During the last week of Emma's school year, I selected six readings from The Chronicles of Narnia. My last post was Days 1 and 2 from The Voyage of the Dawn Treader and The Horse and His Boy. The next two selections come from Prince Caspian and The Magician's Nephew.
Friday, June 1: Chapter 11 “The Lion Roars” from Prince Caspian
Several hundred years have passed since Kings Peter and Edmund and Queens Susan and Lucy ruled in Cair Paravel but upon their being summoned back into Narnia they learn that the land is now ruled by the hated Telmarines. All the good beasts of Narnia have been driven away by King Miraz and his soldiers, Aslan is but a myth from the “old days” and everything they had once known is gone. In time they learn they have returned to restore the old order of things and in their quest to do this they engage the help of Trumpkin, a no-nonsense dwarf who has “no use for magic lions which are talking lions and don't talk, and friendly lions though they don't do us any good, and whopping big lions though nobody can see them.” In his frank assessment, “It's all bilge and beanstalks as far as I can see.” But he proves to be a faithful, loyal companion and follows the four even when they take paths he considers are foolish ones.
In the end, of course, he discovers that he has been quite wrong about certain mythical lions and has a face-to-face encounter with the Lion, the son of the Emperor-Over-the-Sea which would unnerve the stoutest of warriors:
“ ‘And now!’ said Aslan in a much louder voice with just a hint of a roar in it, while his tale lashed his flanks. ‘And now, where is this little Dwarf, this famous swordsman and archer, who doesn’t believe in lions? Come here, Son of Earth, come HERE!’ and the last word was no longer the hint of a roar but almost the real thing.”
“ ‘Wraiths and wreckage,’ gasped Trumpkin in the ghost of a voice. The children, who knew Aslan well enough to see that he liked the Dwarf very much, were not disturbed; but it was quite another thing for Trumpkin who had never seen a lion before, let alone this Lion. He did the only sensible thing he could have done: that is, instead of bolting, he tottered towards Aslan.”
“Aslan pounced. Have you ever seen a very young kitten being carried in the mother-cat’s mouth? It was like that. The Dwarf, hunched up in a little, miserable ball, hung from Aslan’s mouth. The Lion gave him one shake and all his armor rattled like a tinker’s pack and then – hey-presto – the Dwarf flew up in the air. He was as safe as if he had been in bed, though he did not feel so. As he came down the huge velveted paws caught him as gently as a mother’s arms and set him (right way up, too) on the ground.”
“ ‘Son of Earth, shall we be friends?’ asked Aslan.”
“ ‘Ye-he-he-hes,’ panted the Dwarf, for it had not yet got its breath back.”
I think of what Saul (later Paul) must have felt that first morning after his encounter with Jesus on that road to Damascus. There he sits alone in a friend's house, blind and dejected, his mind all a whirl as he tries to process what had just happened to him the day before. Everything that he had stood for – and against – had been turned upside down. And then a few days later comes a fateful knock on the door. A stranger enters his room and utters the following words:
“Brother Saul, the Lord—Jesus, who appeared to you on the road as you were coming here—has sent me so that you may see again and be filled with the Holy Spirit.” Immediately, something like scales fell from Saul’s eyes, and he could see again. He got up and was baptized, and after taking some food, he regained his strength. (Acts 9:17-19, NIV)
I wonder if that moment was in the back of Lewis' mind as he wrote his words concerning Trumpkin. It's just like the Lord, isn't it. Though we resisted him – and some of us vehemently – he pursues us regardless and when we come to our senses he offers us friendship, sonship, calling and purpose. At that moment in Paul's life, I'm sure he wasn't feeling very worthy of anything but judgment. After all, he had authorized the stoning of Stephen and the arrest of so many other disciples of the One who was at that very moment extending his hand in friendship. But he takes the hand offered and surrenders himself to the leadership of Him who pursued him so.
Monday, June 4: Chapter 4 “The Bell and the Hammer” from The Magician's Nephew
Digory (later the sage Professor Kirke who lives in a castle in the countryside at which four young children from war-torn London come to live with) and Polly, have got into a world by way of magic rings Digory's conceited uncle Andrew has constructed. By putting on the rings they are whisked away to the magical “wood between the worlds” and then by stepping into one of the many pools that dot this “inbetween” place they end up, as they later learn, in the dead world and city of Charn. Prominent there is a huge palace-like structure that they explore and eventually come upon a great hall full of people still as stone.
Digory and Polly conclude that these are not statues but actually real people magically in stasis, “like the most wonderful waxworks you ever saw.” They are seated on stone chairs and the further in they walked the more crueler their faces appeared until finally they reached the last, and seemingly most important, figure in the room:
The last figure of all was the most interesting – a woman even more richly dressed then the others, very tall (but every figure in that room was taller than the people of our world), with a look of such fierceness and pride that it took your breath away. Yet she was beautiful too. Years afterward when he was an old man, Digory said he had never in all his life known a woman so beautiful.
In the middle of the great hall stood a small stone pillar and atop it was a little golden bell suspended from a small arch with an equally small hammer beside it for which to strike it. It was too much for Digory to resist. Even though Polly was all for leaving the room, Digory insisted they strike the bell in order to find out what would happen. A vehement argument ensues between the two and then:
I can't excuse what he did next except by saying that he was very sorry for it afterwards (and so were a good many other people). Before Polly's hand reached her pocket, he grabbed her wrist, leaning across her with his back against her chest. Then, keeping her other arm out of the way with his other elbow, he leaned forward, picked up the hammer, and struck the golden bell a light, smart tap. Then he let her go and they fell apart staring at each other and breathing hard. Polly was just beginning to cry, not with fear, and not even because he had hurt her wrist quite fairly badly but with furious anger. Within two seconds, however, they had something to think about that drove their own quarrels quite out of their minds.
As soon as the bell was struck it gave out a note, a sweet note such as you might expected, and not very loud. But instead of dying away again, it went on; and as it went on it grew louder. Before a minute had passed it was twice as loud as it had been to begin with. It was soon so loud that if the children had tried to speak (but they weren't thinking of speaking now – they were just standing with their mouths open) they would not have heard one another. Very soon it was so loud that they could not have heard one another even by shouting. And still it grew: all on one note, a continuous sweet sound, though the sweetness had something horrible about it, till all the air in that great room was throbbing with it and they could feel the stone floor trembling under their feet. Then at last it began to be mixed with another sound, a vague, disastrous noise which sounded first like the roar of a distant train, and then like the crash of a falling tree. They heard something like great weights falling. Finally, with a sudden rush and thunder, and a shake that nearly flung them off their feet, about a quarter of the roof at one end of the room fell in, great blocks of masonry fell all around them, and the walls rocked. The noise of the bell stopped. The clouds of dust cleared away. Everything became quite again.
It was never found out whether the fall of the roof was due to Magic or whether that unbearably loud sound from the bell just happened to strike the note which was more than those crumbling walls could stand.
“There! I hope you're satisfied now,” panted Polly.
“Well, it's all over, anyway,” said Digory.
And both thought it was; but they had never been more mistaken in their lives.
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| Holder beware |
It's not a feel-good moment in the Narnia-stories. It is a fateful one that unwittingly sets in motion a series of events that will lead to Aslan's sacrifice on the Stone Table in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and many other troubles that were ultimately visited upon the denizens of Narnia. So why do I like it? The destiny of worlds hinge on innocuous moments like this. That moment in the Garden of Eden when the serpent is whispering insidiously to Eve goading her to doubt God's goodness and the purpose behind the ban on the fruit from the tree in the middle of the garden is similar in kind to Polly and Digory's spat before the bell on Charn. From that fateful moment when Eve takes and bites hard into the fruit and in turn hands it to her husband to try so much trouble and pain has flowed and continues to flow. It should teach us humility. It should teach us to listen to the counsel of the Lord and not doubt his goodness even when his commands seem burdensome – or, at the very least, unpopular. It should cause us to ponder that though our rebellion is just one small tap of a hammer, the echo of that strike may reverberate in our lives longer than we know and bring trouble to far more people than ourselves. As General Joshua reminded the Eastern tribes as they returned to their land on the other side of the Jordan, “[Achan] was not the only one who died for his sin” (Joshua 22:20, NIV).
More to come...
More to come...
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