A Year with Aslan: Daily Reflections from The Chronicles of Narnia Read online

  “All right,” said Jill, “I’ll believe you.”

  —The Silver Chair

  Why do you think Eustace chooses to share his secret? Are you good at believing things? What’s the hardest thing anyone’s ever asked you to believe?

  JANUARY 19

  Nobody Special

  BREE TURNED ROUND AT LAST, his face mournful as only a horse’s can be.

  “I shall go back to Calormen,” he said.

  “What?” said Aravis. “Back to slavery!”

  “Yes,” said Bree. “Slavery is all I’m fit for. How can I ever show my face among the free Horses of Narnia?—I who left a mare and a girl and a boy to be eaten by lions while I galloped all I could to save my own wretched skin!”

  “We all ran as hard as we could,” said Hwin.

  “Shasta didn’t!” snorted Bree. “At least he ran in the right direction: ran back. And that is what shames me most of all. I, who called myself a war horse and boasted of a hundred fights, to be beaten by a little human boy—a child, a mere foal, who had never held a sword nor had any good nurture or example in his life!”

  “I know,” said Aravis. “I felt just the same. Shasta was marvelous. I’m just as bad as you, Bree. I’ve been snubbing him and looking down on him ever since you met us and now he turns out to be the best of us all. . . .”

  “It’s all very well for you,” said Bree. “You haven’t disgraced yourself. But I’ve lost everything.”

  “My good Horse,” said the Hermit, who had approached them unnoticed because his bare feet made so little noise on that sweet, dewy grass. “My good Horse, you’ve lost nothing but your self-conceit. No, no, cousin. Don’t put back your ears and shake your mane at me. If you are really so humbled as you sounded a minute ago, you must learn to listen to sense. You’re not quite the great Horse you had come to think, from living among poor dumb horses. Of course you were braver and cleverer than them. You could hardly help being that. It doesn’t follow that you’ll be anyone very special in Narnia. But as long as you know you’re nobody very special, you’ll be a very decent sort of Horse, on the whole.”

  —The Horse and His Boy

  Why is it helpful for Bree to think of himself as nobody special? Do you think of yourself that way? What are the benefits and limits of such a philosophy?

  JANUARY 20

  Awakening Evil

  THE THING IN THE MIDDLE of the room was not exactly a table. It was a square pillar about four feet high and on it there rose a little golden arch from which there hung a little golden bell; and beside this there lay a little golden hammer to hit the bell with.

  “I wonder . . . I wonder . . . I wonder,” said Digory.

  “There seems to be something written here,” said Polly, stooping down and looking at the side of the pillar. . . .

  What it said was something like this—at least this is the sense of it though the poetry, when you read it there, was better:

  Make your choice, adventurous Stranger;

  Strike the bell and bide the danger,

  Or wonder, till it drives you mad,

  What would have followed if you had.

  “No fear!” said Polly. “We don’t want any danger.”

  “Oh, but don’t you see it’s no good?” said Digory. “We can’t get out of it now. We shall always be wondering what else would have happened if we had struck the bell. I’m not going home to be driven mad by always thinking of that. No fear!”

  “Don’t be so silly,” said Polly. “As if anyone would! What does it matter what would have happened?”

  “I expect anyone who’s come as far as this is bound to go on wondering till it sends him dotty. That’s the Magic of it, you see. I can feel it beginning to work on me already.”

  “Well, I don’t,” said Polly crossly. “And I don’t believe you do either. You’re just putting it on.”

  “That’s all you know,” said Digory. “It’s because you’re a girl. Girls never want to know anything but gossip and rot about people getting engaged.”. . .

  [Polly said,] “I’m off. I’ve had enough of this place. And I’ve had enough of you too—you beastly, stuck-up, obstinate pig!”

  “None of that!” said Digory in a voice even nastier than he meant it to be; for he saw Polly’s hand moving to her pocket to get hold of her yellow ring. I can’t excuse what he did next except by saying that he was very sorry afterward (and so were a good many other people). Before Polly’s hand reached her pocket, he grabbed her wrist, leaning across with his back against her chest. Then, keeping her other arm out of the way with his other elbow, he leaned forward, picked up the hammer, and struck the golden bell a light, smart tap.

  —The Magician’s Nephew

  Whom do you most sympathize with in this situation? Why?

  JANUARY 21

  How Do You Know It’s Not True?

  THE TWO OLDER ONES were really beginning to think that Lucy was out of her mind. They stood in the passage talking about it in whispers long after she had gone to bed.

  The result was the next morning they decided that they really would go and tell the whole thing to the Professor. “He’ll write to Father if he thinks there is really something wrong with Lu,” said Peter; “it’s getting beyond us.” So they went and knocked at the study door, and the Professor said “Come in,” and got up and found chairs for them and said he was quite at their disposal. Then he sat listening to them with the tips of his fingers pressed together and never interrupting, till they had finished the whole story. After that he said nothing for quite a long time. Then he cleared his throat and said the last thing either of them expected:

  “How do you know,” he asked, “that your sister’s story is not true?”

  “Oh, but—” began Susan, and then stopped. Anyone could see from the old man’s face that he was perfectly serious. Then Susan pulled herself together and said, “But Edmund said they had only been pretending.”

  “That is a point,” said the Professor, “which certainly deserves consideration; very careful consideration. For instance—if you will excuse me for asking the question—does your experience lead you to regard your brother or your sister as the more reliable? I mean, which is the more truthful?”

  “That’s just the funny thing about it, sir,” said Peter. “Up till now, I’d have said Lucy every time.”

  “And what do you think, my dear?” said the Professor, turning to Susan.

  “Well,” said Susan, “in general, I’d say the same as Peter, but this couldn’t be true—all this about the wood and the Faun.”

  “That is more than I know,” said the Professor, “and a charge of lying against someone whom you have always found truthful is a very serious thing; a very serious thing indeed.”

  “We were afraid it mightn’t even be lying,” said Susan; “we thought there might be something wrong with Lucy.”

  “Madness, you mean?” said the Professor quite coolly. “Oh, you can make your minds easy about that. One has only to look at her and talk to her to see that she is not mad.”

  “But then,” said Susan, and stopped. She had never dreamed that a grown-up would talk like the Professor and didn’t know what to think.

  “Logic!” said the Professor half to himself. “Why don’t they teach logic at these schools? There are only three possibilities. Either your sister is telling lies, or she is mad, or she is telling the truth. You know she doesn’t tell lies and it is obvious that she is not mad. For the moment then and unless any further evidence turns up, we must assume that she is telling the truth.”

  —The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe

  Why are Susan and Peter so surprised at the Professor’s opinion? Why do you think their first instinct is not to believe Lucy? When in your life have you had trouble reconciling belief with logic?

  JANUARY 22

  Minding Our Own Business

  BUT HOW COULD IT BE TRUE, SIR?” said Peter.

  “Why do you say that?” asked the Professor.<
br />
  “Well, for one thing,” said Peter, “if it was real why doesn’t everyone find this country every time they go to the wardrobe? I mean, there was nothing there when we looked; even Lucy didn’t pretend there was.”

  “What has that to do with it?” said the Professor.

  “Well, sir, if things are real, they’re there all the time.”

  “Are they?” said the Professor; and Peter did not know quite what to say.

  “But there was no time,” said Susan. “Lucy had had no time to have gone anywhere, even if there was such a place. She came running after us the very moment we were out of the room. It was less than a minute, and she pretended to have been away for hours.”

  “That is the very thing that makes her story so likely to be true,” said the Professor. “If there really is a door in this house that leads to some other world (and I should warn you that this is a very strange house, and even I know very little about it)—if, I say, she had got into another world, I should not be at all surprised to find that the other world had a separate time of its own; so that however long you stayed there it would never take up any of our time. On the other hand, I don’t think many girls of her age would invent that idea for themselves. If she had been pretending, she would have hidden for a reasonable time before coming out and telling her story.”

  “But do you really mean, sir,” said Peter, “that there could be other worlds—all over the place, just round the corner—like that?”

  “Nothing is more probable,” said the Professor, taking off his spectacles and beginning to polish them, while he muttered to himself, “I wonder what they do teach them at these schools.”

  “But what are we to do?” said Susan. She felt that the conversation was beginning to get off the point.

  “My dear young lady,” said the Professor, suddenly looking up with a very sharp expression at both of them, “there is one plan which no one has yet suggested and which is well worth trying.”

  “What’s that?” said Susan.

  “We might all try minding our own business,” said he. And that was the end of that conversation.

  —The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe

  Why does the Professor advise them to mind their own business? When does our concern for the well-being of others become problematic?

  JANUARY 23

  Pleased with Nothing

  THE NAME OF THE SHIP was Dawn Treader. She was only a little bit of a thing compared with one of our ships, or even with the cogs, dromonds, carracks and galleons which Narnia had owned when Lucy and Edmund had reigned there under Peter as the High King, for nearly all navigation had died out in the reigns of Caspian’s ancestors. When his uncle, Miraz the usurper, had sent the seven lords to sea, they had had to buy a Galmian ship and man it with hired Galmian sailors. But now Caspian had begun to teach the Narnians to be sea-faring folk once more, and the Dawn Treader was the finest ship he had built yet. She was so small that, forward of the mast, there was hardly any deck room between the central hatch and the ship’s boat on one side and the hen-coop (Lucy fed the hens) on the other. But she was a beauty of her kind, a “lady” as sailors say, her lines perfect, her colors pure, and every spar and rope and pin lovingly made. Eustace of course would be pleased with nothing, and kept on boasting about liners and motorboats and aeroplanes and submarines (“As if he knew anything about them,” muttered Edmund), but the other two were delighted with the Dawn Treader, and when they returned aft to the cabin and supper, and saw the whole western sky lit up with an immense crimson sunset, and felt the quiver of the ship, and tasted the salt on their lips, and thought of unknown lands on the Eastern rim of the world, Lucy felt that she was almost too happy to speak.

  —The Voyage of the Dawn Treader

  Why do some people fight magic and adventure, while others thrive in the unexpected? Which do you tend toward?

  JANUARY 24

  Puddleglum

  I’M TRYING TO CATCH A FEW EELS to make an eel stew for our dinner,” said Puddleglum. “Though I shouldn’t wonder if I didn’t get any. And you won’t like them much if I do.”

  “Why not?” asked Scrubb.

  “Why, it’s not in reason that you should like our sort of victuals, though I’ve no doubt you’ll put a bold face on it. All the same, while I am a catching them, if you two could try to light the fire—no harm trying—! The wood’s behind the wigwam. It may be wet. You could light it inside the wigwam, and then we’d get all the smoke in our eyes. Or you could light it outside, and then the rain would come and put it out. Here’s my tinder-box. You wouldn’t know how to use it, I expect.”

  But Scrubb had learnt that sort of thing on his last adventure. The children ran back together to the wigwam, found the wood (which was perfectly dry) and succeeded in lighting a fire with rather less than the usual difficulty. . . .

  “Now,” said Puddleglum. “Those eels will take a mortal long time to cook, and either of you might faint with hunger before they’re done. I knew a little girl—but I’d better not tell you that story. It might lower your spirits, and that’s a thing I never do. So, to keep your minds off your hunger, we may as well talk about our plans.”

  “Yes, do, let’s,” said Jill. “Can you help us to find Prince Rilian?”

  The Marsh-wiggle sucked in his cheeks till they were hollower than you would have thought possible. “Well, I don’t know that you’d call it help,” he said. “I don’t know that anyone can exactly help. It stands to reason we’re not likely to get very far on a journey to the North, not at this time of the year, with the winter coming on soon and all. And an early winter too, by the look of things. But you mustn’t let that make you down-hearted. Very likely, what with enemies, and mountains, and rivers to cross, and losing our way, and next to nothing to eat, and sore feet, we’ll hardly notice the weather. And if we don’t get far enough to do any good, we may get far enough not to get back in a hurry.”

  Both children noticed that he said “we,” not “you,” and both exclaimed at the same moment, “Are you coming with us?”

  “Oh yes, I’m coming of course. Might as well, you see. I don’t suppose we shall ever see the King back in Narnia, now that he’s once set off for foreign parts; and he had a nasty cough when he left. Then there’s Trumpkin. He’s failing fast. And you’ll find there’ll have been a bad harvest after this terrible dry summer. And I shouldn’t wonder if some enemy attacked us. Mark my words.”. . .

  “Look here!” said Scrubb, suddenly losing his temper, as people so easily do when they have been frightened. “I don’t believe the whole thing can be half as bad as you’re making out; any more than the beds in the wigwam were hard or the wood was wet. I don’t think Aslan would ever have sent us if there was so little chance as all that.”

  —The Silver Chair

  Why might Puddleglum always think about the worst-case scenario? Why is his outlook so frustrating to Scrubb? Who have you known who seems to always look on the dark side? Do you have any tendencies in that direction?

  JANUARY 25

  The Narnian Lords

  WAY! WAY! WAY!” came the voice. “Way for the White Barbarian King, the guest of the Tisroc (may he live forever)! Way for the Narnian lords.”. . .

  It was quite unlike any other party they had seen that day. The crier who went before it shouting, “Way, way!” was the only Calormene in it. And there was no litter; everyone was on foot. There were about half a dozen men and Shasta had never seen anyone like them before. For one thing, they were all as fair-skinned as himself, and most of them had fair hair. And they were not dressed like men of Calormen. Most of them had legs bare to the knee. Their tunics were of fine, bright, hardy colors—woodland green, or gay yellow, or fresh blue. Instead of turbans they wore steel or silver caps, some of them set with jewels, and one with little wings on each side. A few were bare-headed. The swords at their sides were long and straight, not curved like Calormene scimitars. And instead of being grave and mysterious like most Calor
menes, they walked with a swing and let their arms and shoulders go free, and chatted and laughed. One was whistling. You could see that they were ready to be friends with anyone who was friendly, and didn’t give a fig for anyone who wasn’t. Shasta thought he had never seen anything so lovely in his life.

  —The Horse and His Boy

  Why do the Narnian lords make such a favorable impression on Shasta? What do they represent to him? What might people notice about you if they saw you walking by?

  JANUARY 26

  Aslan Roars

  THE LIGHT WAS CHANGING. Low down in the east, Aravir, the morning star of Narnia, gleamed like a little moon. Aslan, who seemed larger than before, lifted his head, shook his mane, and roared.

  The sound, deep and throbbing at first like an organ beginning on a low note, rose and became louder, and then far louder again, till the earth and air were shaking with it. It rose up from that hill and floated across all Narnia. Down in Miraz’s camp men woke, stared palely in one another’s faces, and grasped their weapons. Down below that in the Great River, now at its coldest hour, the heads and shoulders of the nymphs, and the great weedy-bearded head of the river-god, rose from the water. Beyond it, in every field and wood, the alert ears of rabbits rose from their holes, the sleepy heads of birds came out from under wings, owls hooted, vixens barked, hedgehogs grunted, the trees stirred. In towns and villages mothers pressed babies close to their breasts, staring with wild eyes, dogs whimpered, and men leaped up groping for lights. Far away on the northern frontier the mountain giants peered from the dark gateways of their castles.

  —Prince Caspian

  What kind of emotions would you say Aslan’s roar stirs in those who hear it? How can one sound represent different things to different people? Where do you see that in our world today?

  JANUARY 27

  Real Magic