26 May 2025

We were at a musical version of ‘The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe’ recently. It was a spell-binding event with song, dance, some magic, a life-sized puppet of Aslan, the lion and a faithful rendering of the novel by CS Lewis.

The novel empowers children in unexpected ways. It involves animals and engages the natural world. It celebrates the defeat of evil. Above all, it has the Gospel at its heart in a wintry landscape which is transformed by love.

My copy of the novel was bought for 3/6d and has beautiful line drawings by Pauline Baynes. The front cover features  Aslan dancing with Susan and Lucy. As children it inspired my brother and I to use our imaginations and create our own escape into Narnia.

We couldn’t get there through a wardrobe but through a window in our granny’s bedroom which led out into a field and down to a burn. The window  had a very large sill. When it was not leading us into Narnia, the window sill became for us a stage in our very own theatre.

In the Gospels, Jesus is likened to two animals -  the  lamb that was slain and the lion of Judah which was victorious. Aslan, the Lion,  feeds off the Biblical imagination and retells the Easter Gospel in a remarkably creative way without churches, theology or religion! It is a masterpiece!

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