As Pearl and I have been preparing for our trip for Vietnam and Cambodia, we’ve rented several movies to allow us to unplug and just relax for a couple of hours (movies for a storyteller are like a giant sack of catnip for a cat!).
Saturday morning, we found ourselves like 7 year old kids, curled up on the couch, blankets on our toes, bowls of cereal in our hands, our hair still in the shape of our pillows, and our attention held captive by the story and imagery of Narnia: Voyage of the Dawn Treader.
It’s an amazing movie. Here’s the link to trailer if you haven’t seen it yet. In fact, here’s a link to redbox so you can reserve it near you for tonight!
Why I’m writing about storytelling and Narnia the morning Pearl and I are about to leave for Southeast Asia isn’t because I’m out of coffee and I’m drinking tea, it’s because the last chapter of the movie has haunted me since I watched it (haunted in a good way, like Casper the ghost is a good haunt).
The last chapter involves the children finally arriving on the shores of Aslan's country. Aslan meets them on the shores, and he tells them what lays ahead for each of them. He doesn't share too many details to spoil the adventure but reveals just enough to help each of them to take their next step. He sends Lucy and Edmund back home, finally ready to care for their own world. Eustace is sent home transformed from the annoying, whiney, and pompous cousin to a humble and caring friend with the hope of returning to Narnia someday. Prince Caspian realizes he needs to stop fighting to get back what was taken from him and to start caring for what has been given. The whole thing is a very cool moment in the film.
But the moment that caused tears to form in my eyes and then grow to falling from my face and demand Kleenexes to be found (remember a good story stirs the emotions) was when Reepicheep (the heroic and comical mouse that all little kids fall in love with) is granted his life’s wish of finally getting to see Aslan’s country. To sail beyond the wall of water and see the place he’s only dreamed of.
Now here’s what caused the flood works kick in. For those of you new to the story Aslan personifies God and his country Heaven. For Reepicheep to be granted his wish is for him to finally get to see heaven, and for him to get Heaven he must take a short boat ride beyond the shores he now stands on.
Once permission is given for him to see his new home joyful hugs are given, hugs that all know will not be repeated until they all follow in his footsteps and then he turns and scurries towards the water. As he approaches the edge a tiny boat just perfect for him awaits, almost like Aslan had already known what he needed before he even asked. This tiny comical warrior gleefully starts to push into the water and as so doing pulls out his swords, shoves it deep into the stand like a flag pole and declares “Where I’m going, this is no longer needed.” And at this my eyes now start to water again!
“Where I’m going this is no longer needed!”
Oh how I can’t wait for those days!
Days when the battles and junk of this world are over and the many battles we all face each day are done and we can each declare this fight is over.
I think of where Pearl and I will be in a few short hours. A land rippled with bullets, death and genocide. Oh, how I want their fighting to be done, the terror to be over and the wounds to be healed. They’re wounds today may not bleed due to a bullet but the bullets of forty years ago are still wounding a nation.
I think of the young girls who we will see in Cambodia who are trafficked against their wills. Fighting for some since of humanity, fighting for life, fighting for escape from the hellish life they have been trapped in. When will their fighting be over!
I think of students we work with each week. Fighting a sex crazed culture that continually declares their appearance to not be good enough, them too not be good enough. They daily fight for a self worth greater then their sex appeal.
I think of students who find themselves fighting their own desires. Desires that some declare as wrong, others as acceptable. Their identity, faith, and worth being caught in the cross fire of these warring camps. Straight? Gay? Bi? What really matters? Who am I? Am I worthy of love? Am I a mistake? Are the questions that land as hard as bombs.
I think of spouses who are cheated on, abandoned, and left like unwanted trinkets at a thrift shop.
Reepicheep, Oh how I long for the day to declare the wars of this world to be over! To say peace has come and the instruments we use to inflict pain on ourselves and others are no longer needed and to turn these heinous objects of hurt into a flag post pointing the way for a better land, a better life.
Oh Reepicheep tell me the stories from Aslan’s country! Tell me of a place with no more tears and no more pain, make the imagines come alive in my mind and my senses to dance in their embrace. Oh tell me of such a place!
Cause I now stand not on the shores of Aslan’s country but along the path to it. I shout as loud as I can to keep fighting, keep pushing, keep rejecting the junk of this world and push on, oh people push on, cause a better land is coming, a better home awaits, a home with no more tears, no more sorrow, no more pain, a place where not a jolly ol’ lion will meet us but God himself.
People have all kinds of twisted views of who God is and what he isn’t. But for me, today, the image of God that rings loud in my heart is the image of the one who brings peace to this world, peace to our lives, and who declares the fighting of this life is over.
God, As Pearl and I set towards an adventure in a few minutes in Southeast Asia, may we become masterful storytellers. May you open our senses to drink deep of what we experience, and may you help us to process in such a way that points not to just the broken images of this world but the coming peace. May we learn to tell the story of what’s to come and may we learn to tell it well.
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