Dear Aslan

To, 

Aslan the Great,

the King and Lord of Narnia, and son of the Emperor-Beyond-the-Sea, 

C/o Mr CS Lewis, 

Chronicles of Narnia series



Dear Aslan,

Your name was enough.

The first time that Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy Pevensie heard your name, “each one of the children felt something jump in its inside.”

I have a similar story to share. The first time I read your name, I felt a delicious thrill coursing through my veins.

I was reading The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, and I was so entranced that I followed it up by reading the other six books in the Chronicles of Narnia series. I read the books, looking not for the Pevensie children, but for you, knowing you were something special. A golden, talking lion with a big shaggy mane in a work of fantasy, you were obviously not an ordinary lion.

Mind you, I was no kid then. My older daughter, La Nina, was a bun in the oven when I read about you, so perhaps I was reading as much for myself as I was reading for her.

And so, I thrilled to the reading.

You loved the four Pevensie children as much as you loved the least of the animals in Narnia. You offered the White Witch your own life so that the life of Edmund Pevensie may be spared, when you could easily have swiped her with your great big paw. And then you defeated death and the White Witch too, ending her terrible wintry reign over Narnia and bringing spring and joy to the land. 

My pulse quickened as the pieces of the puzzle fell into place. The parallels with the Biblical story of the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus were unmistakable. Undeniable.

It was much later that I read about Lewis’ motivations in writing the book, and it confirmed what I had suspected all along. That I hadn’t imagined the Christian symbolism. It was all real.

The reading of the book felt like a breathtaking experience. As if I were reading it out in loud whispers. 

Very quickly I became a child too, experiencing the wonder and the awe that children feel when they come face-to-face with something they have never encountered before. Something that is more fantastic than the greatest inventions that their imaginations could have conjured up.

You were indeed the embodiment of all that is Good and Just. And each time the Pevensie children prayed for you to come help them, you did.

When Mr Beaver told the children that Aslan "isn't safe. But he's good," he was expressing the edginess of intimate familiarity with a figure who inspired awe and reverence and deep love in the same breath. Not a tame lion, by any means.

I wonder what it would have been like to come to know you as a child. Someday I shall introduce La Nina and El Nino to you. We shall read your story together, and then I will be able to see you anew through their eyes.

I hope they will be convinced like me that “we are all between the paws of the true Aslan.”