A life in letters: Narnia

Aslan

I must have been in my early 20s when I first read The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and the other Narnia Chronicles by C. S. Lewis. I was rather jealous when in 1975 I met a family who had inhabited the mythology of Lewis’s parallel universe since their earliest childhood, their parents reading them the books as bed-time stories.

To someone who had always found image and symbol speaking more powerfully than word alone, the Narnia Chronicles with their explicit sequences of Christian allegory was electrifying. I, who found it so hard to connect with Jesus found that through the great Lion Aslan Jesus encountered me. As I buried my face in that deep soft mane and inhaled that sweet-smelling breath my heart reached out for the Lord whom Aslan incarnated and I glimpsed his firm, loving tenderness.

In particular, two passages from the Chronicles have never left me. At one point in Prince Caspian, the Pevensie children are on an arduous journey through Narnia when Lucy is convinced she sees Aslan in the distance, beckoning them to change direction, to go up and join him. But the others are blind to Aslan’s presence, and so they all continue on their arduous journey, Lucy crying bitterly, until they find themselves under arrow-fire, and are forced to make a heart-breaking retreat.

That night, awakening in the forest, Lucy hears the lion calling her. Making her way to him she is confronted with the fact that even though the others refused to believe he was there, she herself could have left them and made her way to him, and that somehow, if she had had the courage to do this, everything would have turned out for the good. ‘But how?’ asks Lucy. ’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.’  And my clearer-seeing days have been driven by a longing to find out ‘what will happen.’

Towards the end of The Last Battle, a group of dwarves who have been disloyal to King Tirian of Narnia and to Aslan himself find themselves inside the small, thatched stable which has been central to the story. Tirian discovers that through Aslan’s magic the interior of the stable is in fact a whole new dimension of unimaginable perfection, with deep blue sky, and heavily-laden fruit trees, and there he meets the Kings and Queens of Narnia – and Aslan himself.

‘In our world too,’ says Queen Lucy, ‘a Stable once had something inside it that was bigger than our whole world.’

But the dwarves are somehow unable to appreciate their surroundings. They can’t see the others in what to them is the dim half-light of a stable – their senses are numb and deadened to the reality of the miracle which the others are experiencing. Lucy holds out a bunch of wild violets to one of the dwarves, but he pushes it away: to him it smells like a handful of straw and dung.

Lucy implores Aslan to intervene – to help the dwarves, trapped in their own misconceptions to see things as they really are – and the great lion promises to show her both what he can, and cannot do for them. He draws close to the dwarves and lets out a low growl, but, blind to his nearness, they give a ludicrous naturalistic explanation for the sound they are hearing. He magics into their laps a glorious feast, but to them the pies and trifles taste no better than stable-food – hay, turnip, cabbage and the exquisite wine in the glasses Aslan has placed in their hands tastes like polluted trough-water.

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

I saw (and still see) something of myself in the dwarves’ behaviour. I realised how easily I can be blinded to the reality Aslan has awakened in me. And I realised how crucial it is for me to attune my spiritual senses to the dimension my soul in fact inhabits, through choosing to see from the perspective of joy and gratitude.