Winter and Stone

Why did the White Witch curse Narnia with a perpetual winter?

Why did the White Witch turn creatures to stone?

These two questions came to my mind in my most recent re-reading – more on that here – of the first book of the Chronicles of Narnia. I’m a read according to the publishing date person, so yes, I consider The Lion, The Witch, And The Wardrobe to be book 1 of the series. Just like I think the first Star Wars movie anyone should watch is A New Hope, but that’s another post.

These are two very central elements to the first book of the Chronicles.
1) The curse of the Narnian winter, and 2) the Witch’s ability to turn the Narnians into stone.
Why did C. S. Lewis choose these? What’s the significance of these “powers”? After some thought, I have an idea, a theory if you will.

Warning, massive spoilers ahead if you have not read the books or watched the films. You’ve been warned. Now, go read the books.

Oh, the wonders of a crowded bookshelf.

My theory – Why Winter?

If you haven’t noticed yet, symbols are important in the world C. S. Lewis created. Although the Chronicles of Narnia is a fantastic fantasy series it is primarily allegorical, it’s supposed to be, Lewis explicitly intended it to be so. Therefore, the Witches powers of winter and stone are not just central to the plot and her character development, but are highly symbolic.

“The White Witch? Who is she?”
“Why, it is she that has got all Narnia under her thumb. It’s she that makes it always winter. Always winter and never Christmas; think of that!”

A conversation between Lucy and Mr. Tumnus; The Lion, The Witch, And The Wardrobe, by C. S. Lewis

Why? Because Christmas is a celebration of life. Whether it is the pagan roots of the end of winter, or the Christian roots of the birth of Jesus, Christmas is inherently a celebration of life. Who is uniquely tied to life in the Chronicles? Aslan.

Aslan is pitted a the opposite of the Witch. The Beavers call him the true King of Narnia, making the Witch a usurper. He is the good and wise King of Narnia, she is the wicked and cruel tyrant. Aslan’s power brings comfort and boldness at just the mention of his name. The Witch in appearance and name inspires terror and doubt – she is called “witch” for good reason.

So, the Witch, as the usurping, illegitimate tyrant over Narnia seeks to squash out anything even remotely Aslan-ish. She plays to the natural order of things: nature slows down in the winter, and much of Narnia is nature – the talking beasts, the dryads, and the naiads, etc. – so the best way to subdue her subjects is a perpetual winter. It’s logical and mythical.

My theory – Why Stone?

Edmund saw the Witch bite her lips so that a drop of blood appeared on her white cheek. Then she raised her wand. “Oh, don’t, don’t, please don’t,” shouted Edmund, but even while he was shouting she had waved her wand and instantly where the merry party had been there were only statues of creatures (one with its stone fork fixed forever halfway to its stone mouth) seated round a stone table on which there were stone plates and a stone plum pudding.

The Lion, The Witch, And The Wardrobe, by C. S. Lewis

Why stone? Much like the first part of the theory, this has to do with life and therefore being the antithesis of Aslan.

The Witch wanted complete control over Narnia, probably because it was not hers to begin with. The control you can have over a living thing is quite limited, but you can do whatever you want to stone. Stone can’t talk back, stone can’t act in defiance, stone can’t even raise its paw in polite question, because stone isn’t alive.

It’s fascinating to think of the true king, Aslan, and then the children afterwards, and how they rule. They rule justly, and kindly over living creatures in a thriving kingdom. The Witch can only wield her power well over a dead land, and dead stone people.
Apply whatever sociopolitical analogies you see fit, there are many.

Aslan, the Jesus Christ character, is the opposite, as I said. He rules powerfully over living creatures in a thriving land. He quite literally brings life with his very breath in the scene where he breathes the stone spell away from all the statues in the Witch’s castle. In the most ultimate example of this power of stone, death, and life, in the chapter titled “The Triumph of the Witch”, Aslan is slain on the Stone Table.
The What? That’s right, the Stone Table. Aslan is killed with a stone knife on the Stone Table.
And then… as the sun rises, the table cracks in two, and Aslan lives.
The Witch uses stone to kill, to defeat, but Aslan’s power of life over death can never be defeated. This theme is all through this book, and the whole series.

“Who is Aslan?” asked Susan.
“Aslan?” said Mr. Beaver, “Why, don’t you know? He’s the King. He’s the Lord of the whole wood, but not often here, you understand. Never in my time or my father’s time. But the word has reached us that he has come back. He is in Narnia at this moment. He’ll settle the White Queen all right. It is he, not you, that will save Mr. Tumnus.”
“She won’t turn him into stone too?” said Edmund.
“Lord love you, Son of Adam, what a simple thing to say!” answered Mr. Beaver with a great laugh. “Turn him into stone? If she can stand on her two feet and look him in the face it’ll be the most she can do and more than I expect of her. No, no. He’ll put all to rights, as it says in an old rhyme in these parts:

Wrong will be right, when Aslan comes in sight,
At the sound of his roar, sorrows will be no more,
When he bares his teeth, winter meets its death
And when he shakes his mane, we shall have spring again.

You’ll understand when you see him.”
“But shall we see him?” asked Susan.
“Why, Daughter of Eve, that’s what I brought you here for. I’m to lead you where you shall meet him,” said Mr. Beaver.
“Is–is he a man?” asked Lucy.
“Aslan a man!” said Mr. Beaver sternly. “Certainly not. I tell you he is the King of the wood and the son of the great Emperor-Beyond-the-Sea. Don’t you know who is the King of Beasts? Aslan is a lion–the Lion, the great Lion.”
“Ooh!” said Susan, “I’d thought he was a man. Is he–quite safe? I shall feel rather nervous about meeting a lion.”
“That you will, dearie, and no mistake,” said Mrs. Beaver. “If there’s anyone who can appear before Aslan without their knees knocking, they’re either braver than most or else just silly.”
“Then he isn’t safe?” said Lucy.
“Safe?” said Mr. Beaver. “Don’t you hear what Mrs. Beaver tells you? Who said anything about safe? ’Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good. He’s the King, I tell you.”

The Lion, The Witch, And The Wardrobe, by C. S. Lewis

Now, a word of warning. Don’t go hunting for themes and connections like this. I made the connection only lightly while I read, and thought deeper about it afterwards. Enjoy the story. Don’t ruin the moment. Especially for someone else, especially for a child.

Go forth! And read well!

Soli Deo Gloria

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Posted on by Anna Young Aside 1

Re-reading Favorites

I’ve been in a funk. A reading funk, a creative funk, an anti-spontaneity funk.

It’s not a totally terrible thing that I’ve been in a funk! I actually have a very good reason to be in a funk. I have a three month old baby. I am nursing for the first time. I also have three other children who have their own needs, and a whole house to take care of, and a husband to relationship with.

Dirty floors, but happy kids 🙂

In short: I’ve been busy, and therefore tired. Physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually.

One of my go-to strategies for times like this is to re-read my favorite books.

So I’ve been re-reading the Chronicles of Narnia – I’m on The Silver Chair now – and The Man Who Was Thursday by G. K. Chesterton and the Harry Potter series. The stories behind my love of these books deserve a post of their own. For now I will say that I have many good memories associated with these books, and even without my nostalgia they are good books. It’s like eating your favorite food cooked by your favorite people, and enjoyed with them too.

My second strategy is to read a new book from an author I’ve read before and liked. This is how I am now in my third, or fourth, book by Wendell Berry. He’s not exactly a new author to me, I just didn’t enjoy his books the first time I read them. I think I had come off the heels of a fast paced thriller, and Wendell Berry’s works are all thoughtful character/place centered pieces. I was just not in the right head space for them. Now, I understand it better and just love it. I want to inhale all he’s written. I just found an audiobook of his read by Nick Offerman and I am so excited. I’m trying to be good and finish what I have started before beginning something new. (This is a discipline I need to work on for myself, and I’m starting to see it in my children.)

A third strategy I have, which I have already hinted at above, is audiobooks. I have to be careful with this one though because I will binge them. Not only that, but I will listen to the books constantly, perpetually having a headphone in my ear and irritated that I’m getting interrupted (and with lots of little people, interruptions are just part of life).

(I listen to almost all my audiobooks on my free library app! Woot!)

Re-reading is a wonderful thing. I have many other books I re-read on a regular basis. Perhaps I should make a list! But that’s another post.

Do you re-read books? What stories do you find yourself coming back to over and over?

Soli Deo Gloria

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Posted on by Anna Young Aside 3

Get Up

Something happened the other night that doesn’t happen often: my three year old woke up to go to the bathroom.
This doesn’t happen often for two reasons. One, she sleeps like a rock, and usually only wakes up when she is sick. Two, she wears a pull-up to bed and therefore doesn’t wake up to use the toilet.
She did wake up though, and she DID use the toilet.
She was not sick, and was in fact happy to go back to bed, snuggle up with her blankie and roll over to sleep.

Except for the second thing that happened that doesn’t happen that often: my three year old didn’t sleep.
For whatever reason, she could not settle down, and she could not go back to sleep. Being a three year old, she did the only thing she could do. She cried for her Mama, for me.

The result was that I was up with her, getting in and out of my bed, and down to her little bed that nearly touches the floor. Every time I thought I had settled her down, I would get back in my own bed, and pray. I’d pray that God would settler her heart, mind, and body down, that his grace would extend to her, that his grace would keep her siblings (who share the room with her) asleep, that his grace would get us all back to sleep.
“God give her the grace to sleep” I sighed the fourth time I heaved myself out of bed, and went to wipe her tears and kiss her forehead.

Oh, did I mention that I’m currently seven months pregnant? Factor that into your mental image of me getting up and down in the middle of the night. I didn’t just want her to sleep. I wanted to sleep too!

Finally, I grabbed a pillow, and headed back to my daughter’s side. This time, I had given up, and do the thing I rarely do, actually lay down with her in her own bed, hoping against hope that Mama being with her would calm her down.
As I lay down, trying to get as comfortable as possible on her much thinner mattress, the very words of my own prayer came into my mind.
“I am the grace she needs to sleep.”

I smiled into the darkness, and kissed my little girl. She put her hand on my belly, rubbed it, then cuddled herself as close as she could get to me with that belly in the way.
I had been praying for God to be my magic sleep potion for my child, and myself. I had been praying for God to do the work that he was calling me to do as my child’s parent.
I prayed for the grace my child needed to sleep. And God answered my prayer, he gave her me.

How often does this happen and I’m too blind in my own selfishness to see it? How often do I just want my kids to be good, or be quiet, or get along for ten seconds without me doing anything?
How often do I want God to parent my kids, but I don’t want to do any parenting?

God blessed me and my husband with these kids. We purposely had all these kids. Yes, intentionally, on purpose, all four of them. We prayed with desperate tears for this fourth child still growing within me. This fourth child is our “rainbow baby”. This pregnancy has been difficult, and scary.
Yet, it’s a blessing. The pregnancy and the baby.

I’m thankful for that sleepless night. I’m thankful for the rough few days that followed because Mama was tired. I’m thankful for what those difficulties – self inflicted to an extent – exposed in me: selfishness.
Parenting has a way of breaking you down as a parent and exposing sin in you that you would have sworn up and down you didn’t have. Mine is selfishness, and anger. These few days of little sleep, on top of regular third trimester tiredness, and typical childhood folly have really shown that to me.

So, my prayers are changing.
I’m still praying that God would give my family grace, but specifically, I pray that he would give me grace. The grace to get up, in the middle of the night, in the middle of a podcast, in the middle of a sibling fight, in the middle of a really uncomfortable Braxton Hicks cramp. I need the grace to get up out of my comfort zone, to stop yelling from across the room, and to image God to them by being the grace my kids need.
God wants to give my kids grace, I can see that. More importantly, I see how he wants to give it to them, and it’s through me.

Fun fact. My name, Anna, means Grace.
🙂

Soli Deo Gloria

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Posted on by Anna Young Aside 0

Treasuring Christ When Your Hands Are Full; Gospel Meditations for Busy Moms – Book Review

Gloria Furman does it again. In this little book Furman goes through the truth of the Gospel: the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Then she takes that truth and applies it to the everyday mess and busyness that is motherhood.

The subtitle for this book says “… for Busy Moms” but to be real, what mom isn’t busy. This is for all moms. That being said, I cannot recommend it enough. It is a short 160 pages, which includes all of the notes and back matter. Yes, it’s a quick little book, but man does it pack a punch.

If you’ve ever read Furman before, you know what I’m talking about. Her writing style seems, to my eyes, to be heavily influenced by her life as a wife to a disabled husband, a mother to multiple children, a woman in ministry struggling through all the demands that work entails, and lives in a challenging international city in the Middle East. She does not have time for the fluffy, round about way of saying things. “Get to the good part! Tell me the good news, now! I need it!” Her words seem to say. That’s exactly what she does in this book.

Yet, there is not a sense of urgency or chaos, as sometime is the case when this attitude of immediate need is applied to writing. She presents the message, or the “Treasures” as the title puts it, of this book gently. With the tenderness of a woman, and a parent. It is a breath of fresh air after a long slog type of feel she gives in her writing.

I think this is mainly due to the content of this book. It is difficult to come across as harsh, chaotic, prideful, or condescending when you are presenting a message that is not essentially your own. Gloria Furman in this short, sweet book presents Christ, the Message himself, to tired, busy women, with children in tow. Her books is life giving, because Christ is. Her words are comforting, confronting, and refreshing, because Christ is.

She does this through, not her own words, but through the scriptures. I type this with a smile, for it is difficult to read farther than a sentence or two without some scripture reference or quotation. Further proving that this treasure, this good news, this hope, is not her message, but God’s message, is Christ himself presented to the world, and through Furman, funneled at mothers.

Moms, pick up this book! Read it. Re-read it. It is that kind of book that you can read a few paragraphs, filled with scripture quotations, as your quiet time and dwell on truth all day long.

I read this in the carline while I waited to pick up my children from school, with my toddler in the backseat. Grab a paragraph or two while you nurse (actually you may be able to get a whole chapter while nursing). Read a little while your kiddos do their homework next to you. It’s small enough to fit in most purses! Take it to work and sneak a chapter in on your lunch break. It’s not dense, so even a few sentences before you collapse into bed is possible.

If you’re not a mom, read it! It’s the gospel. It applies to you too. Better yet, read it, and pass it on to a mom. Then, you can have discussions about what’s in the book! What a blessing! And you will get much more out of it talking about it, as usually when you talk about something, your mind and heart dig into it a little deeper.

Whatever you do, where ever you are in life. Read on, friends!

Soli Deo Gloria!

Posted on by Anna Young Aside 0

To Read, To Write, To Learn

I’ve been doing a lot recently. All of it has caused me to do one thing: think deeply.

I’ve been writing in a more creative way. Finished a manuscript for a novel, now working on my second novel, and have several short stories finished and some short stories in the works.

I’ve been reading a lot, and been keeping a reading list. As of today, I have read 14 books since January 1st, and am currently reading about 12 others. Audiobooks have helped me bulk up these numbers, and they totally count. If it counts as reading for my children when they are read aloud to, then it counts when I am read aloud to.

I keep this by my bed, with my favorite color pen at the ready.
This is where I keep all my quotes, book lists, and whatever else.
Also, The Literary Life Podcast is wonderful, I love it. (Not sponsored or anything, I’m just a fan!)

All this word consuming and creating has made me extremely thoughtful. I’ve read things I didn’t agree with, and things I didn’t think I agreed with until it was explained. I’ve read some horrific accounts, and some tellings of delightful tales.

The main thought that keeps running in and out and around my mind is this: Why?

Why did the author write this?
Why is this considered “good” or “bad”?
Why did I not enjoy this before?
Why don’t more people read this?
Why would someone do that (in the case of some non-fiction books)?
Why don’t I like this?
Why is this so hard to read?
Why do others think this is so hard to read (because it’s really not)?

Why, why, why?

I don’t have answers for many of these, but that hasn’t stopped me from asking the questions, postulating answers, and then badgering my husband with his opinions (he was a philosophy major, and still is a philosopher at heart, so he doesn’t mind).

Why do you read what you read?
What makes that genre or that author or that kind of story your favorite?
What stops you from reading?

Looking over my booklist two types of books stick out to me as favorites: old books, and detective novels.

Old books (my definition): anything written by someone who has been dead for at least 50 years.

Detective novels: crime solving novels, usually involving a detective, private or official.

Why do I like these so much? I’m not sure, but I know that I do. I love history, so I suppose that is part of liking old books. I love learning about people and places. There is nothing more mysterious and full of things we don’t understand than the past. Old books, even fiction, open up a world that is, for the most part, foreign to us. I find this delightful.
I think I like detective novels for the same reason. And, I like to feel smart, and solve clever puzzles, and feel a part of righting a wrong and doing justice, even if it’s fiction. There is something deeply human in detective novels. We see wrong and right very clearly on display. The fight for rightness, justice, meeting the tension of inadequacies, grey areas, and fallible good guys. Detective novels, and math, prove, in a way, the existence of objective truth. There is a reason why Agatha Christie is the best selling author of all time behind only the Bible and Shakespeare. We humans are drawn to truth, objective truth, goodness, and beauty. Books highlight this reality.

“The difference between nonfiction and fiction is that fiction must be absolutely believable.”

(possibly said by Mark Twain, but true regardless)

I wax poetic and digress into theology, philosophy, and pondering the gracious purpose of life. We have a title!

What are you reading? Has it got you thinking?

Soli Deo Gloria

Posted on by Anna Young Aside 1