Fighting a Caspian-like Battle on the Home Front

I took the children to see Prince Caspian this weekend. I thought the movie was incredibly well-done. One of the great things about movies based on classic literature is that you basically know what you will be getting. In fact, very rarely will I take the children to see any movie that is not based upon a book that I have read. Even if the movie is rated G, there may be materials I find objectionable because they run counter to our beliefs. Or, it might be so inane that I find it a waste of our time and mental energy.

Caspian was rated PG for violence, but it was not senseless violence. As scary as the battle scenes may be, you know the good side is going to beat the evil side. And good and evil are clearly defined. Children also need to know that there are battles worth fighting.

Just like many of our American men felt a strong urge to go fight for our country after the attacks on 9/11/01, I came out of the movie with a desire to fight for something worthwhile. After making dinner and cleaning up, I did a cross-stitch while the children watched a BBC version of Prince Caspian that we had on VHS.

How can I fight for something worthwhile? I thought, thinking that I was doing next-to-nothing. To paraphrase A.A. Milne in his Winnie-the-Pooh stories, Christopher Robin says that “nothing” is what you tell your parents you’re doing when you go outside to play. We all know the importance of childhood playtime. So, “Nothing” can actually be “something” worthwhile.

I pondered that for a while and realized that the “nothing” I was presently doing was really quite something. I was enjoying my children while they filled their minds with great stories. I was relaxing, taking delight in the wonderful family life God has granted us. I was making a handmade gift for someone, something the family in that household can take joy from for many years to come, rather than writing out a check or buying something off a registry.

We mothers are indeed fighting a holy war in our homes. We are fighting a culture that says things are more important than people, morals are relative, and God is a creation of our minds.

King Miraz feared the truth and brainwashed his people until they came to believe that the Narnians were extinct. The secular establishment fears the righteous, and brainwashes us through the media, textbooks, and schools to believe that really good people are extinct. Good politicians are considered oxymorons, brides are generally assumed to be unworthy of wearing white, men are believed to be incapable of remaining faithful in both mind and body, and religion is held to be something for the weak-minded.

In the book, Prince Caspian’s nurse (who was not mentioned in the movie) was sent away for disobeying the king. She and the tutor who takes her place, Doctor Cornelius, raise a righteous leader by defying the King and secretly telling the child all the stories of Narnia. Like them, we can do our part in bringing up righteous citizens by instilling God’s Word in our children’s hearts and rearing them in homes that live uprightly.

“Rather, the law of the Lord is their joy; God’s law they study day and night.”
Psalm 1:3

The Man Who Was Used Up

While my sister was visiting, we stumbled upon my library’s monthly used book sale. For $1.00, I was able to pick up a 753-page hardcover, library edition of “Sixty-Seven Tales” by Edgar Allan Poe. Then I put it on my bookshelf and forgot all about it.

My legs were tired and I needed something to read while I took a short break yesterday. Remembering the volume of short stories, I removed it from its resting place. Reading the description of one as a “brilliant story of humor and satire” and finding that it was only 7 pages in length, I put my feet up for a short interlude and enjoyed this story. (You can read it here.)

“The Man That Was Used Up: A Tale of the Late Bugaboo and Kickapoo Campaign” opens up with a detailed description of the fascinating and handsome Brevet Brigadier General John A.B.C. Smith. The narrator is intrigued by some mysterious quality of his new acquaintance and seeks to find out more about him. His social spies repeat generalities about the courageous and remarkable man, his fight with the Bugaboo and Kickapoo Indians, and what a wonderful age of invention we are living in! Not to be put off any further, he ends up at Smith’s house while he is still dressing. He finds that the General has to be put together, from his legs to his palate, and every single physical attribute about him is artificial. Mystery solved: he was “the man that was used up”.

A good story will resonate within a good reader’s mind for some time and bring out all kinds of new thoughts. Most of these are unintended by the writer. He just wanted to tell a good story.

I have always wondered about the increasing artificiality of many people as they get older. When I attend a social function, sometimes the most sing-songy hello-how-are-you’s ring as the most non-genuine and leave me with a sour taste. I wonder:

How many us have left a good portion of ourselves behind as we lose ourselves in the messy details of life?

How many of us hide behind a veneer as a protective mechanism so long that we forget who was there?

How many of us can’t remember who we were before we got married and had children?

How many of us, by middle age, are women who are all used up?

God turns Pharaoh’s heart to stone to enable him to repeatedly refuse the Hebrews their independence. But through the prophet Ezekiel he offers something different for his people…

“A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh.” Ezekiel 36:26

In The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, by C.S. Lewis (from The Chronicles of Narnia series; the movie is in pre-production for May 2010 ), Eustace turns into a dragon and can only be saved by Aslan. The Great Lion gives him a bath that one-by-one removes each layer of scales. Painfully they come off, and Eustace is relieved and born again when he finds himself naked, in his boy skin.

At our conception we were given a soul, and noone can kill that soul – not even ourselves. We can try to bury it under layers of protective mechanisms, but God can strip away these veneers.

The Magic of Four

It was on a rainy summer afternoon like today that Lucy peered into a wardrobe and discovered the world of Narnia. The Chronicles of Narnia, by C.S. Lewis forms the series of my most beloved books. I discovered them (with the help of my very literate mother) at the age of seven, and read each of the seven books seven times. There were four Pevensie children, and I do believe they are the reason I always held four to be my magic number.

There are two dreams I have had as long as I can remember. The first is to have four children. The second is to write (and publish) novels. Great novels, like those written by George MacDonald, C.S. Lewis, L.M. Montgomery, Charles Dickens, and Thomas Hardy (okay, I’m partial to the English), when read during the formative years, become part of you. Without them, the world would seem like a different place.

It is through the written word that God has shared himself through us. The writer – whether consciously or not - attempts to interpret His truths with the reader. She attempts to find the perfect word, to describe the perfect image, to convey the perfect thought.

Is that perfection attainable? My children argued this during the baking of oatmeal cookies today.

“I want them to be perfect!”
“There’s no such thing as perfect!”
“Well if there’s no such thing as perfect why is there the word?”

I have yet to complete my first novel. I’ve been too busy with the rearing of my first dream, the four children God has gifted me. I have the rest of my life to work on the second goal. In a sinful world, none of us can be the perfect mother or the perfect writer. (“All have fallen short of the glory of God.”) Like goodness, which is only truly attainable by God, I can only try to come as close as I can with the tools I have been given by my Creator.