Thoughts on the Chronicles of Narnia, written by CS Lewis. Inspired by the talk with Carl Benjamin.
I didn’t read The Chronicles of Narnia as an allegory when I was a child. I didn’t know anything about theology, or substitutionary atonement, or the way people tucked whole worlds of meaning under stories. I only knew that when Lucy stepped through the wardrobe, I could feel the cold air hit my face too. I could smell the snow. I could hear the trees whispering under their breath.
I think that’s why Narnia felt like a place I’d been before. Not in this lifetime, maybe, but in the part of my life that’s always been happening somewhere underneath everything else. The part where I’m barefoot in the grass, talking to the trees. The part where I press a pretty rock into my hand and I understand its purpose.
Aslan wasn’t a sermon to me. He wasn’t “Christ” in disguise. He was the thing I’ve met a few times in my life, a magnificent presence that shows up without conditions. The thing that doesn’t care if I’ve failed or wandered off or asked too many questions. The thing that’s patient enough to let me find my own way back.
I loved Lucy for believing what she saw even when no one else did. I loved the Old Narnians for hiding out in the forest, keeping the stories alive when the rest of the world forgot. I loved Reepicheep for heading straight into the sea just because his heart told him it was the way home. I loved Shasta for discovering he was wanted after all. I loved Digory for standing in the place where the whole world began, and I loved him even more for carrying the grief of knowing it couldn’t heal everything.
But I didn’t love all of it. I felt the sharp edge of the White Witch’s winter, the control of a magic that takes and takes and takes. I've felt people who had this effect on you. I recognized the lies of the Green Lady in my own life and the way people can easily manipulate and mislead for their own gain. I hated Susan’s absence at the end, because I’ve been left out for the same reason. Walked away from “faith” and been told that meant I was no longer invited to the table.
Still, I keep coming back to Aslan. The way he sees every flaw, every wound, every wrong turn, and He loves anyway. I know how rare that is in humans, but I’ve felt it in glimpses: my daughters, certain friends, surrogate parental figures. But it fades. Fractures. We continuously fail each other.
Maybe that’s why the last pages of The Last Battle undo me every time. The way the door closes on one Narnia and opens to another, more real than the first. The way Aslan says to go “further up and further in.” I picture myself there, sitting in the grass instead of running ahead. He’s beside me, smiling like he already knows what I’m about to ask.
“Why?”
No sermon, just a mirror.
And there it is: the snow-lit forests, the sound of waves against a ship’s hull, the scent of trees in bloom. My daughters’ faces. The very few people who have loved me without condition. My own stubborn, vibrantly beating heart.
That’s why.
And I know then that both Narnia and my life have been the same kind of story all along; a story about seeking, stumbling, and then finding out love was always there by the end of it.
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