C.S. Lewis

[hyphenate]

This is just a pondering on C.S. Lewis. When I was growing up, C.S. Lewis was a writer. To a ten year old, when her teacher began to read "The Lion, the Witch and The Wardrobe" to her class, that ten year old girl fell madly in love with the wonders of Narnia, the imagination of the author, and most importantly, gave that child the passion to read, and continue reading, anything and everything she could get her hands on.

C.S. Lewis, to that 10 year old, was nothing more than that. A man infused with a wondrous creativity which brought forth the wonder that was Narnia, with its stern but always loving Aslan, and who more than anything, gave fantasy a place in the heart of that girl.

At 10, the other major trilogy of her young years, the Lord of the Rings, was still in the future. That future was at least 5 years away, but Narnia was perfect.

Narnia was a believable world to that child. Heroes, villains--yes, the main "bad guy" was, of all things, a woman! But that was okay. A strong woman, a woman who had as much fire and passion as all the other characters--woman or not, it didn't really make a difference. That was good, growing up in the 1960s--women WERE equal to men, and if you judged by C.S. Lewis, the girls in his books were just as capable of doing anything that the men were.

C.S. Lewis was a good man. He might have been well known to adults as a Christian author, and he might have been known to put Christian allegories into his writing, but that really didn't come across to a child who was trying to find a world filled with splendor, filled with bravery, filled with treachery and filled with more possibilities than anything she had encountered before.

Let's face it, folks--she still yearned for her Prince Charming (Stuart Damon from "Cinderella") but found that Oz and Dorothy Gale were for "little kids." Playing Oz in the park had been a pleasant pastime when you're 7, but when you've grown enough to realize that Oz was not exactly a wonderland, you moved on!

It has been frightening to me these past months when "Narnia" made its most celebrated appearance to date--a huge movie, filled with special effects, touted by many as the best fantasy of the year--to be commandeered by the RRR for their own nefarious purposes.

I think C.S. would have been appalled to see what the RRR tried to accomplish with their extremely tenuous hold on the film. I think, more than anything else, C.S. Lewis loved people, was a man whose Christianity was not restricted to selective omissions, and who was proud and content to share his beliefs with the world.

You don't infuse a hero like Aslan with the love and devotion that he did if you didn't give a shit. You don't "share" a part of yourself as precious as your belief system if you want to keep your faith on your sleeve and justify all kinds of atrocities in the name of your saviour.

C.S. Lewis had a very generous soul. He could create writings that spoke to all the 10 year old children in the world, while at the same time, devoting that writing to what he made his life's work. He didn't try to "trick" those 10 year olds into believing something other than pure fantasy, because he knew, right or wrong, that a 10 year old child would not have the understanding to take a complex creation such as Aslan, or the whole of Narnia, and apply allegorical allusions to them. Making them "good" and "heroic" was enough--and perhaps some day, they would look at the larger picture of Narnia and see what he wanted the adults to see in the form of a children's series of books.

Those on the RRR who try to claim Narnia and Lewis for themselves are/were doing a grave disservice to the author who penned the wonderful Narnian series. They are trying to take him into isolation and away from the public--the people that Lewis loved and wrote for.

My fundie friend gloated when the movie came out, trying to be so cocksure about who Lewis was, and why he was "on her side." She might have read some of his religious works, but I don't think she looked at the man who wrote those works. She saw a comrade--an ally, in her fundie mind, and forgot to remember that Christianity, in C.S. Lewis's day was not filled with self-serving and self-righteous people who try to believe that they are the "chosen ones." They might have been around, but they were most likely looked at like fools. The mainstream Christian at that time cared more for his/her fellow human beings, who took time to share their lives and souls with others, and who would never let a vagrant go without something to eat.

But now, the RRR is only concerned with its own brand of power, its own isolationist stand, and its own belief system, and to hell with everyone else. C.S. Lewis would likely have torn them a new one if he saw it happening, and the hellfire and brimstone that he would have flung at them for their very selfish stance on life in the 21st century would have been enough for these creeps to stand down and look at themselves with some objectivity.

We really need another C.S. Lewis now, because more than anything, we need his sort more than ever.