LWW Chapter 3

In chapter 3, Lucy, who has just tumbled out of the wardrobe after returning from Narnia, finds the others and tells them her tale, only to have them disbelieve her. After they examine the wardrobe and find that it appears perfectly ordinary, the others, especially Edmund, make her life miserable for several days that ought to have been most enjoyable. On the next rainy day, as they are inside playing hide and seek, Lucy is beginning to doubt her own experience and decides to take one more look in the wardrobe. Hearing footsteps, she jumps in to hide, and Edmund, seeing her go in, jumps in after her. He finds that he is in Narnia, and shouts out an apology, but Lucy is nowhere to be found. As Edmund is preparing to return home, the White Witch herself rides up in a sledge pulled by small, white reindeer, and driven by a dwarf. Edmund notices that, though she is beautiful, her skin is pure white and her look is proud and stern. She begins to question him about what kind of creature he is.

In this chapter, we get a bit more of a feel of Edmund's nastiness. He describes Lucy as "batty" when she tells her tale of Narnia, and in his spite he makes her life miserable by teasing her about her story. After he gets into Narnia, he reluctantly calls out an apology, but when he cannot find Lucy, begins to blame her rather than himself for the situation.

We find that Lucy has the courage and determination to stick to her story. She knows it to be true, even when the others do not believe her and she can produce no evidence to support her experience. She refuses to yield under taunting and pressure, even though it makes her own life miserable.

We also see enough evidence to learn that the entrance to Narnia through the wardrobe is not there all the time. Specifically, you can get into Narnia that way only when you are not trying to, when you are thinking about something else as you enter the wardrobe. If you are trying to use the wardrobe to get to Narnia, you cannot.

Another fact that appears is that Narnian time runs in a different way than earth time. Lucy had been in Narnia for "hours and hours," but she got back only a moment after, or perhaps at the same time as, she left.

There are no obvious Christian references in this chapter. Perhaps the closest is the portrayal of sin through Edmund's nastiness to Lucy, and his attempt to place the blame on her, even when she turns out to have been right. We also see how sin can break relationships and spoil good times.

LWW Chapter 2

In chapter 2, Lucy goes to the home of Tumnus the Faun for tea, then discovers that he meant to lull her to sleep and turn her over to the White Witch. After meeting her, Tumnus decides that he cannot betray her, and helps her get back home.

There are few direct Christian references in this chapter. One that I detect is that the Faun calls Lucy "Daughter of Eve," a term which she does not understand. Another is Tumnus' repentance for a premeditated sin and Lucy's forgiveness of him.

From the storytelling point of view, the reader detects fairly quickly that something is not quite right in the interaction between Tumnus and Lucy. The first hint is that he says nothing to her until he has picked up his packages. Then, instead of immediately introducing himself, he takes some pains to ascertain that she is really human, and we learn that he has never seen a human before. After establishing that she is human, he is about to say something and suddenly stops, then presses her to go home with him for tea. Probably, for many people today, the thought of a stranger inviting a girl home would immediately raise red flags. Those must have been more innocent days.

After luring Lucy into a trap and trying to lull her to sleep so that he could turn her over to the Witch, Tumnus realizes that he cannot go through with it, and repents with bitter tears. To show that his sorrow is genuine, he confesses what he meant to do, and tries to make it right by helping Lucy find her way back home, even at his own peril. He begs forgiveness, which Lucy freely and gladly offers. While we applaud her forgiving spirit, we also get the impression that in her childhood innocence, she does not fully comprehend the horror of what she would have faced had Tumnus carried out his original intent.

We also learn that Narnia is a land under an evil spell: the White Witch is a usurper who makes it "always winter and never Christmas." The message here is that evil shows its power by making others miserable. It also depicts the frozen state of the soul without God, and prepares for the depiction of the thaw and healing that comes when God enters.

LWW Chapter 1 Observations

The Memphis C. S. Lewis Society is reading The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, the first of the Chronicles of Narnia. Here are some of my observations, chapter by chapter. Among them, I hope to point out the Christian and biblical references that I notice.

The book begins with a dedication to Lucy Barfield by her godfather Lewis. No doubt Lewis based the character Lucy in the story on her, somewhat as A. A. Milne included his son Christopher Robin in the Pooh stories. I do not know whether the other children were based on the real Lucy's siblings or not.

The dedication expresses hope that fairy stories are not just for children, but also for those who have matured enough to appreciate them once again, at a new level. In that spirit, let us proceed.

Chapter 1 begins the story by telling of the four siblings Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy, as they are sent to a country house for safety during the Blitz of World War II. I do not recall their surname Pevensie being used in this first book. It is clear from their initial appearance that Edmund is the problem child of the family. He has to hide his laughter at their host when he meets him. There is a hint of his short temper and pessimism. His problems will trigger the crisis in the story later.

On a rainy day, the children decide to explore the house. The very immenseness of the house and its unexpected hallways and rooms depict adventure, new horizons, and the sense that something unusual is going to happen and could be waiting around any corner. One of their discoveries is a series of rooms full of books, as Lewis says, "most of them very old books and some bigger than a Bible in a church." This is the first hint, however indirect, that there is a religious air to the story.

When they encounter the magic wardrobe while exploring the house, only Lucy stays behind to examine it. Lewis thus portrays her as a bit more inquisitive, a bit more venturesome, even perhaps a bit more in tune with her surroundings and with life, than the rest.

Once Lucy enters the wardrobe, Lewis begins a running joke combined with a bit of advice: it is very silly to shut yourself in a wardrobe.

The wardrobe, it turns out, is a portal: one of the magic places that open between this world and Narnia. We shall learn more about this portal later. Lucy's reaction is the natural reaction of one who encounters something unexpected and unexplained: frightened, inquisitive, and excited. This could apply to learning unexpected spiritual truths as well.

Making sure that she can get back, Lucy ventures into this unknown world of winter and encounters a lamp post in the middle of a wood and a Faun. The first is unexplained, the second clearly unearthly. One does not ordinarily encounter a functioning lamp post in the woods, but it might be understood as the result of human action. A Faun, however, is not in our normal realm of experience.

Thus the chapter ends, leaving Lucy and us to ponder her encounters. There are no specifically Christian references yet, except the offhand reference to a Bible in a church. But we sense that, in the midst of a very ordinary experience, we are being taken out of the realm of ordinary experience and into a different world. This in itself is preparation for the possibility of spiritual experience and change.

It is also important that Lucy just stumbled onto the experience. She was not specifically looking for another world. She was just being inquisitive about something that she enjoyed in this world, and it became for her a portal into another. So, perhaps, Lewis is saying, we can encounter the spiritual world in unexpected ways in the course of our "ordinary" experiences.

The Memphis C. S. Lewis Society

Since I am an Inklings fan, it was with great interest that I recently discovered that there is a C. S. Lewis discussion group that meets in Memphis. Their web site is narnia.org. They meet every second Sunday night of the month at 7:00 PM in the library at the Memphis Theological Seminary.

This month, August, Linda and I attended for the first time. They were finishing their discussion of Charles Williams' book The Forgiveness of Sins. We had not read the book, but the discussion was interesting. I should have written this post earlier, since now I cannot remember much of it.

One interesting point, on the side of receiving God's forgiveness, was that sometimes people get too hung up on deciding whether they need forgiveness for some particular sin, and forget that they are sinners. Each of us can confess to God every day that we have sinned, whether we can remember the particulars or not.

On the side of giving forgiveness to others, there was an interesting discussion of how approaching someone to "forgive" them can in fact become a weapon against them. If I am going to forgive you, that means that you did me some wrong. But what if you do not think that you did me a wrong? Such interactions call for much discretion, good judgment, and tact.

The society will next move on to a discussion of the first of Lewis' Narnia Chronicles: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. I say first advisedly. It was the first in the original order of the series, and should still be the first. I do not agree with the decision of the current publishers to try putting the stories in chronological order, beginning with The Magician's Nephew. Beginning the story in the middle, then filling in the beginning later on, is a well-known literary device. The author's intentions in using it ought to be respected.

Linda and I are rereading The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe now in preparation for the next meeting. I plan to make some posts on this blog of my thoughts on it, especially Christian and biblical references in the story.

I Am Not a Motorcyclist

Some years ago, Leonard Nimoy wrote a book called I Am Not Spock. I have not read it, but I presume that he felt that he had to establish his own identity, distinct from that of the beloved character that he played on Star Trek.

This spring, I got interested in motorcycles. I have never before this ridden a motorcycle in my life. What actually happened was this. Last spring of 2004, I believe it was, I was teaching a class at the University of Memphis, and picked up a copy of the student newspaper, the Daily Helmsman. On the front page was an article about the Memphis dealership for Vespa, an Italian motor scooter. For some reason, I got intrigued and was looking into getting one. I was discussing it with a coworker who rides motorcycles. He said, as long as I was thinking about a scooter, why not go for a regular motorcycle? So I started thinking about it. I also went to the current Wonders exhibit in Memphis, "The Art of the Motorcycle." Since I had never ridden, I decided to try taking a training course.

On July 29 and July 30, I took the Motorcycle Safety Foundation basic rider course. I would like to have said, July 29 through July 31, but I cannot. I flunked out of the course on Saturday, July 30.

The course started out OK. Friday night, we were in a classroom and went over various aspects of motorcycle safety, gear, and handling. On Saturday morning, we went outside for riding practice. It started slowly, with checking the bike, starting the bike, walking the bike, and then finally slow riding. There were different exercises in starting, stopping, turning, cornering, and use of the friction zone. It was quite a thrill to be riding for the first time in my life.

I was doing OK until the exercise on weaving around cones. I was having difficulty managing the weaving and was missing some of the cones. Then, on one of the turns, I had a low side fall. I was not hurt, and did not even damage my helmet. I learned something very important from that: don't put on your brakes during a turn, especially the more powerful front brake.

The real trouble came with countersteering. Before taking the course, I read the course material. The one thing that I could not understand was countersteering. The basic idea is that to make a motorcycle turn, if you are going more than about five miles per hour, you have to make the motorcycle lean in the direction that you want to turn. The way that you are supposed to do this is to press forward on the handlebar in the direction that you want to turn. This seems totally counterintuitive to me. I told the rider coaches this when we started the course. Their answer was, it does work, just wait until you try it, it is something that you have to feel.

Well, when I tried it, I still could not feel it. When we got to the countersteering exercise, I was doing it so poorly that they stopped me and wanted me to ride behind one of them while they showed me. I found this too frightening. So they told me that if I could not get this down, I could not continue the course. I went home at lunch time and did not return.

I am not criticizing them for stopping me. That was what they had to do. My only criticism of the course is that it seemed to me that they were asking us to do exercises, such as the weaving among cones and the countersteering, for which we were not sufficiently instructed. It felt more like a test of the abilities that we already had rather than instruction in how to acquire those abilities. I really had a fear of and a mental block about countersteering that I needed to get over.

Since then, I have read a little about countersteering on the web. I think that I understand the concept a little better now, and may be able to do it given some patience, instruction, and practice.

My suggestion to the coaches in the course, which I offer freely, is: get a gyroscope. Let people hold it and see how it behaves when you apply pressure to it while it is spinning.

I was about to give up on the whole idea, when, oddly enough, I ran into the president of the Memphis Motorcycle Club at an event at my church. He offered to help me learn. They have an event where they get out and ride in a field, and he said that he could help me there.

So who knows? I hear that Leonard Nimoy eventually wrote another book, I Am Spock. Maybe some day I shall be able to post another article here entitled "I Am a Motorcyclist."

Kidney Stone

It has been a while since I posted. It's just hard to find the time. Today is going to be a banner day for posting, since I am home from work with a kidney stone.

I have never had a kidney stone before, and hoped that I never would. I guess I had some warning that it was coming from some minor abdominal pain. But I woke up this morning with discomfort that quickly developed into excruciating pain. I had no idea at first what the problem was, but suspected a colon blockage. So as not to bore or nauseate you with the details, I wound up in the emergency room, where they gave me a CAT scan and determined that there is a stone of size 4 mm by 7 mm in my right kidney. They said that it was borderline whether it would pass on its own. For that, I am still waiting and may be waiting for days.

I have heard it said that kidney stones are the closest thing that a man can experience to the pain of childbirth. If that is so, my had is off to all women who go through childbirth. This is the first time that I have ever been on pain medication. I do not like pain medication. I pray that this clears up soon. Your prayers would be appreciated too.

I also learned something else. I have been taking calcium tablets for bone health. Kidney stones are made of calcium. The calcium tablets have to go.

My sympathy is with you if you are going through anything similar.