Ye Olde Mom’s Imagination

The sign of a great writer is that once he is dead and no one can any longer have the opportunity to know him, you still feel as though you do when you read his works or at the very least that you want to know him or wistfully wish you could know him.

My earliest memories always involve a book.  The cream of these remembrances  feature my mother, my guide through the Land of Fiction, my usher down lanes of stories, my hostess amidst bands of thieves, hoards of goblins, and worlds of giants.  We would sit up in my bed and she seamlessly pieced together the pages in front of us.  Never once did it occur to me that she herself was not the author of my favorite part of the day.  Rather, my mother was the introduction into the world I still love most: the world of Make Believe.

The most frequent of our repeats, written by C.S. Lewis and George MacDonald (respectively), were the Chronicles of Narnia and the Princess and the Goblin series. We came back and back again to these tales, maybe because they were Mom’s favorites or maybe because I pestered her to do so.  Regardless, I always thought these two worlds somehow belonged to one another.  Little did I know, but they do.

You see, George MacDonald was the under-appreciated contemporary of C.S. Lewis.  Even if his writing style was, well, muddled at times, G.M.D. awoke imagination from the sleepy hills of Scotland and England and Wales through the stories he penned.  He always said that the greatest metaphor we have of God is that of the loving Father, because true fatherhood is at the core of all the universe, of all relationships.

Keanu Reeves, that bearer of truth in the late 1980s, has one of the most poignant lines on our situation in this life about dads: “You know, you need a license to buy a dog, to drive a car – you even need a license to catch a fish. But they’ll let any asshole be a father.”  And such is the world’s perspective on fatherhood at large. So what does it mean to read tales in which the father figure is what we always dreamed of – is it, alas, just make believe? Or can it be an achievable and always sought after goal?  Men who raise their children in faith and understanding love, and women who urge their husbands on to be the men they were created to be.

George MacDonald knew what it was to father children (he had eleven of them) and so as he wrote, he penned the kinds of characters you wish you were around or were yourself. In doing so, G.M.D. became one of those authors who I quickly thought I knew, even at age six.

The way I feel about C.S. Lewis is the same he felt about George.  Lewis said, “What I learned to love in [MacDonald’s writing] was goodness… What it actually did to me was to convert, even to baptize my imagination.” The legends MacDonald created set seeds in C.S.; any man who influenced my all-time favorite author so heavily is high on my list.

So. Good ol’ Clive Staples Lewis. I had heard before that he was heavily influenced by the countrysides in which he lived, but it never really struck me until I peaked a hilltop and saw stretching in front of me what surely was the Stone Table from Narnia.  The Stone Table on which Aslan the great Lion sacrificed himself for the traitor, the Stone Table around which the kings and queens of old rallied the remnant before going into battle against wicked Miraz.  Funnily enough, you’ve seen it dozens of times yourself, in photos and postcards and books.  Nowadays there’s a certain mystique surrounding the place.

Stonehenge.

Don’t let these photos fool you. It appears sunny and deliciously warm, when in reality a biting wind consumed my ears and fingers. Rob the Britt didn’t even notice the Arctic blast, of course, despite the fact that a Yeti from the Himalayas would have been miserable.  But enough of my Texan-whining.

The archeological explanations of Stonehenge vary, as you would expect, but at the very least “they” know roughly how it was built and how it looked hundreds and hundreds of years ago.  I won’t go into the nitty-gritty (if you are nerd enough, just look up Stonehenge Architecture.)

Most experts agree on a few main points, namely the general double-horseshoe configuration of the stones.  Before it was a major tourist attraction, I imagine it would be an ideal location to let your mind wander and envision all sorts of creatures and mythical stars.  We slowly circled the enclave in the wind.  And then it hit me: there is some form of this place in just about all of C.S.L.’s worlds.

(For Lewis lovers: Stone Table, Ramandu’s Island, and Cair Paravel in Narnia; the meeting place of Oyarsa in Out of the Silent Planet, the sending-off point for Ransom in Perelandra, the discovery of Merlin in the woods in That Hideous Strength.  Just to name a few.)

For the last four years, I’ve carried at least one C.S. Lewis book with me at all times.  At this point, it feels like I know him, or maybe I knew him. But now, walking the same hills he did and sitting in the same pubs and watching the same sunrises…. it is bizarre.  It’s as though I had this other father figure, or maybe grandfather figure, growing up who I never knew, but am getting to know by following around the wisps of his ghost.  To see what he loved, to smell and hear what inspired him to create these other worlds so many people love… I tend to dearly love individuals who also love Lewis. There’s a common thread of Humanity there that forms an easy camaraderie.

But that’s just what the Gospels are, aren’t they? A calling together of people who love the same things, the same Person. Wisps of the ghost of the One who loved and still loves us best.  Echoing whispers of a father/brother figure who you genuinely like so much, it’s hard not to become obsessed with and follow around like a child. I love this game of tracking a lost loved one like Lewis and somehow feeling the distance of time and unknowing-ness close to a manageable gap.

Hopefully this business of following the trail of writers who inspire me to live well is a practice run for the rest of my life.  Hopefully the rest of my life, and the rest of your’s, will be a constant chase after the bits of God that are obvious enough for me to find.

Looking for hidden places and bushels of blackberries-

SO GOOD–