For our Relief Society book discussion this month we chose, "Voyage of the Dawn Treader" by CS Lewis. At mostly my insistence we are reading three books out of the Narnia series. I thought that the most important ones to read would be, "The Lion, the witch and the Wardrobe", "The Voyage of the Dawn Treader" and to get some closure we would finish with "The Last Battle". This is a completely different genre than most of the ladies usually read and unfortunately we have had some refuse to read the books or come to the discussion. As an introduction to the series I explained that these books are sort of like a parable for the Plan of Salvation.
As we were having the discussion this month one of the ladies said that this gives us good practice for reading Isiah or the parables of the Savior. There is the top level but when you think more about the book there is more meaning. True! We all agreed that the favorite part of the book was the 'undragoning' of Eustace. What a beautiful way of understand the Savior's role in repentance. I will quote...
He had turned into a dragon while he was asleep. Sleeping on a dragon's hoard with greedy, dragonish thoughts in his heart, he had become a dragon himself.
And it (Aslan) led me a long way into the mountains....and 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.....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.
"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....in a minute or two I just stepped out of it and I started to go down in 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....Well 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. ....
Then the lion said "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 feel the stuff peel off. 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 and threw me into the water. It smarted like anything but only for a moment. After that it became perfectly delicious...and then I saw why. I'd turned into a boy again.
We had a really good discussion and I am looking forward to next month's discussion on "The Last Battle" I recommend that everyone needs to read this series every few years or so. The very best thing would be to read them out loud with your children or grand children. You would be surprised how insightful children can be. My kids loved these books and were able to look for deeper meanings in the writings. Usually they can do this at about fourth or fifth grade. If they read them earlier they usually just get the superficial story.
