The Silence of Charn - guest blogger Randal Pope

“This place was at least as quiet as the Wood between the Worlds. But it was a different kind of quietness. The silence of the Wood between the Worlds was rich and warm (you could almost hear the trees growing) and full of life: this was a dead, cold, empty silence. You could not imagine anything growing in it.”

It intrigues me how C.S. Lewis contrasts two very different types of silence. Charn is described as a dark, dreary and dying place. A world at the end of it’s life, it’s ancient sun red and dying, while The Wood between the Worlds, on the other hand, is very much alive, although also silent. 

Lewis uses such vivid descriptions like “You could almost hear the trees growing” and “You could almost feel the trees drinking the water up with their roots” to transport his readers into his magical world.

In life we experience these same types of silence, in varying ways. Charn’s is a lonesome and uneasy silence. Charn is like a situation where we can not hear God. It represents being immersed in the world, where everything is dead and dying spiritually. 

It’s a scary situation, but like Polly and Digory, we usually find a way to navigate through such a situation, in their case (as is often the case in real life), find some trouble to get tangled up in.

Prior to arriving at Charn, the children visit the Wood Between the Worlds, which creates a stark contrast to their adventure in Charn. The Wood Between the Worlds is a place that is so alive, that any inkling of uneasiness leaves Polly and Digory. They become so relaxed and at home, for a moment they don’t even know how long they have been there. 

Imagine experiencing the presence of God in such a way that all worry flees you! They are so comfortable in the wood, I imagine they could have stayed there forever and lived in bliss, possibly not never needing anything ever again. 

It makes me think of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, their every need met, living in the comfort of the presence of the Lord. Like Adam and Eve though, Polly and Digory had the insatiable desire to know more, which is what lead them to Charn where corruption in the form of an innocent bell awaited Digory, and eventually Narnia.

From this I think we can learn that we need to be comfortable in our walk with God. The temptation to venture out into the dead and corrupting world will be there, but isn’t it better to remain with God, where life abounds?

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Guest Blogger Randal Pope is a good friend of mine who not only puts up with me and my husband, but is a part of our church family at Radial Church... and is a member of our book club! 

Special thanks for his input in this week's post!!

Brethren General Conference

So this week's lackluster postings is because we are helping lead worship at the Brethren General Conference and it is being streamed live at brethrenchurch.org ... Check out this gathering of awesome leaders from our denomination!

CREATION (part 6 - final thoughts)

I genuinely appreciate Lewis’s take on creation as told in his fictional story, The Magician’s Nephew because of the re-awakening I feel when reading it; it gives a vivid picture to the creation of life.  In fact, this particular account is precisely the reason why it has become my favorite stories among the Chronicles of Narnia. 

Aslan singing the world into creation sends chills up my spine.  The vibrant descriptions are a perfect way to encapsulate the reader, enabling them to appreciate the creation story of this world. 

“By allowing the reader to watch the creation of another world, C.S. Lewis evokes an appropriate awe and delight in the things of this world.” 

This story points me to God, which I believe is essentially what Lewis intended.

I also appreciate C.S. Lewis’s humble view of humanity.  Not only does he heighten the depictions of wrongdoing through the use of magic and science, but he also enables the reader to see a humble hero, like Digory in The Magicians Nephew, or Lucy in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.  

Lewis emphasizes the struggle between good and evil throughout all his books, but “throughout the Chronicles, the process of creation is treated as fundamentally good.”[1]  He understands that adventure through creativity is not our own doing, but rather comes from an ultimate Creator. 

“The reality of God’s creation and originality was so woven into the warp and woof of Lewis’s everyday thinking that he consistently denied any originality for his own books.”[2] 

Lewis understood that without God, there would be no source for creativity.  His thoughts on Creation theology are embedded within the fiction and non-fiction writings Lewis dedicated his life to.  It is only through the use of Creation that we can truly enjoy the creativity embedded in Nature by the Great Creator.

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[1] Gregory Bassham, Jerry L. Walls, and William Irwin, eds., The Chronicles of Narnia and Philosophy: the Lion, the Witch, and the Worldview (popular Culture and Philosophy) (Chicago: Open Court, 2005), 246.

[2] Vaus, 63.

Creation (part 5- Creativity)

I think it is pretty evident that C.S. Lewis had a plethora of creativity.  In this post, I will delve a bit more into my thoughts on creative life.
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CREATIVITY

Lewis placed quite an emphasis on creativity.  He “believed strongly that originality was the prerogative of God alone and that, even within the Trinity, originality seemed to be confined to God the Father.”[1]  Therefore all which is created is ultimately linked back to God.  The cars we drive, the pens we write with, and even the pipes we smoke are all examples of creation by man, but ultimately through God’s gift of creativity to man.

The only way we can “perceive the Creation” is through “image, metaphor, and myth”[2] because there is no way of obtaining true knowledge.  We gain knowledge paired with creativity because we were created in the image of the first Creator.  “God has designed his higher creatures for the happiness of being voluntarily united to him” because “a world of robots would hardly be worth creating.”[3]  Lewis understood the breadth of creativity through the gifts and care given in the Creator’s making of humans.  

Morning Reads

The best part of waking up is not Folgers in your cup... I think it's waking up, excited to read the next chapter in a book with a drink in hand!

My morning today consists of Prince Caspian and a chai. I'm so thankful for a flexible schedule where I can do this prior to heading to work for the day!

CREATION (part 4)

So in the past few posts, we've covered what Lewis's basic theology was with Creation.  But the more important topic to focus on is what we should do with creation.  This, I think, is what Lewis's main point was throughout his Narnia books.

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RESPONDING TO CREATION

This creation invokes response.  While it may seem like a nice idea that the world was created merely for our pleasure, Lewis understood that there is an appropriate response through our actions and relationships with others.  

“The Magician’s Nephew demands that the reader see the physical world as a created world.  It demands that the reader respond to the creation, and to the creator.”[1]  The created world holds a purpose through right relationships with one another and with God.  This is explained by “the biblical understanding of God as Creator [which] is primarily concerned not with his creative act of bringing the world into being, but rather with his ongoing involvement in and with his creation.”[2]  

Not only is there a reaction to the vastness of creation, but also that the grand Creator wants a relationship with the created beings.  Lewis supposed that “the relation between Creator and creature is, of course, unique, and cannot be paralleled by any relations between one creature and another.”[3]  It is a special relationship that is communicated to the reader by Lewis’s depiction of Aslan with his created beings.

For the created beings, there are basically two responses to creation: use it or abuse it.  In his book, The World According to Narnia, Jonathan Rogers explains these two responses in the form of the characters Digory, the adventurer, and Uncle Andrew, the magician.  

CREATION (part 3)

CREATION OF NARNIA

Lewis’s take on the creation account in the Magician’s Nephew is a striking attempt at capturing the beauty in which the world as we know it was created.  His vibrant descriptions paint a created world which makes the reader feel the significance of creation.  As Jonathan Rogers puts it, “You’ve heard it so many times you may have lost the ability to marvel at the most marvelous, and perhaps the most fundamental of Christian truths: the natural world is of supernatural origin.”[1]  The story of Adam and Eve has become an overused story through Sunday School lessons, children’s Bibles and Vacation Bible Schools in our culture. 

Yet Lewis, through his gift of writing, creates a world that evokes feeling and emotions which the Biblical narrative of creation just cannot do. 

Though it is evident that Adam and Eve are recognized even in Narnia as the created beings of earth, the land of Narnia takes on an entirely different – yet similar – creation story.  God speaks the world into being, while Aslan, the Great Lion, sings his land of Narnia into being.  This smooth and “most beautiful noise”[2] brought light and vegetation and animals to the world, which is an impressive testament to the created things of the world as well.  

Lewis clearly understood the phenomenon of creation by the way he described two wonders during Narnia’s creation.  One was the harmony of voices, “more voices than you could possibly count.”[3]  The other wonder “was that the blackness overhead, all at once, was blazing with stars…one moment there had been nothing but darkness; next moment a thousand, thousand points of light leapt out.”[4]  If this gives any testament to the Genesis account of “Let there be light” (Genesis 1:3 NIV), then it surely paints a more vivid picture and understanding of the massive change the world had just experienced.  

In fact, I cannot help but wonder if there is a hint of C.S. Lewis represented by the Cabby who responds to the creation scene by stating, “I’d h’a been a better man all my life if I’d known there were things like this.”[5]  Perhaps this was his way of inserting his regrets of not understanding God’s beauty and grace sooner in life.

The remainder of the creation story in chapter 9 of The Magician’s Nephew is primarily focused on the animals and humans.  After identifying a lion as the source of the song of creation, the land of Narnia begins its growth through the musical undertones.  

“As he walked and sang, the valley grew green with grass…making that young world every moment softer.  Soon there were other things besides grass,”[6] like trees and mountains and flowers.  Nature grew right in front of the small crew of people from London.  They were able to witness life from the beginning as trees sprouted quickly as the “great Lion, Aslan”[7] sang nature into creation.  

The next thing he focused upon is the birth of animals.  The Lion’s song changes and the land swells into humps which “moved and swelled till they burst, and the crumbled earth poured out of them, and from each hump there came out an animal.”[8]  This interesting creation of animals brings about dogs and moles and frogs and panthers and all sorts of new life.  

Lewis is clear in Mere Christianity that he understood the act of God creating as “begetting, not making, because what He produces is of the same kind of Himself,”[9] and it is evident that Narnia has a similar beginning.  The song of the Lion is soon overtaken by the new noises of the animals who join in their creator’s song, emphasizing that “Narnia was quite a different world from ours.”[10]

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[1] Jonathan Rogers, The World According to Narnia: Christian Meaning in C.S. Lewis's Beloved Chronicles (New York: FaithWords, 2005), 153-4.

[2] C.S. Lewis, “The Magician’s Nephew” in The Chronicles of Narnia, 1st American ed. (New York: HarperCollins, 2001), 61.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Ibid, 62.

[6] Ibid, 65.

[7] Kilby, 118.

[8] Lewis, Magician’s Nephew, 69.

[9] Lewis, Mere Christianity, 151.

[10] Kilby, 120.