Anew

When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.

~ C. S. Lewis

One of my favorite thoughts from the minds of others. If you've paged through any of his works, you'll know that he boasts quite the stash of pithy sayings. If they were all stuffed into a closet, you'd likely be forced to jam the keyhole with socks and the gap under the door with blankets to keep them from spewing out.

Which makes this book [er, books] "review" rather impossible to write thoroughly, Or at least satisfactorily. So I'll keep this one brief.

Although I can't say why, I never finished The Chronicles of Narnia series as a child. Or even when I revisited the books in college. Made it through Prince Caspian and never picked up the next one. It's possible I listened to the post-Caspian novels on audio book fifteen-ish years ago, but I really can't remember. [In my defense, I can't generally recall the previous evening's meal.]

Regardless, this "reread" was wonderful. Definitely not the crying type, but my eyes may have been a bit moist towards the end. Some series are far too long to keep one's interest, but others are just the right length and depth for attachment---to the characters and to the world fashioned by the author, however they manifest themselves within one's own imagination.

...

While I could easily yank out the restraints and stand aside, drowning you in collected adages and excerpts [what a way to treat the odd visitor!], one striking snippet will suffice:

"Who are you?" he said, scarcely above a whisper. "One who has waited long for you to speak," said the Thing. Its voice was not loud, but very large and deep.

~ C. S. Lewis, The Horse and His Boy

In this detour-from-the-main-plot-line-novel, Shasta, an orphan-turned-runaway finds himself alone in the middle of the night in the pitch blackness of a forest, feeling entirely abandoned. The friends with whom he journeyed and the ones he'd just met had left or been left behind. The embers of his smolderingly urgent message dying with his resolve to deliver it. On the verge of dismounting his pony to string the trees with garlands for his pity party [mentally, of course; bit hard to accomplish in the dark], he sensed something else among the trees. Something enormous.

A recurring character, if you catch my drift (don't want to spoil it for any not-yet-read-the-Chronicles folks). A most certainly allegorical character. Perhaps what stood out most about this scene was that, as the "Thing" explains to Shasta, he's been there all along. Not in the same form, but as the same, ever-present help. And most incredible of all, he was waiting. Waiting for Shasta to simply say something. Waiting for his dark moment to shed golden light.

What a bewildering thought when you translate allegory to reality. That when the Light feels absent, maybe He's just waiting. Waiting for those He's already marked to call. To reveal another sliver of radiance. Another shower of sparks. Another because the marked have seen this before. They just tend to get lost in the gritty dimness, ever in need of further illumination.

Maybe they [we, I] just need to speak. To seek. And let Him who's miraculously still there find.

The God who made the world and everything that is in it, since He is Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made by hands; nor is He served by human hands, as though He needed anything, since He Himself gives to all people life and breath and all things. He made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined their appointed times and boundaries of their habitation, that they would seek God, if perhaps they might feel around for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us; for in Him we live and move and exist.

~ Acts 17:24-28a