Who said anything about safe?

The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe - C.S. Lewis

The classic favorite: "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." (p. 86)

Aslan: "We have a long journey to go. You must ride on me." And he crouched down and the children climbed onto his warm, golden back, and Susan sat first, holding on tightly to his mane and Lucy sat behind holding on tightly to Susan...That ride was perhaps the most wonderful thing that happened to them in Narnia...Imagine that you are going about twice as fast as the fastest racehorse. But this is a mount that doesn't need to be guided and never grows tired. He rushes on and on, never missing his footing, never hesitating, threading his way with perfect skill between tree trunks, jumping over bush and briar and the smaller streams, wading the larger, swimming the largest of all. (p. 180-181)

I was the lion

The Horse and His Boy - C.S. Lewis

The Horse and His Boy turned out to be my favorite of the Chronicles this time around. One of the two most memorable lines in my reading of all the stories is when Shasta, feeling terribly sorry for himself, and walking in the dark, suddenly feels the presence of an "invisible companion" who breathes "on a very large scale." Shasta describes his sorrows to the Voice, including his encounters with what he thought were several lions. The Voice responds: "I was the lion." And as Shasta gaped with open mouth and said nothing, the Voice continued. "I was the lion who forced you to join with Aravis. I was the cat who comforted you among the houses of the dead. I was the lion who drove the jackals from you while you slept. I was the lion who gave the Horses then new strength of fear for the last mile so that you should reach King Lune in time. And I was the lion you do not remember who pushed the boat in which you lay, a child near death, so that it came to shore where a man sat, wakeful at midnight, to receive you."(p. 175)

I was reading The Horse and His Boy toward the end of my seminary class, which was on Calvin's Institutes. The following dialogue between Aravis and the Hermit tied in very well with what I was learning in Calvin regarding the sovereignty and mystery of God, and God's revelation of Himself. I used it at the beginning of my reading journal for The Institutes. "I say!" said Aravis. "I have had luck." "Daughter," said the Hermit, "I have now lived a hundred and nine winters in this world and have never yet met any such thing as Luck. There is something about all this that I do not understand: but if ever we need to know it, you may be sure that we shall." (p. 158)

"Aslan," said Bree in a shaken voice, "I'm afraid I must be rather a fool." "Happy the Horse who knows that while he is still young. Or the Human either." (p. 215-216)

Aslan, you're bigger

Prince Caspian - C.S. Lewis

"Aslan," said Lucy, "you're bigger."
"That is because you are older, little one," answered he.
"Not because you are?"
"I am not. But every year you grow, you will find me bigger." (p. 148)

"Lucy went first, biting her lip and trying not to say all the things she thought of saying to Susan. But she forgot them when she fixed her eyes on Aslan." (p. 157)

"Welcome, Prince," said Aslan. "Do you feel yourself sufficient to take up the Kingship of Narnia?"
"I - I don't think I do, Sir," said Caspian. "I'm only a kid."
"Good," said Aslan. "If you had felt yourself sufficient, it would have been a proof that you were not."

Caspian: "I was wishing that I came of a more honorable lineage."
"You come of the Lord Adam and the Lady Eve," said Aslan. "And that is both honor enough to erect the head of the poorest beggar, and shame enough to bow the shoulders of the greatest emperor on earth. Be content."

He knows me

The Voyage of the Dawn Treader - C.S. Lewis

Eustace to Edmund, recounting how he became "un-dragoned": "The Lion said - but I don't know if it spoke - 'You will have to let me undress you.' I was afraid of his claws, I can tell you, but I was pretty nearly desperate now. So I just lay flat down on my back to let him do it.
The very first tear he made was so deep that I thought it had gone right into my heart. And when he began pulling the skin off, it hurt worse than anything I've ever felt. The only thing that made me able to bear it was just the pleasure of feeling the stuff peel off..." (p. 115-116)

Eustace: "But who is Aslan? Do you know him?"
Edmund: "Well - he knows me." (p. 117)

"It would be nice, and fairly nearly true, to say that 'from that time forth Eustace was a different boy.' To be strictly accurate, he began to be a different boy. He had relapses. There were still many days when he could be very tiresome. But most of those I shall not notice. The cure had begun." (p. 119-120)

There's Aslan

The Silver Chair - C.S. Lewis

"It was the worse thing she (Jill) had ever had to do, but she went forward to the stream, knelt down, and began scooping up water in her hand. It was the coldest, most refreshing water she had ever tasted. You didn't need to drink much of it, for it quenched your thirst at once. Before she tased it she had been intending to make a dash away from the Lion the moment she had finished. Now, she realized that this would be on the whole the most dangerous thing of all. She got up and stood there with her lips still wet from drinking." (p. 21-22)

Jill: "I was wondering - I mean - could there be some mistake? Because nobody called me and Scrubb, you know. It was we who asked to come here. Scrubb said we were to call to - to Somebody - it was a name I wouldn't know - and perhaps the Somebody would let us in. And we did, and then we found the door open." "You would not have called to me unless I had been calling to you," said the Lion. (p. 23)

Regarding Aslan's signs: "As you see, she had got the order wrong. That was because she had given up saying the signs over every night." (p. 103)

Puddleglum: "There are no accidents. Our guide is Aslan; and he was there when the giant King caused the letters to be cut, and he knew already all things that wouldcome of them; including this." (p. 160)

When the Witch is enchanting the underworld travelers and trying to convince them that there is no sun, they finally agree with her and then: "For the last few minutes Jill had been feeling that there was something she must remember at all costs. And now she did. But it was dreadfully hard to say it. She felt as if huge weights were laid on her lips. At last, with an effort that seemed to take all the good out of her, she said: 'There's Aslan." (p. 187)

Further Up, Further In

The Last Battle - C. S. Lewis

During the holidays I gave myself the gift of reading all of the Chronicles of Narnia back to back. I think I have read most of them (or had listened to them as my mother read them aloud), but that was long ago. It was a wonderful gift and I very much enjoyed understanding how they all fit together. In the next few posts, I'll record my favorite parts, during this reading, from each of the Chronicles.

This is the starting point for this blog, and from here on out, I'm going to try to record my thoughts on all that I read - from personal reading, book club selections, class assignments, stories I read with my daughter, and so on. If you're reading and you have your own favorite parts of the books I've included, please feel free to share your good words.

Today I'll starting with the Lewis' final episode of the Narnia series...The Last Battle. (Page numbers are from the 1994 Harper Trophy edition.)

"I'd rather be killed fighting for Narnia than grow old and stupid at home and perhaps go about in a bath-chair and then die in the end just the same." Jill to Eustace (p. 120)

"...it is better to see the Lion and die than to be Tisroc of the world and live and not to have seen him." (p. 204)

"And this is the marvel of marvels, that he called me Beloved, me who am but as a dog-" (p. 206)

The unicorn on the New Narnia: "I have come home at last! This is my real country! I belong here. This is the land I have been looking for all my life, though I never knew it till now. The reason why we loved the old Narnia is that it sometimes looked a little like this. Bree-hee-hee! Come further up, come further in!" (p. 213)

Lucy: "This garden is like the stable. It is far bigger inside than it was outside." "Of course, Daughter of Eve," said the Faun. "The further up and the further in you go, the bigger everything gets. The inside is larger than the outside." (p. 224)

"And for us this is the end of all the stories, and we can most truly say that they all lived happily ever after. But for them it was only the beginning of the real story. All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read: which goes on forever: in which every chapter is better than the one before." (p. 228)