Narnia, Lucy and a Meaning for Life

   Days ago, I guess probably weeks ago, we set out on a project to read all of the Narnia books, All seven.

   I had never read them at all, had heard about them all my life, but figured I was past the correct age to take them up. My wife had read a couple but not the whole series.

   So I bought all seven and set to reading them out loud.

   First of all, I liked the stories..

   The heroes were good and the villains were bad..

   I liked the allegories..

   And I liked the ending paragraph, which were the last words in the last book:

      "And for us this is the end of of all the stories, and we can most truly say that they all lived happily ever after. But for them it was only the beginning of the real story. All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read: which goes on forever: in which every chapter is better than the one before."

   The books were great on many levels, the stories, the adventures, the symbolism, and the ending, as they made one think of the world we live in and the worlds beyond. Wrapping your mind about that is well worth the effort and puts our lives in perspective to the whole.

   And there were a couple of other things that helped us to enjoy them.

   There was a girl in the stories, and her name was Lucy. When we saw her in action and heard in our mind the words the author had given her, it reminded us of one of our grand daughters who has the same name. We could see her in the story with her smiles, wit and energy, giving us a reference point to real life in our world.

   And there was the fact that we did a lot of our reading the last thing in the day, right before bedtime. Much better to drift off to sleep with the stories in our minds than images of the Nightly News.

   We might even read them again one day.

   They were definitely worth the time.