey and how they were almost at their goal when another lion chased them and wounded Aravis. And also, how very long it was since he had had anything to eat.

"I do not call you unfortunate," said the Large Voice.

"Don't you think it was bad luck to meet so many lions?" said Shasta.

"There was only one lion," said the Voice.

"What on earth do you mean? I've just told you there were at least two the first night, and——"

"There was only one: but he was swift of foot."

"How do you know?"

"I was the lion." And as Shasta gaped with open mouth and said nothing, the Voice continued. "I was the lion who forced you to join with Aravis. I was the cat who comforted you among the houses of the dead. I was the lion who drove the jackals from you while you slept. I was the lion who gave the Horses the new strength of fear for the last mile so that you should reach King Lune in time. And I was the lion you do not remember who pushed the boat in which you lay, a child near death, so that it came to shore where a man sat, wakeful at midnight, to receive you."

"Then it was you who wounded Aravis?"

"It was I."

"But what for?"

"Child," said the Voice, "I am telling you your story, not hers. I tell no-one any story but his own."

"Who are you?" asked Shasta.

"Myself," said the Voice, very deep and low so that the earth shook: and again "Myself," loud and clear and gay: and then the third time "Myself," whispered so softly you could hardly hear it, and yet it seemed to come from all round you as if the leaves rustled with it.

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The Thursday Review: On Dog Whispering and the Image of God

First published March 20, 2009 (Back when Trixie was only a year old)

Okay, bear with me on this one.

We got our family dog, Trixie, about a year ago. Though there was always a dog in our household growing up, I had forgotten I was a "dog person" until Trixie came along. In choosing the dog's name, I insisted it had to be something I could wander about our neighbourhood calling plaintively without feeling like a total idiot. This is my main childhood memory of "Bear," the family dog who bolted every time the front door opened even a fraction of an inch.

But Trixie has helped me re-discover my inner dog-person.

Besides the basics (sit, down, stay, come), the complete list of the 14-some-word vocabulary she's acquired under our care includes: "Drop" (spit out whatever you happen to be chewing and await further instructions), "go pee" (I'm in a hurry, so take a leak quick and get back in the house), "kennel" (we're going out and you're not coming, so lie down in your kennel and wait for us), "toy" (go find one of the many chew toys you have hidden around the house and we'll play catch).

What amazes me is how happily she responds to these commands-- almost like they were just waiting there inside her little dog heart for us to come along and breathe them into life.

But that's not all. Trixie is uncannily in tune with our habits. Mornings she watches to see if I put on my coat, and as soon as I do she goes and lies down in her kennel, knowing I'm off to work. Evenings she listens closely for me to sit on the couch and open a book, her cue to come lie down next to me.

Now here's the thing: in a relatively obscure passage tucked away in The Problem of Pain, C. S. Lewis makes some interesting, passing comments on the spirituality of our relationship to the animals. He argues that some animals (especially the naturally clever ones like horses or dogs) have a latent personality that is called out and enlarged as they come into contact with humans who relate to them lovingly and wisely. In such contact with animals, we discover part of our human calling, whispering to life an aspect of their creatureliness that would otherwise have lain dormant. He goes on to suggest that in drawing a creature (like Trixie) up into our life as humans, and so drawing out its full creatureliness, we get a limited picture of what Christ has done for us, drawing us up into the life of God, and so drawing out our full humanity.

Well, I'll defer completely to those who are more experienced with pets or theology on this one, but I wonder if there isn't something to this.

The creation account in Genesis shows the Creator speaking creative order out of chaos. Then he calls the adam, the human creature filled with his breath and made in his image, to carry on this chaos-subduing creative work. And one of the first tasks for the adam is to name the other creatures-- naming, of course, being an act of deep spiritual significance in the Old Testament.

So maybe Lewis was right. Maybe there is something deeply spiritual about our relationship with the other creatures of God's good earth.

I wonder what he would have said about cats.

Post Cards from Narnia (IV): Virtue, Vice and the Voyage of the Dawn Treader

 I have a bit of a running theory about The voyage of the Dawn Treader, the fifth book in the Narnia series (it is the third book Lewis wrote, but fifth in the chronological order of the stories).  The Voyage has always been my favorite of the seven books, the one I’ve spent the most time thinking about, so it’s maybe to be expected that I’d have a theory about it (I should also give credit where credit's due: this reading came to me one afternoon when I was watching the award winning BBC film adaptation of Voyage, produced by Wonderworks, which is well worth a watch... far better than the hatchet-job that Walden Media made of the story, which I could barely stomach, let alone watch in its entirety).

If you’ve never read The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, stop everything right now, and go read it.  I’ll wait.  If you really can’t spare the time, here’s the book in a nutshell:  Lucy and Edmund, long-time veterans of Narnia, are summoned back to the Magical Country through a mysterious picture frame, this time bringing with them their stinker of a cousin, Eustace Clarence Scrubb (a boy so rotten he almost deserves the name...)  They join Prince Caspian and an assorted crew of Narnians on a mystical quest to sail to the eastern edge of the World, searching for the seven lost lords of Narnia that sailed away many years ago and never returned.  Along the way they discover a number of strange islands, encounter all sorts of wonderful characters, de-stinkify their cousin Eustace and ultimately find their way to the Aslan’s Country, beyond the end of the world.

To get my theory, you have to understand first that, as the third book that Lewis wrote for the series, Voyage is a sequel to Prince Caspian, a book that was, for all intents and purposes, about the revival, or re-conversion of Narnia back to the ways of Aslan (so: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe tells the Easter story, with Aslan's allegorical Death and Resurrection; Prince Caspian is set hundreds of years later, after Narnia has forgotten the story and has fallen away from “the old ways”; Prince Caspian is the only human in Narnia who believes in Aslan and he’s able to “convert” the people back to the old ways.)  Then comes Voyage: Caspian, having led the revival in Narnia, is now on an east-ward journey to the end of the world, to make it, at last to Aslan’s Country.

If Lion is the story of the Cross (Redemption), and Caspian is the story of conversion (Salvation), then Voyage is the story of Discipleship (Sanctification).  It's the story, that is, about the spiritual journey (as symbolized by the sea-quest) through the triumphs and trials of life (as symbolized by the islands they encounter along the way), to reach, eventually, our heavenly home (as symbolized by Aslan’s Country).

This reading takes on weight and substance when you look closely at each of the stops they make along the way.  Lewis has written extensively and eloquently elsewhere (both in The Screwtape Letters and also in Mere Christianity) about the classical virtues and vices of the Christian tradition, and when you read it with that in mind, if becomes clear that at each one of the island stops on the journey to Aslan’s Country deal with either one of the seven deadly sins, or one of the seven cardinal virtues.  In this way, as they confront the seven deadly sins and grow in the seven cardinal virtues, the children advance further in their quest for Aslan’s Country.  This is not just vague symbolism, either.  Consider the following itinerary of the Dawn Treader in its eastward journey. (For your reference, remember that the seven deadly sins are: anger, greed, sloth, envy, gluttony, lust and pride; and the seven cardinal virtues are: courage, wisdom, temperance, justice, faith, hope and charity).

1. Their first stop is on the Lone Islands, where they need to put an end to the slave trade conducted there.  In so doing they explicitly demonstrate the virtue of justice, and encounter the first of the lost lords, Lord Bern.

2.  Their next stop is on “Dragon Island,” where Eustace sneaks away while the work's being done, specifically because he's too lazy to help, demonstrating the sin of sloth.  He takes a nap in a dragon’s cave, only to waken the next day as a dragon himself.  He is eventually restored by Aslan, and they discover the remains of the second lost Lord, who himself turned into a dragon previously.

3. En route to the next stop, they have two narrow escapes:  they are attacked by a sea serpent, where Eustace demonstrates the virtue of courage fighting it off (the text specifically points out his bravery); and then they land on an island where the water turns everything it touches to gold, and they must overcome the enchantment of greed (they also discover the remains of the third lost lord, who unwittingly  swam in the pool and got turned into a gold statue).

4.  Next they land on an island peopled by a group of foolish, one-legged dwarfs named the Dufflepuds.  The Dufflepuds have made themselves invisible because they believe an evil wizard put an “ugly spell” on them, and they couldn’t bear to look at one another; now they wish to be visible again, so they force Lucy to sneak into the Wizard’s study and read a spell from his book.  Along the way Lucy is tempted to read a spell that will make her beautiful, and it is revealed she has always felt envy towards her sister, who was always considered the prettier one.  (The Dufflepuds are the embodiment of folly, the total opposite of the virtue of wisdom, and their foolishness is played up for comic relief.)

5.  Next they come to an island where “all your wildest dreams come true,” which seems promising at first, until they learn that the dreams in question are really the deepest, darkest corners of the id, the stuff that spins your nightmares in the dead of night.  This one’s a bit Freudian, but it’s my contention that this island is Lewis’ way of handling the theme of lust on a level a child would be able to process and understand.  (Notably, they meet the fourth Narnian Lord here, who ostensibly arrived at the island do to his lack of temperance.)

6.  Finally they arrive at the last island in the book, and are forced to decide if they will carry on to Aslan’s country or not.  Here they discover the last of the three Narnian Lords.  It’s worth pointing out here that in Christian ethics (and Lewis cites this concept in Mere Christianity, so we know he was familiar with it), the first four of the cardinal virtues—justice, courage, wisdom and temperance—were said to be virtues even the pagans could attain to, without Christ.  But the last three virtues—faith, hope and love—were said to be virtues that it took the special grace of the Holy Spirit to attain.  So it’s no accident that the last three Narnian Lords are all found together on the last island before Aslan’s Country.  Interestingly, the three lords have fallen into an enchanted sleep because they could not agree whether they should carry on to Aslan’s Country or not, and the only way to awaken them is for the crew to journey on themselves and leave someone in Aslan’s Country. (Also notable: the reason they are asleep is because they had been quarreling about whether or not to go on to Aslan's country, and one of them grabbed hold of a sacred knife in an outburst of anger, causing the enchantment to fall on them.)

7.  When they finally arrive at Aslan’s Country, Prince Caspian himself wishes to stay behind, even though he must return to be king of Narnia.  The rest of the crew tries to convince him of this, but in his pride, he insists on staying, until Aslan encounters him and helps him to repent. 

This is, of course, a rough overview, and if you’ve never read the book, it may not make much sense to you.  But if you have perhaps it will ring true:  the Voyage of the Dawn Treader is really about the Christian voyage, the journey of growth in Christian virtue, and at each adventure along the way, the children must prove themselves in one of the seven cardinal virtues or resist one of the seven deadly sins (or both), and so draw closer to their heavenly destination, the land beyond the rising sun, Aslan’s Country.  Inasmuch as this is a journey that, in the end, all Christians must take, you might say that Voyage is, actually, a fictional, allegorical, children’s-lit discipleship manual,  an imaginative reflection on the spiritual life.

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Postcards from Narnia (III): The Lion, the Witch and the Atonement

I have often thought it was a bit surprising that contemporary, North American Evangelicalism embraced C. S. Lewis as enthusiastically as it did.  He could very well be one of the most frequently quoted writers in Evangelical sermons (just the other day, in fact, I was visiting a church and the preacher gave Lewis a quote and a nod).  When I informally poll people on books that were formative in their spiritual formation, Lewis is often top of the list.   A few years back, Focus on the Family produced a dramatized reading of the complete Chronicles of Narnia, to help evangelical families better focus on God.  Shoot, even John Piper quotes him generously in Desiring God, and John Piper won’t quote just anybody.  A good friend of mine once called C. S. Lewis “the Evangelical patron saint of the imagination.”

This is all well-deserved, in my mind.  There was something about this man’s work that rang true, and shone clear, and lingered sweetly on the palate.  He had a way of putting things succinctly and arrestingly; he often left you saying “but of course!” before you even knew what you were assenting to.   His fiction, especially, was vivid and engaging and uniquely imaginative.  I don’t begrudge him his place in the Evangelical heart for one minute. 

I’m just a little bit surprised by it, is all.

I say this because when you read the breadth of his work, he often covers ground that most conservative North American Evangelicals would find a bit disorienting, to say the least.  They certainly would have a generation ago, anyways, back when C. S. Lewis’ name was still in the process of becoming a household word.  He toys with the idea of purgatory in The Great Divorce (toys, but never lands on it); he more or less comes out as a theistic evolutionist in The Problem of Pain; he wonders out loud about the very real possibility of salvation apart from Christ in The Last Battle; he more-or-less rejects the “perseverance of the saints” (i.e. the doctrine of once saved always saved) in The Screwtape Letters.

To be clear, in pointing these things out, I am not trying to state my own view on any of these issues, which would take many blog posts each to cover.  I’m only saying that none of these positions reflected the Evangelical party-line back in the late 50s and early 60s when C. S. Lewis was planting the flag of Narnia firmly in the territory of Evangelical affections.  Which makes the authority he holds today a bit surprising.  In the aforementioned sermons that quote Lewis, often just referring to him is enough to settle the homiletical issue in question.  You don’t even have to give the quote, you can just say something like, “And like C. S. Lewis says, after all, God is not a tame lion...” and that usually says it all.

One of the more prominent examples of this—conservative Evangelicalism’s embrace C. S. Lewis despite his apparently heterodox position on many conservative Evangelical sacred cows—is seen in the sacrifice of Aslan in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. 

In case you’ve not read the book, or forget, here’s the nutshell:  the boy Edmund, a first-class stinker all round, betrays his brother and sisters to the White Witch, because he’s eaten some of her enchanted food and wants more.  Aslan rescues Edmund from the Witch’s clutches, but the Witch demands that Aslan surrender Edmund back up to her, as her rightful property.  Interestingly, Aslan acknowledges the Witch’s claim on the boy, but rather than losing Edmund, he gives himself in Edmund’s place.  The Witch kills Aslan, thinking she’s won, only to have Aslan come to life again the next morning, resurrected and victorious.

Here's the crucial exchange where the Lion and the Witch settle Edmund's fate:

"You have a traitor there, Aslan," said the Witch. Of course everyone present knew that she meant Edmund. But Edmund had got past thinking about himself after all he'd been through and after the talk he'd had that morning. He just went on looking at Aslan. It didn't seem to matter what the Witch said.

"Well," said Aslan. "His offence was not against you."
"Have you forgotten the Deep Magic?" asked the Witch.

"Let us say I have forgotten it," answered Aslan gravely. "Tell us of this Deep Magic."
 "Tell you?" said the Witch, her voice growing suddenly shriller. "Tell you what is written on that very Table of Stone which stands beside us? Tell you what is written in letters deep as a spear is long on the firestones on the Secret Hill? Tell you what is engraved on the sceptre of the Emperor-beyond-the-Sea? You at least know the Magic which the Emperor put into Narnia at the very beginning. You know that every traitor belongs to me as my lawful prey and that for every treachery I have a right to a kill."

"Oh," said Mr Beaver. "So that's how you came to imagine yourself a queen - because you were the Emperor's hangman. I see."

“Peace, Beaver," said Aslan, with a very low growl.

"And so," continued the Witch, "that human creature is mine. His life is forfeit to me. His blood is my property."

"Come and take it then," said the Bull with the man's head in a great bellowing voice.

"Fool," said the Witch with a savage smile that was almost a snarl, "do you really think your master can rob me of my rights by mere force? He knows the Deep Magic better than that. He knows that unless I have blood as the Law says all Narnia will be overturned and perish in fire and water."

"It is very true," said Aslan, "I do not deny it."
"Oh, Aslan!" whispered Susan in the Lion's ear, "can't we - I mean, you won't, will you? Can't we do something about the Deep Magic? Isn't there something you can work against it?" "Work against the Emperor's Magic?" said Aslan, turning to her with something like a frown on his face. And nobody ever made that suggestion to him again.

Maybe you can see where Lewis was going with this?  He always denied that he was writing allegory per se, but he was a Medievalist, and probably meant that in the technical sense of the word “allegory.”  It’s not near so linear as Pilgrim’s Progress, to be sure, nor so blunt as Everyman, nor so cumbersome as Romance of the Rose; granted.  But in a looser sense of the term, this has allegorical signification oozing out the pores.  To say the Witch is the Devil, Aslan is Christ, and Edmund is sinful humanity does no violence to the narrative. 

If that’s the case, it bears noting that the operative theory of the atonement here—which seems to be a Narrative Christus Victor—is actually quite different from the standard Evangelical presentation of the Gospel, which has tended to emphasize Penal Substitution almost exclusively.  A bit of glossary may help here:  a “theory of the atonement” is a way of explaining how Christ’s death on the cross was a saving event—how the cross saves.  The Christus Victor theory of the atonement (Latin for “Christ the Victor”) focuses especially on the idea that Christ won an unexpected and decisive victory over Sin, Death and the Devil when he died on the cross, paying our ransom and freeing us from their power.  The Penal Substitution theory of the atonement focuses on the idea that Christ stood in as our substitute, taking the punishment for our sins in our place on the cross.  Historically, Evangelicals have emphasized Penal Substitution, almost to the exclusion of all other theories of the atonement, in their traditional explanations of the cross.

If you’re only a Narnia fan and not a theology fan, you may be wondering what’s the big deal?  So let me point out that in Penal Substitution (at least in most traditional expressions of it), the debt of sin is owed by sinful humanity to God himself, and the punishment (again, in most traditional expressions of it) is God’s own just judgement on sin.

In Christus Victor, however, the cross is not about paying a debt, but paying a “ransom.”  Ransom, of course, is paid to a captor to free a captive, and in most Christus Victor theories of the atonement (at least among the Church Fathers, whom Lewis read and knew), the ransom was paid not so much to God himself as to the enemy of our souls, the very real White Witch: the satan.  The cross is an unexpected victory over Satan, because Satan believed he won in killing Christ only to be defeated the third day when Christ rose again.

If Christ did indeed pay a debt he did not owe to pay a debt I could not pay, the question here is, to whom did he pay the debt?  To God, or to the devil?  Penal Substitution has a clear and unambiguous answer to this question:  the Cross is God’s gracious means of satisfying God’s own righteous wrath towards sin.  Christus Victor is less clear:  the Cross is God’s gracious plan to pay our ransom and defeat our captor, freeing us from his power.

Like I’ve said, North American Evangelicalism has traditionally defaulted to Penal Substitution (though this is changing: these days Christus Victor, Scapegoating, and Moral Influence are all becoming predominant atonement motifs in Evangelical theology, but Penal Substitution is still, probably ascendant in most popular level gospel presentations).  This is why it’s interesting to me that The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe has earned such a sacred place in the Evangelical imagination, because Lewis’ theory of the atonement here is not Penal Substitution.  Not exclusively, anyways, nor even especially.  Aslan is paying Edmund's debt to the White Witch, who, in the allegorical world of Narnia,  has a real claim on the boy’s life (a claim granted her by the “Emperor over the Sea,” sure, but that raises other thorny theological issues about the relationship between God and the satan that wouldn’t make for good bedtime reading....)

Personally, my predominant atonement motif focuses on the recapitulation, a theme that comes from ancient theologians like Irenaeus and is comfortable with both Penal Substitution and Christus Victor working side by side.  But that's another post for another day.

For today, let me just offer two humble "so what's" to this close reading of the operative atonement theology in the allegorical world of Narnia.  First: you can't think too seriously for too long about what happened that day on the Stone Table in Narnia, before all sorts of difficult questions bob to the surface: to whom was my debt owed, really?  Did the satan really have any legitimate claim over anything in the Creator's world?  And if so, how and why?  There are no easy answers to any of these questions, but they make for some good wrestling. Growing Christians would do well, I think, to take a round on the mat with them once in a while, if for no other reason than for the exercise.

But second:  it's more than just exercise.  How we explain the cross, as Christians, is intricately related to how we understand God—who he is, how he loves, how he is sovereign over the world, what his heart is for humanity and what his plan is for the creation.  Whether you land with Lewis on this one or not, having an operative theory (or operative theories) of the atonement and being able to articulate it (them) well, is crucial if we want the message of the cross to permeate every aspect of our lives.  If we are determined, like the Apostle Paul once put it, to know only Christ, and him crucified, this is not optional theology.

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Postcards from Narnia (Part II): Easy Success in Metaphysical Blindness

There’s a wonderful scene in The Magician’s Nephew, the first book in the Chronicles of Narnia where Uncle Andrew, the amateur and rather iniquitous magician whose petty dabblings in magic open the first door to Narnia, meets Aslan, the Lord of Narnia, the central hero of the books, and the Mighty Lion who so often serves as a literary vehicle for C. S. Lewis’ musings about the nature, character and life of God.

Earlier on in the book, Uncle Andrew watches the Lion Aslan sing the world of Narnia into creation, but because of his fear, his pride and his iniquity, he is unable to bring himself to believe that the lion is in fact singing: “And the longer and more beautiful the Lion sang, the harder Uncle Andrew tried to make himself believe that he could hear nothing but roaring.”

“The trouble,” Lewis wisely and somewhat playfully writes, “with making yourself stupider than you really are, is that you very often succeed.” Soon, Andrew’s willful unbelief has flowered into full-blown obtuseness, and he is unable to hear the Lion’s song, or, indeed, any of the speech of any of the talking animals in Narnia. To him, their laughter, discourse, singing and jesting is nothing more than so much barkings, growling, bayings and howlings.

And so, when he finally comes face to face with Aslan, towards the end of the book, and a little girl named Polly asks Aslan if he can’t do something to help poor Uncle Andrew, Aslan compassionately, but clearly says no. “I cannot [explain Narnia] to this old sinner, and I cannot comfort him either; he has made himself unable to hear my voice. If I spoke to him, he would hear only growlings and roarings. Oh Adam's sons, how cleverly you defend yourselves against all that might do you good!"

This is an idea C. S. Lewis plays with frequently in his writings, that we humans excel especially at plugging our ears to the reality of God; and that, the harder we try to convince ourselves that there is nothing more to life than what we can see and hear and measure and touch, the harder we make it to actually hear from God at all; and that there is a point beyond which we can have convinced ourselves so thoroughly that God’s singing is really just the natural growling and grumblings of nature, that there’s no going back.

The idea pops up again in The Last Battle. A group of Dwarves are determined not to be “taken in” by stories of a great powerful Lion in control of the world. They have been flung into the donkey stable (it’s a long story, but in the logic of the novels, they have essentially “died” in there, and crossed over to the after-life). But even though the children can all see that they are now surrounded by a beautiful, verdant, sun-lit paradise, the dwarves obstinately insist that they are still in the stable.

Lucy asks Aslan if he will do anything to help them...

"Dearest," said Aslan, "I will show you both what I can, and what I cannot, do." He came close to the Dwarfs and gave a low growl: low, but it set all the air shaking. But the Dwarfs said to one another, "Hear that? That's the gang at the other end of the stable. Trying to frighten us. They do it with a machine of some kind. Don't take any notice. They won't take us in again!"

Aslan raised his head and shook his mane. Instantly a glorious feast appeared on the Dwarfs' knees: pies and tongues and pigeons and trifles and ices, and each Dwarf had a goblet of good wine in his right hand. But it wasn't much use. They began eating and drinking greedily enough, but it was clear that they couldn't taste it properly. They thought they were eating and drinking only the sort of things you might find in a stable. One said he was trying to eat hay and another said he had a bit of an old turnip and a third said he'd found a raw cabbage leaf. And they raised golden goblets of rich red wine to their lips and said "Ugh! Fancy drinking dirty water out of a trough that a donkey's been at! Never thought we'd come to this." But very soon every Dwarf began suspecting that every other Dwarf had found something nicer than he had, and they started grabbing and snatching, and went on to quarrelling, till in a few minutes there was a free fight and all the good food was smeared on their faces and clothes or trodden under foot. But when at last they sat down to nurse their black eyes and their bleeding noses, they all said:

"Well, at any rate there's no Humbug here. We haven't let anyone take us in. The Dwarfs are for the Dwarfs."

"You see, " said Aslan. "They will not let us help them. They have chosen cunning instead of belief. Their prison is only in their own minds, yet they are in that prison; and so afraid of being taken in that they cannot be taken out."

In his Screwtape Letters, he takes this idea one step further. In letter 30, Screwtape advises the young tempter Wormwood that special damage can be done to his “patient’s” faith if he can get him to believe that the horror, despair, fear and grief he feels in moments of crisis, despondency, threat or loss, are “real life,” but the joy, attachment, hope and exaltation he feels in moments of delight, intimacy, courage or worship, are only “subjective emotion,” and not real.

The general rule which we have now pretty well established among them is that in all experiences which can make them happier or better only the physical facts are “Real” while the spiritual elements are “subjective”; in all experiences which can discourage or corrupt them the spiritual elements are the main reality and to ignore them is to be an escapist. Thus in birth the blood and pain are “real”, the rejoicing a mere subjective point of view; in death, the terror and ugliness reveal what death “really means”. The hatefulness of a hated person is “real”—in hatred you see men as they are, you are disillusioned; but the loveliness of a loved person is merely a subjective haze concealing a “real” core of sexual appetite or economic association. Wars and poverty are “really” horrible; peace and plenty are mere physical facts about which men happen to have certain sentiments.

There is a profound insight into the psychology of faith, I think, in this observation that we tend to experience the world as we convince ourselves it is, and this is especially true in the spiritual life.  It is possible to be so afraid of being "taken in," as Aslan says, that we cannot be taken out of the blind, closed, spiritually dead prison of our own making.  Like Gerard Manley Hopkins put it, the World is charged with the grandeur of God, and if, like Uncle Andrew, we grow too adept at making ourselves dull to it, we are liable to lose the ability to enjoy it at all.

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Postcards from Narnia (Part I)

To this day I can still remember opening The Magician’s Nephew, the first book in the Chronicles of Narnia, back when I was 10 years old. My Dad had purchased me a complete box-set of the Narnia books, through the Scholastic Book Order from school, which was a bit surprising. This was the only time I can ever remember him even noticing the Scholastic Book Order forms I brought home each month. But he did. “Oh,” he said when he saw the Narnia books, “I read those as a kid and I think you’d really like them. Can I order them for you?”

A month later, there they were, on the teacher’s desk with the rest of the Scholastic Book Order purchases. This was novel enough, because I seldom had any items in the Scholastic Book Order when it arrived, and as the teacher read through the names and the kids came forward to retrieve their Scholastic treasures from her desk, I was expecting, like always, to be left out. And then, to my surprise (I’d actually forgotten about my Dad’s purchase), she said my name.

“Dale Harris, 1 box set of the Chronicles of Narnia.”

And I went forward and she put into my hand this mysteriously decorated box, all covered over with evocative drawings of dwarves and unicorns and on one side, a picture of a faun (though I did not know at the time that this is what it was called) standing in a snowy wood next to a lamp-post.

The box set actually remained untouched on my book shelf for months. It was just so mysterious, and really, other than my Dad’s recommend, I had no clue what I would find if I opened it. And I sort of forgot about them.

But then came the long, slow days of summer, and one afternoon when my usual pastimes had lost their luster, I saw this almost-magical looking box on the shelf and finally wondered what was inside.

Book 1: The Magician’s Nephew. In my mind’s eye I can still see myself stretching out on the couch in the sunlight and reading that first paragraph:

This is a story about something that happened long ago when your grandfather was a child. It is a very important story because it shows how all the comings and goings between our own world and the land of Narnia first began. In those days Mr Sherlock Holmes was still living in Baker Street and the Bastables were looking for treasure in the Lewisham Road. In those days, if you were a boy you had to wear a stiff Eton collar every day, and schools were usually nastier than now. But meals were nicer; and as for sweets, I won't tell you how cheap and good they were, because it would only make your mouth water in vain. And in those days there lived in London a girl called Polly Plummer.

By the time Polly and Digory had found their way into the Wood Between the Worlds, I was dully enthralled; by the last page I was mesmerized.

I read the rest of the books voraciously; and I can remember as vividly reading the last page of the last book, The Last Battle. I was lying in my bed on a Saturday morning, and I closed the back cover on the last page, and I lay there, completely still, staring at it for what seemed like three whole minutes. I knew I had just read something far more profound, and beautiful and meaningful than I could put into words, so I just lay there, letting it soak over me, hesitant to move for fear of breaking the spell.

I have read and re-read the series dozens of times since those days and each time I do I find new layers of profoundity, new gleams of beauty, new meanings that I hadn’t noticed before, even as an adult. Over the years, I have tried at various times to express the layers of meaning to be found in these deceptively simple children’s books; I have allegorized and interpreted and exegeted these books many times in my heart. And yet none of these efforts to go deeper have marred the simple joy I find in reading them. There is such a mystical quality to the stories, and such a purity to the prose they’re told in, that even today, I am still that 10 year old child stretching out on the couch, about to embark on a spiritual journey he knows not of, every time I come to them again.

I have been rereading them again this summer, and thought that it might make for an interesting blog series if I wrote up a few “postcards from Narnia”—that is , chose some of the especially magical or particularly pure parts and offered my best reading of them. If you’re a fan of the books, too, this may prompt your own journey of rediscovery. If you’re not a fan, it may inspire you to give them a try.

So over the next few months at terra incognita, I will be posting some “Postcards from Narnia,” as I travel once again to C. S. Lewis’s world within the wardrobe.

And as a teaser, let me offer this little tidbit, to whet your appetite. Scholars have often wondered if there was any inner logic to the scope and sequence of the work; that is to say: why seven books? And why do they unfold in such a seemingly haphazard way?

Recently, I came across the work of Dr. Michael Ward, author of “Planet Narnia: The Seven Heavens in the Imagination of C.S. Lewis.” He suggests that the seven books of the Narnia series were conceived as symbols of the seven planets in the Medieval European cosmology. While today we understand the solar system as having 8 planets (plus Pluto), in the geocentric system of the Medieval astronomers (which Lewis was an expert in), there were seven “planets”: The Sun, the Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn.

Dr. Ward’s reading—and he makes a compelling case—is that each of the books, in their themes, symbols and content, were meant to stand as symbols for one of these planets. You can read the whole article here:  http://blog.cslewis.com/narnia-and-the-seven-heavens/

In this reading, The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe, with all its themes of kingship, is Jupiter, the king of the planets. Prince Caspian, with its themes of war and revival, is Mars, the war-god. The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, with its journey into the east and the Rising Sun, is the Sun, and The Silver Chair, is the Moon. The Horse and His Boy is Mercury (Mercury governs Gemini, the twins, and The Horse and His Boy has both twin lions and twin boys in it...), The Magician’s Nephew is Venus (themes of creation, fertility abound, plus there is a “false Venus,” an “Ishtar” in the character of Queen Jadis), and The Last Battle, at the end of time, is Saturn (Saturn is named after the god of time; Father Time is his namesake).

No ten year old child, of course, could have known that when he opened that Scholastic Book box set, that they were about to take a spiritual journey through the seven heavens of the Medieval cosmology, but that is the wonder of these books, and the reason why, I hope, they deserve a few "postcards" like this.  Every reading yields fresh insight and yet no new insight detracts from the childlike wonder these books still produce in me.

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When Shasta meets Narnia and the World meets the Way

There's a scene in the third Narnia book, The Horse and His Boy, that has always sort of spoken to me. 

To set the stage, let me explain that Shasta is a young orphan boy who grew up in Calormen, a proud and cruel Empire across the desert south of Narnia.  All his life he has believed he's the only son of a hard-handed fisherman named Arsheesh.  At the start of the story, however, he happens to meet Bree, a talking horse from Narnia who was raised in captivity in Calormen.  Bree points out to Shasta that he is obviously northern-born, too, and convinces him help him escape to Narnia.

Tashbaan is the capital city of the Calormene Empire, and they must pass through it on their way across the desert and home to Narnia.  Shasta, you must remember as you read this scene, has grown up surrounded by the sombre and arrogant Calormenes, and is completely acculturated to their ways.  Aside from Bree, he has never encountered a true Narnian before.  But while they are wending their way through the crowded, labyrinthine streets of Tashbaan, this happens:

It was in a splendid street very near the top of the city (the Tisroc's palace was the only thing above it) that the most disastrous of these stoppages occurred.

"Way! Way! Way!" came the voice. "Way for the Barbarian King, the guest of the Tisroc (may he live for ever)! Way for the Narnian lords."

Shasta tried to get out of the way and to make Bree go back. But no horse, not even a Talking Horse from Narnia, backs easily. And a woman with a very edgy basket in her hands, who was just behind Shasta, pushed the basket hard against his shoulders, and said, "Now then! Who are you shoving!" And then someone else jostled him from the side and in the confusion of the moment he lost hold of Bree. And then the whole crowd behind him became so stiffened and packed tight that he couldn't move at all. So he found himself, unintentionally, in the first row and had a fine sight of the party that was coming down the street.

It was quite unlike any other party they had seen that day. The crier who went before it shouting "Way, way!" was the only Calormene in it. And there was no litter; everyone was on foot. There were about half a dozen men and Shasta had never seen anyone like them before. For one thing, they were all as fair-skinned as himself, and most of them had fair hair. And they were not dressed like men of Calormen. Most of them had legs bare to the kneee. Their tunics were of fine, bright, hardy colours -woodland green, or gay yellow, or fresh blue. Instead of turbans they wore steel or silver caps, some of them set with jewels, and one with little wings on each side of it. A few were bare-headed. The swords at their sides were long and straight, not curved like Calormene scimitars. And instead of being grave and mysterious like most Calormenes, they walked with a swing and let their arms and shoulders free, and chatted and laughed. One was whistling. You could see that they were ready to be friends with anyone who was friendly and didn't give a fig for anyone who wasn't. Shasta thought he had never seen anything so lovely in his life.

A bit of background might help here.  In C. S. Lewis' books, Narnia (and the North) is, in a general way, symbolic of the Life of Faith-- the Christian Life, the Christian Community, the Christian Church.  Tashbaan, by contrast, grave and noble and mysterious as it is, is roughly speaking a symbol of the World.  Shasta, as a refugee from the World, is encountering here, for the first time, authentic Christians living in authentic Christian community.

And now, hopefully, you'll understand you why this description of Shasta's first encounter with the "Narnian Lords" is so compelling to me.  The bright colours and sparkling joy, the easy gait and springing step, free camaraderie and open-armed peace with the world that radiates from this band of brothers and sisters is one of the most poetic pictures of Christian community I know of. 

A friend once said, in passing, that he felt Christians should be the most interesting people in the world.  I've mulled that over a lot since then. He wasn't speaking about holiness, per se, when he said that, or Bible knowledge, or any of the typical stuff we associate with the Christian life.  He just meant that, if we really are the Redeemed of the Lord--set free from the power of sin and death and experiencing the on-going renewal of the Image of God in us--if all that's really true, our lives ought to be more fully engaged, more filled with wonder and creativity, more curious about the Creator's world, more free with our friendship and more spendthrift with our love than any other way of living on offer.

We ought to be moving through this world together like a band of Narnian Lords through the crowds of Tashbaan.  And if we did, I think, more than just Shasta would be left wondering if they'd ever seen anything so lovely.

Nine Poets for the Soul

Okay: not that I think most visitors to terra incognita are here because they've been dying to find out who my favorite poets of all time are, but the research I did before starting this blog told me that regular posting matters, and when at a loss, lists are always handy one-offs.

So, in keeping with terra incognita's interest in the connection between words and spirituality, I offer here the shortlist of my top nine favorite poets (I was going to make it the traditional ten: William Blake, Philip Larkin, Lawrence Ferlinghetti might all have contended for that tenth spot. But to be honest, none of them have hit me the way the following nine have, and if I were to have added one more to this list, it would only have been to make it reach a totally arbitrary quota. Who said you always have to have ten "top things" anyways?)

9. Leonard Cohen. for Annie, If it be Your will

8. W. B. Yeats Sailing to Byzantium, Falling of the Leaves, Hosting of the Sidhe.


7. Walt Whitman. Song of Joys

6. D. H. Lawrence. Glorie de Dijon, Shadows, They Say the Sea is Loveless

5. John Keats Hyperion, Lamia.

4. C. S. Lewis. Dying in Battle, Modern Poetry, After Prayers Lie Cold

3. Dylan Thomas, The Force that through the green fuse drives the flower, Light breaks where no sun shines

2. John Donne, La Corona, Resurrection imperfect, Divine Meditation 14

1. Gerard Manley Hopkins, I wake and feel the fell of dark, As kingfishers catch fire dragonflies draw flame, Gods Grandeur

In his spiritual autobiography, C. S. Lewis talks about the role that poetry played in his conversion. He says that as he approached the point of conversion, he discovered a "ludicrous contradiction between [his atheist/secular] theory of life and [his] actual experiences as a reader." Namely: "those writers who did not suffer from religion and with whom in theory [his] sympathy ought to have been ... all seemed a little thin. ... The roughness and density of life did not appear in their books"-- while the authors he felt he could feed on most deeply, and did-- George MacDonald, G. K. Chesterton, John Donne, Spenser, Milton, Herbert-- all "by a strange coincidence" shared the same unfortunate "kink": their Christian faith.

As he puts it: Christians were wrong-- but the rest were all bores.

At the time, he assumed these authors were good "in spite of" their faith; but as he reached the threshold of his own Aldersgate moment, he began to believe they were good "because of it." Only 3 of the poets on my list are explicitly Christian (Lewis himself, Donne and Hopkins), and many of the others are decidedly not (Thomas, Yeats, Cohen), but I think I get what he means about the best of Christian poetry expressing something of "the roughness and density of life" that secular verse can't get at. The operative word here, of course, is "best." There are times when perhaps Christian lit hasn't always been at its best, but then there have been times I've read a Divine Meditation of John Donne, and felt I had to hold myself perfectly still afterwards for fear the slightest movement might shatter the reverent word-spell he'd woven; and there are times I've read a G. M. Hopkins sonnet and felt like a tender fist had just crushed around my heart. And that too, I think, is a gift of God.

Of Magic Rings and Open Doors

I'm preaching on John 10 this coming Sunday, and can't help but think about my favourite Narnia book: The Magicians Nephew.

Remember this one? Andrew Ketterly, is a small-time dabbler in magic who's obsessed with the idea of finding a portal into another world. Digory and Polly stumble into his study just as he's discovered what he believes is the secret—a set of green and gold rings made out of some dust from Atlantis. He tricks Polly into using one, who is instantly whisked off to God-knows-where, and Digory has to use the rings himself to go after her.

Eventually Uncle Andrew’s magic rings bring Digory and Polly to Narnia, where they meet Aslan, who gives Digory this impossible quest: he has to journey to the western edge of the world, where there’s a tree, in a garden, on a green hill. And he has to pick a silver apple and bring it back to Aslan to protect the world from the witch he's inadvertently brought with him into Narnia.

Okay: this is where my sermon prep on John 10 comes in. Because when Digory finally gets to this garden on a hill at the end of the world, he stands in front of its beautiful golden door, and on the door are these words: Come in by the gold gates, or not at all / Take my fruit for others or forbear / For those who steal, or those who climb my wall / Shall find their heart’s desire and find despair.

And Digory wonders out loud: “Well, who’d want to climb a wall, if he could get in by a gate.”

I can still remember the day first I read those words. I was about ten years old, and had just enough Sunday School in me to know that those words—the whole “come in by the gold gates or not at all” part—was a reference to John 10:1. I just knew there was a connection.

But what?

I've probably read The Magician's Nephew some 20 times since I was 10, and every time I get to that part I have this nagging hunch that there's something really deep going on. But I never stopped long enough to wonder it out.

Until just this week. I was working through John 10 and thinking about Narnia and something finally clicked for me. If, like in all the Narnia books, this magical world is a symbol for our life-together-with-God, then Uncle Andrew’s obsession—to find a portal into Narnia?—it's really about the ubiquitous human journey to find a connection with the spiritual.

Uncle Andrew's obsession is really Everyman's quest for a way "in" to life with God.

When you think about it like that, what stands out suddenly starkly is that all the people in the book-- Andrew, Jadis, even Digory himself--really are trying to enter the Spiritual Life by some way other than the gate. With all their magic rings made out of the dust of Atlantis and what not, they're trying to “climb up some other way” into Narnia—trying to "steal in" to life with God--instead of entering by the door.

And so with perfect logic, the gate of the garden at the end of the quest tells Digory the same thing Jesus says in John 10:1: only a thief would try to come in by some way other than the door.

And suddenly I'm seeing John 10:7 and Digory's choice-- and even the magic wardrobe door that will come of his choice in a later/earlier book in the series--all in new light. And in that light I'm wondering about what "magic rings" I've been using these days to try to steal into that life with God of which Narnia was but the dimmest shadow (a certain kind of success in ministry? certain human "tests" of my spirituality? a certain perception of myself as a pastor, husband, father, Christian?) instead of coming through the door.

The Adventures of Elroy (or: What has Nintendo to do with Jerusalem?)

A few posts ago, I shared a bit about my secret life as a computer game writer back in the Co Co 3 days. What I didn't say there was that, at 14, my game genre of choice by far was the fantasy adventure role playing game. Call me quixotic, but I loved programming magical quests set in magical kingdoms, games in the fullest D&D tradition I could accomplish, with only 128k at my disposal.

Now it wasn't the gaming itself that especially appealed to me, it was more the act of world-creation. Programming offered me the opportunity to create worlds where the diabolical machinations of necromancers could be defeated with weapons of light-- worlds where phrases like "you have discovered the Amulet of Imnodel (or some such)" were weighted with wonder-- worlds where words like "vorpal," and "arcane," and "adamantine" and "valiant" rang true, like steel from a scabbard.

And because they were games-- your games--you could not only create these worlds, you could inhabit them.

As I mentioned before, for old time's sake I've been working on a game using my son's game maker software, and, as those who knew me in those old times might expect, it's a fantasy adventure role-playing game set in a world where you can use expressions like "You have discovered the Vorpal Sword!" with perfect nonchalance. I call it "The Adventures of Elroy." Call me Tolkienesque, but it's the story of a lost elven prince, Elroy, who must journey through a magical kingdom overrun with goblins and jubjub birds, to discover the Treasure of Taran and regain his throne.

[I invite you to click here to download it. Enter the World of Elroy, if you dare! (Insert nerdy attempt at diabolical voice here.)]

But while you're waiting for it to download (or mustering up the courage...), let me add this: working on the "Adventures of Elroy," I've been wondering what it was about the fantasy game genre that so appealed to me as a kid. I didn't know at 14, but I think I might now.

It was the imagination's ache for a kind of other-worldly beauty-- the deep yearning and poignant desire for that elusive something that haunts the shadows of the best myths, and fairy-stories, and romances.

The Germans call it sehnsucht-- a joy-ward longing.

C. S. Lewis called it "the stab of northernness."

In Surprised by Joy he describes quite vividly "the stab, the pang, the inconsolable longing" of an "unsatisfied desire which is itself more desirable than any other desire." It first touched his heart as a child of 5, when he was reading the story of Squirrel Nutkin in the Beatrix Potter books and was smitten by the very Idea of Autumn radiating behind its delicate watercolours. "It sounds fantastic to say that one can be enamoured of a season," he writes, "but that is something like what happened...the experience was one of intense desire."

Later, as a boy of ten, the "Stab of Northernness" would pierce his heart again when, flipping through a book of poems by Longfellow, he read these lines: "I heard a voice that cried, Balder the Beautiful is dead, is dead." The ache that those lines awoke in his heart- a desire for some undefined thing, beautiful but ephemeral, other-worldly but more real than real- would haunt his imagination on its long journey through atheism and eventually to God. It was a pang for a kind of spiritual joy or ethereal beauty that he would later come to associate with the "Idea of Northerness" that he found in the Norse myths and the operas of Wagner.

This deep yearning for something beautiful, unsatisfiable, Other, would eventually turn Lewis's imagination, and later his mind, and finally his heart to God. In Mere Christianity, he puts it like this: "If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world."

This is the restless imagination's longing for that other world. The Stab of Northernness. Lewis found it in Wagner. John Keats found it in King Lear. Tolkien found it in Middle Earth (I've heard some say that the opening chapter of The Hobbit is sharp with Northernness, with it's thirteen dwarves arriving unexpectedly on the doorstep of a simple hobbit, to whisk him off in search of long forgotten gold). As a boy, I found it, among other places, in the worlds of fantasy adventure video games, which invited me to explore realms where words like "valiant" rang somehow true.

On Fixed and Floating Land

A month or so ago I was sitting on a quiet patio in the cool of the evening in small town Saskatchewan, talking with some friends about the ebb and flow of the Christian life. We were talking about things like finishing our studies, and our search for new ministry contexts, and friends going to distant parts of the world, and moves, and change, and newness, and this thought suddenly struck me that I'm still mulling over.

There's a kind of holy restlessness, it seems, pulsing at the heart of Christian communities.

I tried to put it into words then, and the best I could get at was that image of a "holy restlessness." Our God is a missionary God. He's a sending God. A Father who's constantly seeking; a Son who keeps making things new; a Spirit who blows wherever he wills. And this God, holy and restless, is constantly on the move, constantly sending, seeking, renewing and sending again.

I think that as Christian communities, we'll know we're really beating with the rhythm of this God's heart, because we'll find in our midst the same kind of holy restlessness: an impulse to send, and seek, and renew, and send again. An impulse that moves us to laugh with each other all the more richly, to weep with each other all the more deeply, to embrace each other all the more warmly, because we don't know when or how the sending God might send us out once again.

The tendency, of course, is rootedness. Cain wandered east and built a city; Noah was so named in the hope that he might give the harried Sons of Adam rest; Lot pitched his tent in the plain outside Sodom and settled down there.

But Abraham-- and the seed of Abraham in him-- answered God's call to become an alien and stranger in the world. Abraham, the patriarch of Faith, embraced a life of holy restlessness.

Perhaps one of the most vivid descriptions I've ever read of this is in C. S. Lewis' science fiction novel, Voyage to Venus. Lewis portrays the planet Venus as a world entirely untouched by death, inhabited by a sinless King and Queen. Aside from small spots of 'Fixed Land,' the entire surface of this perfect world is covered by ocean. The extraterrestrial Adam and Eve of this new Eden inhabit 'floating Islands' that drift wholly at the mercy of the waves. The Queen explains to Dr. Ransom, the hero of the novel, that God has forbidden them to dwell on the Fixed Lands: “We may land on them and walk on them. . . . But not stay there—not sleep there…"

As the story unfolds, a diabolical villain tempts this Eve to taste the forbidden fruit of living on the Fixed Land, arguing, “This law stands between you and settled life, all command of your own days." But after the temptation has been resisted and the evil overcome, Eve realizes the true grace of the law. In a passage that has always rung hauntingly profound for me, she explains: “The reason for not living on the Fixed Land is plain. … Why should I desire the Fixed except to make sure—to be able on one day to command where I should be the next and what should happen to me? It isto reject the wave—to take my hands out of God’s, to say to Him, ‘Not thus but thus’—to put in our own power what times should roll towards us.”

Well, these things are on my mind a lot these days, perhaps for obvious reasons. But I think it's a lesson God is calling me to learn all over again: what does it mean to choose to live on the floating island of His will? What does it mean to refuse the alluring self-determination of the Fixed Land?

What does it mean to embrace the holy restlessness of the Christian life?

On Dog Whispering and the Image of God

Okay, bear with me on this one.

We got our family dog, Trixie, about a year ago. Though there was always a dog in our household growing up, I had forgotten I was a "dog person" until Trixie came along. In choosing the dog's name, I insisted it had to be something I could wander about our neighbourhood calling plaintively without feeling like a total idiot. This is my main childhood memory of "Bear," the family dog who bolted every time the front door opened even a fraction of an inch.

But Trixie has helped me re-discover my inner dog-person.

Besides the basics (sit, down, stay, come), the complete list of the 14-some-word vocabulary she's acquired under our care includes: "Drop" (spit out whatever you happen to be chewing and await further instructions), "go pee" (I'm in a hurry, so take a leak quick and get back in the house), "kennel" (we're going out and you're not coming, so lie down in your kennel and wait for us), "toy" (go find one of the many chew toys you have hidden around the house and we'll play catch).

What amazes me is how happily she responds to these commands-- almost like they were just waiting there inside her little dog heart for us to come along and breathe them into life.

But that's not all. Trixie is uncannily in tune with our habits. Mornings she watches to see if I put on my coat, and as soon as I do she goes and lies down in her kennel, knowing I'm off to work. Evenings she listens closely for me to sit on the couch and open a book, her cue to come lie down next to me.

Now here's the thing: in a relatively obscure passage tucked away in The Problem of Pain, C. S. Lewis makes some interesting, passing comments on the spirituality of our relationship to the animals. He argues that some animals (especially the naturally clever ones like horses or dogs) have a latent personality that is called out and enlarged as they come into contact with humans who relate to them lovingly and wisely. In such contact with animals, we discover part of our human calling, whispering to life an aspect of their creatureliness that would otherwise have lain dormant. He goes on to suggest that in drawing a creature (like Trixie) up into our life as humans, and so drawing out its full creatureliness, we get a limited picture of what Christ has done for us, drawing us up into the life of God, and so drawing out our full humanity.

Well, I'll defer completely to those who are more experienced with pets or theology on this one, but I wonder if there isn't something to this.

The creation account in Genesis shows the Creator speaking creative order out of chaos. Then he calls the adam, the human creature filled with his breath and made in his image, to carry on this chaos-subduing creative work. And one of the first tasks for the adam is to name the other creatures-- naming, of course, being an act of deep spiritual significance in the Old Testament.

So maybe Lewis was right. Maybe there is something deeply spiritual about our relationship with the other creatures of God's good earth.

I wonder what he would have said about cats.