The Chronicles of Narnia - C.S. Lewis

I enjoyed rereading the Chronicles of Narnia series. While as a series it is fairly disjunct, there are parts of it that I love. Most of those parts include Aslan.

I love how Aslan is written in these books as he encompasses so many of my feelings for God: The grandeur and the intimacy; Being loving and personal, but full of infinite wisdom and knowledge. Like a friend you trust that occasionally will be so brutally honest that you are cut to your soul and feel an exposed, burning pain worse than any you’ve known, but once you’ve healed you realize that a persistent nagging pain is gone and that the scar the cut left behind is as valuable to you as your life. This is what I feel about Aslan as I read him in the books, and he seems to be an excellent allegorical figuration of my feelings about God.

It’s interesting to contrast these feelings with those from the notoriously “anti-Narnian” series by Philip Pullman, the “His Dark Materials” trilogy. There isn’t a single character in “His Dark Materials” that doesn’t at some point succeed in making me feel frustrated, hopeless and cynical, with the possible exception of the polar bear king, Iorek Byrnison. I like the “His Dark Materials” series, but an uplifting tail it isn’t.

My recommendation is to read “The Chronicles of Narnia”, and probably reread the series once ever decade or so, if for no other reason than to be able to relive in print some of your feelings for your Heavenly Father. My apologies to all the atheists (and other humanist types) who don’t choose to regard those feelings as valuable.