Spiritual Care Sunday #14
I have not read the Narnia books in quite some time, but recently, I came across this wonderful passage about Eustace being "undragoned." What a wonderful word- UNDRAGONED! It seems that this might be a bit of how we could describe some of the transformation work of CPE!
“Well, anyway, I looked up and saw the very last thing I expected: a huge lion coming slowly towards 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 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.
“I knew it was a well because you could see the water bubbling up from the bottom of it: but it was a lot bigger than most wells - like a very big, round bath with marble steps going down into it. The water was as clear as anything and I thought if I could get in there and bathe it would ease the pain in my leg. But the lion told me I must undress first. Mind you, I don't know if he said any words out loud or not.
“I was just going to say that I couldn't undress because I hadn't any clothes on when I suddenly thought that dragons are snaky sort of things and snakes can cast their skins. Oh, of course, thought I, that's what the lion means. So I started scratching myself and my scales began coming off all over the place. And then I scratched a little deeper and, instead of just scales coming off here and there, my whole skin started peeling off beautifully, like it does after an illness, or as if I was a banana. In a minute or two I just stepped out of it. I could see it lying there beside me, looking rather nasty. It was a most lovely feeling. So I started to go down into the well for my bathe.
“But just as I was going to put my feet into the water I looked down and saw that they were all hard and rough and wrinkled and scaly just as they had been before. Oh, that's all right, said I, it only means I had another smaller suit on underneath the first one, and I'll have to get out of it too. So I scratched and tore again and this underskin peeled off beautifully and out I stepped and left it lying beside the other one and went down to the well for my bathe.
“Well, exactly the same thing happened again. And I thought to myself, oh dear, how ever many skins have I got to take off? For I was longing to bathe my leg. So I scratched away for the third time and got off a third skin, just like the two others, and stepped out of it. But as soon as I looked at myself in the water I knew it had been no good.
“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 knobbly-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. You'd think me simply phony if I told you how I felt about my own arms. I know they've no muscle and are pretty moldy compared with Caspian's, but I was so glad to see them.
“After a bit the lion took me out and dressed me –“
“Dressed you. With his paws?”
“Well, I don't exactly remember that bit. But he did somehow or other: in new clothes - the same I've got on now, as a matter of fact. And then suddenly I was back here. Which is what makes me think it must have been a dream.”
“No. It wasn't a dream,” said Edmund.
“Why not?”
“Well, there are the clothes, for one thing. And you have been - well, un-dragoned, for another.”
“What do you think it was, then?” asked Eustace.
“I think you've seen Aslan,” said Edmund.
The Voyage of the Dawn Treader – Chapter 7
The author writes, "Eustace is a caricature of all our own lusts, hypocrisy, and self-centeredness. I can’t help but read Lewis’ own past into the creation of this child, if for no other reason than his transformation scene – as Edmund refers to it, his “un-dragoning”. Eustace is allowed to narrate the tale, lending a rare moment of first-person perspective to this series. The narration comes from someone who knows. One cannot simply imagine up this story – it comes from experience. Lewis scholar Dr. Michael Ward calls this scene (found in chapter seven, “How the Adventure Ended”) the “microcosm of the whole novel”.
“‘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 and let him do it.'”
Eustace’s attempts to shed his own skin had felt satisfying and perhaps seemed promising. But he was unable to bring himself down to his boy-skin. Even in handing himself over to the Great and Terrible Lion, he is unprepared for the pain of being stripped bare.
For some of us in these seasons, it may feel as though Aslan is not peeling the whole skin off in one great painful blow, but is drawing out the anguish by peeling back a layer at a time. At times I feel he is forcing me to examine each set of scales in its opalescent hues, its scabby, knobby hardness – compelling me to face how deeply dragon I am. I am tired. I am bitter. I feel like the lesson has been learned a thousand times. What is repentance, anyway? What good does it do us? How can our contrition outshine our shame? How may we truly change?
“‘Then he caught hold of me – I didn’t like that very much for I was very tender underneath now that I’d no skin on – and threw me into the water… After a bit the lion took me out and dressed me… in new clothes.'”
But we hold on to the promise of the new set of clothes awaiting us. Lewis understood these faltering steps, likely recalling his own ongoing journey through sanctification. “To be strictly accurate,” he assures, “he began to be a different boy. He had relapses. There were still many days when he could be very tiresome. But most of those I shall not notice. The cure had begun.” (Emphasis mine.)
As for me, I praise the Great Lion for my Edmunds (“You were only an ass, but I was a traitor” – oh dear, sweet, merciful Edmund), but I’m not sure how many more of these old skins I can bear to look at. It’s time to own up to them once and for all, to do this work I dread most in all the world. I don’t know what comes next, and how I hate being left so raw. Kyrie eleison."
https://letallbewick.wordpress.com/2018/04/17/undragoned/
The Lament of Eustace Scrubb
song by the Oh Hellos
So here's a toast to "undragoning" as we continue in this CPE journey together. I give thanks to God who is not finished with us and who lovingly keeps drawing us deeper into His love, and I give thanks to God for you who are helping me to see more clearly bit by bit...
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