aslan allegory
discovering words that seem to reveal such a depth of my insidious manner in which i deal with revelation. it is indeed painful...but yet at the end...there is the hope. that comes...it surprises me deeply.
excerpted from Chronicles of Narnia, "The Voyage of the Dawn Treader" by C.S. Lewis.
"I looked up and saw the very last thing I expected: a huge lion
coming slowly toward me. And one queer thing was that there was no
moon last night, but there was moonlight where the lion was. So it
came nearer and nearer. I was terribly afraid of it. You may think
that, being a dragon, I could have knocked any lion out easily enough.
But it wasn't that kind of fear. I wasn't afraid of it eating me, I
was just afraid of it -- if you can understand. Well, it came close up
to me and looked straight into my eyes. And I shut my eyes tight. But
that wasn't any good because it told me to follow it."
"You mean it spoke?"
"I don't know. Now that you mention it, I don't think it did. But
it told me all the same. And I knew I'd have to do what it told me, so
I got up and followed it. And it led me a long way into the mountains.
And there was always this moonlight over and round the lion wherever
we went. So at last when we came to the top of a mountain I'd never
seen before and on the top of this mountain there was a garden - trees
and fruit and everything. In the middle of it there was a well. . . .
"Then 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.
You know -- if you've ever picked the scab off a sore place. It hurts
like billy -- oh but it is such fun to see it coming away."
"I know exactly what you mean," said Edmund.
"Well, he peeled the beastly stuff right off -- just as I thought
I'd done it myself the other three times, only they hadn't hurt -- and
there it was lying on the grass: only ever so much thicker, and
darker, and more knobly-looking than the others had been. And there
was I as smooth and soft as a peeled switch and smaller than I had
been. Then he caught hold of me -- I didn't like that much for I was
very tender underneath now that I'd no skin on -- and threw me into
the water. It smarted like anything but only for a moment. After that
it became perfectly delicious and as soon as I started swimming and
splashing I found that all the pain had gone from my arm. And then I
saw why. I'd turned into a boy again."
