Not Just for Children -- Narnia

Some things just stay good.

Last night my husband and I watched The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe from The Chronicles of Narnia. It has come back in "non-'toon" format and for the first time in ages I actually cried! (Crying in movies is an inconvenience I learned to bring into line long ago and I'm very good at it.)

I've loved C.S.Lewis's work since I first read Perelandra (out of order for that trilogy, but it hooked me permanently.) I've collected a bunch of his books, but I admit I did not read the children's books until I had slurped Perelandra's other two books and a bunch of others like The Srewtape Letters, The Problem of Pain, The Great Divorce (and other short pieces), Letters to An American Lady, and, multiple times, Mere Christianity. The fun animated Narnia series came along with my children's children. I scarfed down Surprised by Joy with such delight, loving the window into Lewis' life as a bachelor and then as a husband. Later I watched a moving stage production of Shadowlands which still reverberates, and later the fine film by that name.

So last night when I watched the four excellent child actors and a cast of remarkable characters, I was at first relieved that they did such an artful job of acting and setting the scenes. I thought, "C.S. Lewis would be proud of this." And as the film progressed I realized that it was truly an Oscar-worthy triumph of collaboration between the designers of staged reality and the experts of staged special effects.

The exciting thing is that I got to introduce this story and the wonders of C.S.Lewis' gifts and skills to my very bookish (and movie-ish) husband. How had he missed C.S.Lewis?? Rapt as children at story-hour, we laughed that we would have to turn off the light now and wait until tomorrow night to find out what happened next. We did not turn out the light until the very last inch of the film, and I ended up with tears in my eyes that did not well back down, but needed wiping off!

"Thank you!" said my husband. He said it many times. He got hooked.

It does help that both of us have done some considerable reading; my husband has read far more assiduously than I, but we both are "finder outers" from the bones out. The tale of Narnia is a stand-alone slam-bang good story. But laid against a rich accumulated brainful of legends, mythologies, religions, records and traditions of histories and cultures-- laid against the backgound of all mankind's strivings and studies to make sense out of good and evil, this allegory seems to increasingly fit, to become a parable that not only scoops up all that has been, but all that will be. It's way more than a children's story! (It's "creepy" in more ways than one!)

I love that the Lewis who offers us his mind in his writings stubbornly put himself through years of arduous rigors trying to sort out what, if any, of his own (Anglican) childhood training was worth believing and what of the beliefs of men of all ages and cultures were worth the paper they were recorded on. He wrung out all he could find on the ancient mythologies and theologies and pagan beliefs. He winnowed it all ruthlessly, in the scholarly fashion expected from a Cambridge and Oxford don, but also with the tenacity of a man who, for his own sake had to know. When he settled on some answers that finally satisfied him, he wrote fantasies about it that unblushingly spelled out his findings.

I like so much that this man did not benignly swallow his Sunday School lessons like a good boy. I love that he put it all to the test. His skepticism is the signature of people who seek truth-- who have to know for their own sakes. Thank goodness for his diligence and intelligence and skill and art.

In his grave, I suppose that he is not worried about us not "getting it." After all, it's just out there for the looking! Even a child can "get it!" I am sure he is convinced of that. And I suppose that he would think it wise if we put it all in our own fire to see what is left when the fluff is burned away.

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