Today’s guest post is by Christos Jonathan Seth Hayward. Be sure to check out CJS Hayward’s new novel The Best of Jonathan’s Closet below.
In the final pages of C.S. Lewis’s The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, Lewis writes:
“You are too old, children,” said Aslan, “and you must begin to come close to your own world now.”
“It isn’t Narnia, you know,” sobbed Lucy. “It’s you. We shan’t meet you there. And how can we live, never meeting you?”
“But you shall meet me, dear one,” said Aslan.
“Are–are you there too, Sir?” said Edmund.
“I am,” said Aslan. “But there I have another name. You must learn to know me by that name. This was the very reason why you were brought to Narnia, that by knowing me here for a little while, you may know me better there.”
One reading of this is to kvetch about how Lewis drags in his religion to the Chronicles of Narnia, implying that they are a naturally secular set of stories, and then in addition Lewis grafted on extraneous religious symbolism. This interpretation is both violent to Lewis, who became a Christian by finding that all myths were true and reached their fulfillment in Christianity (“Well, I got him half-saved.”–J.R.R. Tolkein), and to the organic process of storytelling that crystallized in the stories, which weren’t engineered to produce an extraneous religious effect because they weren’t engineered to produce a psychological effect in readers at all. The repeated phenomenon of people grousing that Lewis dragged in his religion to what would have naturally been perfectly secular stories is a bit like talking about dragging in mathematics to theoretical physics or computer science. (While practitioners of both disciplines might be insulted to be told they are simply a department of applied mathematics, the presence of mathematics in models, for instance, is built on certain mathematics as bedrock, and physicists and computer scientists use certain mathematics because they are following the inner logic of their own disciplines.)
But I mention and try to dismiss that concern as a distraction from another less obvious concern. I do not know exactly what response non-religious readers feel to the passage I have quoted; but I wouldn’t fault someone who read this and felt, “Boy, do I feel left out! Christians have everything going their way here.” I wouldn’t fault a less religious reader who thought that, but my own feeling wasn’t “I have everything going my way here.” My response on multiple readings was, “But I want to be in Narnia!” And what the Chronicles of Narnia do, rightly or wrongly, is to show a picture of piercing, haunting beauty, and then at the end say, “But it isn’t real. You have to be in the real world.” And, like the apple taken from Narnia in The Magician’s Nephew, nothing in the real world seems to have color when one’s gaze has been fixed on apples from Narnia.
But, as even Lewis said, a small man may avoid the error of a great one.
I try, too, to paint pictures of piercing, haunting beauty, but pictures that are real. Whether the poetry of Doxology, or the quotes in God the Spiritual Father, or the non-speculative (and Lewis-like!) fiction of The Angelic Letters, I have made a serious effort to portray a beauty that is piercing, haunting, and real.
I have been a long time in making my own pilgrimage from Narnia. But I have found beauty that is piercing, haunting, and real.
I invite you to read, The Best of Jonathan’s Corner!
Title: The Best of Jonathan’s Corner by CJS Hayward
Genre: Creative non-fiction / many genres / religion and spirituality / Eastern Orthodox
The Best of Jonathan’s Corner, newly expanded after getting five star reviews, is a collection of varied works of Eastern Orthodox mystical theology. It spans many topics and many different genres of writing, but it keeps coming back to the biggest questions of all. It is inexhaustible: the works are independent, and you can read a few, many, or all of them to suit your taste. Fans of CS Lewis and GK Chesterton will love it.
Excerpt: From “The Angelic Letters”
My dearly beloved son Eukairos;
I am writing to you concerning the inestimable responsibility and priceless charge who has been entrusted to you. You have been appointed guardian angel to one Mark.
Who is Mark, whose patron is St. Mark of Ephesus? A man. What then is man? Microcosm and mediator, the midpoint of Creation, and the fulcrum for its sanctification. Created in the image of God; created to be prophet, priest, and king. It is toxic for man to know too much of his beauty at once, but it is also toxic for man to know too much of his sin at once. For he is mired in sin and passion, and in prayer and deed offer what help you can for the snares all about him. Keep a watchful eye out for his physical situation, urge great persistence in the liturgical and the sacramental life of the Church that he gives such godly participation, and watch for his ascesis with every eye you have. Rightly, when we understand what injures a man, nothing can injure the man who does not injure himself: but it is treacherously easy for a man to injure himself. Do watch over him and offer what help you can.
With Eternal Light and Love,
Your Fellow-Servant and Angel
About the Author
Christos Jonathan Seth Hayward wears many hats as a person: author, philosopher, theologian, artist, poet, wayfarer, philologist, inventor, web guru, teacher.
Some have asked, “If a much lesser C.S. Lewis were Orthodox, what would he be like?” And the answer may well be, “C.J.S. Hayward.”
Called “Jack of all trades and master of many” by one boss, he also wears many hats professionally: open source / IT generalist, front end developer, JavaScript programmer, back end web developer, Pythonista, PHP and Perl user, Django developer, end to end web developer, Unix/Linux/Mac wizard, LAMP guru, SQL generalist, Unix shell (both using existing shells and implementing a new shell), system administrator, researcher, technical writer, usability advocate, UI developer, UX/IA enthusiast, and more.
Hayward has lived in the U.S., Malaysia, England, and France, and holds master’s degrees bridging math and computers (UIUC), and philosophy and theology (Cambridge).
Connect with the Author:
http://tinyurl.com/best-of-jonathans-corner
http://amazon.com/author/cjshayward
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