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Hooked on Narnia
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___We’ve got a new friend at our house, only he’s really an old friend who’s new to our boys. And he’s new to me in the light we’re discovering him, since I knew him primarily as a theologian for adults.
___ Alison and I and our 7-year-old boys have become enthralled with t
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MA RK WINGFIELD
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he children’s books of C.S. Lewis. We have read two books in "The Chronicles of Narnia" series together, and we can’t wait to get through the others.
___ Somehow, I lead a deprived literary childhood and never read Narnia before now. I had heard about the books, but never took time to read them as an adult.
___ This is one of the great advantages of having kids. You find excuses to read all sorts of wonderful "children’s" books you might not feel justified reading alone as an adult. On the other hand, though, it is a rare but blessed thing when parents and children agree on any book that excites them equally. It is no small miracle that our boys are so excited about any book that doesn’t have anything to do with Pokemon.
___ Of course, we had to force them to start reading "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe" together at bedtime a few weeks ago. They whined and complained for about the first 10 pages, and then they were hooked.
___ So was I.
___ I’m still a little deficient, however, because on the night we were reading the dramatic conclusion to "Prince Caspian," I unwittingly fell asleep while Alison was reading aloud. I was startled awake just about the time she read the last sentence. What disappointment for a dozing dad!
___ We’ve all taken the series to heart so much that we feel like C.S. Lewis is a close friend. We’re soon to have a C.S. Lewis conference at our church, a fact that was announced from the pulpit on a recent Sunday morning.
___ When Luke and Garrett heard the announcement, their eyes lighted up and they turned to me with excitement. Luke asked, "Is C.S. Lewis coming to our church?"
___ I assured him if that happened, it would be a miracle indeed.
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___For me, reading Narnia is like rediscovering something you thought was lost. We are reading from the set of books my parents gave me as a young teenager from which I read and re-read the Chronicles. We have had to be careful because some of the
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ALISON WINGFIELD
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pages are coming out of a few of them--a sign of well-loved books, I hope, and not just how old they (and I) have become.
___ It has been years since I’ve delved into these wonders, and I’m thrilled that the boys have gotten a taste of them so early. Sparking our children’s imaginations has sparked our own.
___ By stepping back into Narnia, all four of us take a faith journey. For the boys, it is more basic, using their imaginations and enjoying the tales of knights and armies and all the strange creatures involved. But it is more than that.
___ As the plot of "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe" unfolds, hints of Aslan, the lion whose counterpart in this world is Jesus, tantalize the reader. The boys would ask us every night, "Is this when Aslan comes?" And they were so excited when he did appear.
___ But even though Luke and Garrett understood the parallels between Jesus and Aslan, they weren’t prepared for Aslan to die. They wanted him to fight the white witch and get rid of her right away. So when he chose to die in the place of one of the children in the book, the boys were taken by surprise--not unlike the people of Jesus’ day who wanted Jesus to be a conquering king.
___ For those who haven’t had the privilege of reading the books, or have forgotten, in this particular book Narnia is under an icy spell where it is "always winter and never Christmas." But as Aslan approaches, the frozen world rapidly melts into spring.
___ What a beautiful picture of a frozen heart melted by Christ’s love as we let him into our lives.
Mark Wingfield is managing editor of the Standard. Alison Wingfield is a freelance writer. The Wingfields moved to Texas from Louisville, Ky., where Mark had been editor of the Western Recorder, in which this column appeared weekly.
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