S7E16 – LC 3 – “From Aslan to Jesus”

David, Matt and Andrew conclude Lewis’ collection of Letters to Children.

S7E16: “From Aslan to Jesus” (Download)

Show Notes

Introduction

Quote-of-the-week

Laurence can’t really love Aslan more than Jesus, even if he feels that’s what he is doing. For the things he loves Aslan for doing or saying are simply the things Jesus really did and said. So that when Laurence thinks he is loving Aslan, he is really loving Jesus: and perhaps loving Him more than he ever did before.

C.S. Lewis, Letters to Children

Chit-Chat

• C. S. Lewis at the Church Of The Messiah.com. There will be a conference on April 26th-27th, 2024.
• The Last Battle by C.S. Lewis

Toast

• Matt: Lagavulin 16 and Old-Fashioned
• Andrew: Laphroaig Càirdeas
• David: Best Day Brewing Hazy IPA

• They toasted Patreon supporter, Joe Sanders!

Discussion

Bucket #1: “Playful Lewis”

01. “Animals and Doodling”

I am getting to be quite friends with an old Rabbit who lives in the Wood at Magdalen. I pick leaves off the trees for him because he can’t reach up to the branches and he eats them out of my hand. One day he stood up on his hind legs and put his front paws against me, he was so greedy. I wrote this about it:

A funny old man had a habit 
Of giving a leaf to a rabbit. 
At first it was shy 
But then, by and by, 
It got rude and would stand up to grab it. 

C.S. Lewis, Letters to Children (His goddaughter, Sarah Neylan)

Reepicheep in your coloured picture has just the right perky, cheeky expression. I love real mice. There are lots in my rooms in College but I have never set a trap. When I sit up late working they poke their heads out from behind the curtains just as if they were saying, “Hi! Time for you to go to bed. We want to come out and play.”

C.S. Lewis, Letters to Children

It is a dreadfully cold, wet summer here. The cuckoo…. Only speaks about once a day and even the squirrels are depressed.

C.S. Lewis, Letters to Children

There’s just no news at all about Cambridge cats. I never see one. No news and no mews.

C.S. Lewis, Letters to Children

I never knew a guinea-pig that took any notice of humans… But the guinea pigs go well with your learning German. If they talked, I’m sure that is the language they’d speak.

C.S. Lewis, Letters to Children, October 1955

I’ve been having a sebacious…cyst lanced on the back of my neck: the most serious result is that I can never at present get my whole head & shoulders under water in my bath. (I like getting down like a Hippo with only my nostrils out).

C.S. Lewis, Letters to Children

Angels can fly because they can take themselves lightly.

G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy (Chapter 7)

02. “Continuing conversations and friendships”

How exciting to be both an opera singer and a cellist.

C.S. Lewis, Letters to Children (29th December, 1962)

Friendship is the greatest of worldly goods. Certainly to me it is the chief happiness of life. If I had to give a piece of advice to a young man about a place to live, I think I should say, ‘sacrifice almost everything to live where you can be near your friends.’

C.S. Lewis, The Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis

“Henri Nouwen once asked Mother Teresa for spiritual direction. Spend one hour each day in adoration of your Lord, she said, and never do anything you know is wrong. Follow this and you’ll be fine.”

John Eldredge, Desire: The Journey We Must Take to Find the Life God Offers

03. “Unexpected Language”

Really awesome!

C.S. Lewis, Letters to Children

• Did C. S. Lewis have a vocal fry?

I never thought of your very sensible idea of doing both together. How many plates do you smash in a month?”

C.S. Lewis, Letters to Children

I wish I was good at Maths!

C.S. Lewis, Letters to Children

I am thrilled to hear that your street runs North as well as South, because in this country all streets (and even country roads) run in two directions at the same time. They are trained to change the moment you turn around. What is even cleverer of them they turn their right side into their left side at the same time. I’ve never known it fail.

C.S. Lewis, Letters to Children

04. “A humble ass”

It makes me, I think, more humble than proud to know that Aslan has allowed me to be the means of making Him more real to you. Because He could have used anyone – as He made a donkey preach a good sermon to Balaam…

…Perhaps, in return, you will sometimes say a prayer for me?

C.S Lewis, Letters to Children, September 1957

Among the asses (stubborn I as they)
I see my Savior where I looked for hay;

The Nativity

• Stan Mattson recently died

Bucket #2: “Literary Advice”

05. “Pentameter, Prose, and Poetry”

[Read the Vulgate for] easy Latin reading to keep one’s Latin up.

C.S. Lewis, Letters to Children, July 18, 1957

• Andrew’s mention of Latin being “fun” made David think of this scene from The Life of Brian:

• Concerning giving feedback, Andrew referenced Bandersnatch: C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and the Creative Collaboration of the Inklings by Diana Pavlac Glyer, as well as Lewis’ feedback regarding The Lays of Beleriand by J.R.R. Tolkien.

You know, my dear, it’s only doing you harm to write vers libre. After you have been writing strict, rhyming verse for about 10 years it will be time to venture on the free sort. At present it only encourages you to write prose not so good as your ordinary prose and type it like verse. Sorry to be a pig!

C.S. Lewis, Letters to Children

06. “Corpus feedback”

…Do you think the Dark Island is too frightening for small children?

C.S. Lewis, Letters to Children

It was nice to hear from you again. The eldila are meant to be angels, not fairies. Haven’t you noticed that they are always about Maledil’s business? I admit I made the birth-rates of the Hrossa a bit too low: but of course you  must remember I was picturing a world in its extreme old age – like an old man tranquilly and happily proceeding to his end.

C.S. Lewis, Letters to Children (Martin Kilmer)

…the 3 sisters are not very like goddesses. They’re just human souls. Psyche has a vocation and becomes a saint. Orual lives the practical life and is, after man sins, saved. As for Redival – well, we’ll all hope the best for everyone!

C.S. Lewis, Letters to Children

I am so glad you like Till We Have Faces, because so few people do. It is my biggest “flop” for years, and so of course I think it my best book.

C.S. Lewis, Letters to Children (20th April, 1959)

Your letter was cheering, for Till We Have Faces has attracted less attention than any book I ever wrote. The names are just “made up”. I expect some Jungianisms do come in but the main conscious framework is Christian, not Junian. Divine Love gradually conquers, first, a Pagan (and almost savage) soul’s misconception of the Divine (as Ungit), then, shallow “enlightenment” (the Fox), and, most of all, her jealous of the real God, whom she hates till near the end because she wants Psyche to be entirely hers.

C.S. Lewis, Letters to Children (26th March, 1963)

• Lewis includes Perelandra alongside Till We Have Faces alongside his favourites.

07. “Longing for a point”

[Her first reading of this story was three years earlier when she experience what she described years later as ‘an indefinable stirring and longing.’]

C.S. Lewis, Letters to Children (Editor’s Note)

I am not quite sure what you meant about ‘silly adventure stories without my point.’ If they are silly, then having a point won’t save them. But if they are good in themselves, and if by a point you mean some truth about the real world which one can take out of the story, I am not sure I agree. At least, I think that looking for a ‘point’ in that sense may prevent one sometimes from getting the real effect of the story in itself.

C.S. Lewis, Letters to Children

As iron sharpens iron,
    so one person sharpens another.

Proverbs 27:17

Now I see that, all along, I was assuming a posterity
Of gentle hearts: someone, however distant in the depths of time,
Who could pick up our signal, who could understand a story. There won’t be.

C.S. Lewis, Re-adjustment

08. “Good Grammar”

…Of course there are no right and wrong answers about language in the sense in which there are right and wrong answers in Arithmetic. “Good English” is whatever educated people talk; so that what is good in one place or time would not be so in another…. Don’t take any notice of teachers and text-books in such matters.

C.S. Lewis, Letters to Children

Bucket #3: “Narnia Business”

09. “Factoids”

The stone table is meant to remind one of Moses’ table.

C.S. Lewis, Letters to Children

10. “More please, Mr. Lewis!”

You must have often wondered how the old professor in TLWW could have believed all the children told him about Narnia. The reason was that he had been there himself as a little boy. This book tells you how he went there, and (of course that was ages and ages ago by Narnia time) how he say Aslan creating Narnia, and how the White Witch first got into that world and why there was a lamp-post in the middle of the forest.

C.S. Lewis, Letters to Children

I hope… you are going to write another one soon. If you don’t, what am I going to read when I am nine, ten, eleven, and twelve?

Johnathan (8 years old), Letters to Children

I’m afraid I’ve said all I had to say about Narnia, and there will be no more of these stories. But why don’t you try to write one yourself? I was writing stories before I was your age, and if you try, I’m I sure you would find it great fun. Do!

C.S. Lewis, Letter to Sydney

11. “The Christian Connection”

You are mistaken when you think that everything in the books ‘represents’ something in this world… I did not say to myself: ‘let us represent Jesus as he really is in our world by a Lion in Narnia’: I said ‘Let us suppose that there were a land like Narnia and that the Son of God, as He became a man in our world, became a Lion there, and then imagine what would happen.

C.S. Lewis, Letters to Children

As to Aslan’s other name, well I want you to guess. Has there never been anyone in this world who (1.) Arrived at the same time as Father Christmas. (2.) Said he was the son of the Great Emperor. (3.) Gave himself up for someone else’s fault to be jeered at and killed by wicked people. (4.) Came to life again (5.) Is sometimes spoken of as a Lamb (see the end of the Dawn Treader). Don’t you really know His name in this world. Think it over and let me know your answer!

C.S. Lewis, Letters to Children

“Are -are you there [in our world] too, Sir?” said Edmund.

“I am,” said Aslan. “But there I have another name. You must learn to know me by that name. This was the very reason why you were brought to Narnia, that by knowing me here for a little, you may know me better there.”

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

Of course you’re right about the Narnian books being better than the tracts; at least, in the way a picture is better than a map.

C.S. Lewis, Letters to Children

12. “The fate of Susan”

Peter gets back to Narnia in it [The Last Battle]. I am afraid Susan does not. Haven’t you noticed in the two you have read that she is rather fond of being too grownup. I am sorry to say that side of her got stronger and she forgot about Narnia.

C.S. Lewis, Letters to Children

The books don’t tell us what happened to Susan. She is left alive in this world at the end, having by then turned into a rather silly, conceited young woman. But there is plenty of time for her to mend, and perhaps she will get to Aslan’s country in the end – in her own way.

C.S. Lewis, Letters to Children

13. “Letters to Lawrence”

Dear Laurence, I think I agree with your order for reading the books more than with your mother’s.

 C.S. Lewis, Letters to Children

Laurence can’t really love Aslan more than Jesus, even if he feels that’s what he is doing. For the things he loves Aslan for doing or saying are simply the things Jesus really did and said. So that when Laurence thinks he is loving Aslan, he is really loving Jesus: and perhaps loving Him more than he ever did before.

If I were Laurence I’d just say in my prayers something like this: “Dear God, if the things I’ve been thinking and feeling about those books are things You don’t like and are bad for me, please take away those feelings and thoughts. But if they are not bad, then please stop me from worrying about them. . . . And if Mr. Lewis has worried any other children by his books or done them any harm, then please forgive him and help him never to do it again.”

C.S. Lewis, Letters to Children

Wrap-Up

Concluding Thoughts

• The Latin Letters of C.S. Lewis by C.S. Lewis

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