The Light Where Stories Begin & End

C.S. Lewis once said of humans that "[w]e seek an enlargement of our being. We want to be more than ourselves. …We want to see with other eyes, imagine with other imaginations; to feel with other hearts as well as our own…We demand windows.” I believe that stories offer us exactly this, and that by choosing to peer through those windows we may develop new ways of seeing and acting within the world and ultimately become more loving humans who inspire the same in others.

In this blog and others to come, I invite you to peer into the stories I love, and discover what they have helped me to see, imagine, and feel. If you are inspired to read one of them, I'd love to hear your thoughts! And if you have a story that has changed you - I'd welcome you to share that as well.

It seems fitting to begin this series with a book inspired by the author of the quote above, Once Upon a Wardrobe by Patti Callahan. After all, as Jack shares with Megs in Callahan's work, "[e]very life should be guided and enriched by one book or another, don't you agree? Certainly, every formative moment in my life has been enriched or informed by a book. You must be very careful about what you choose to read - unless you want to stay stuck in your opinions and hard-boiled thought, you must be very careful."

If, like me, you visited the occasional fantasy world as a child, the title may spark a memory - perhaps one of a lamppost in a snowy field, or a lion both wildly fierce and wondrously loving. Callahan's book follows Megs as she develops a life-changing friendship with C.S. "Jack" Lewis in order to discover for her dying brother where Narnia comes from. Set in Oxford just after The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe was published, easter eggs abound, but Narnia is not the focus. Megs' quest, her hero's journey, is less about finding answers, and more about experiencing the heart-and-soul-growth needed to discover joy in and after tragedy.

Megs has a number of sit-downs with Jack throughout the book, and at each one, he tells her stories of his life - his experiences as a child, a schoolboy, during both world wars, and his time at Oxford. Through his stories he introduces her to his family, his teachers, and his friends (including Tolkien and the other Inklings). To her frustration, what he does not offer her are "straight answers" to her questions about the origins of Narnia and its inhabitants. With her love of math and physics, Megs seeks answers, concrete, clear, repeatable facts and solutions. How often in life do we find ourselves wanting to skip to the end, hoping for the answer to be given to us, focusing so hard on the goal that the beauty of the journey is missed altogether?

But it isn't just the beauty of the journey that matters, it's what we learn along the way, and how we can apply that knowledge in the future.

When I was in high school, I held pitched battles with my stepdad, a math professor, about the need to show my work - after all, if I can give you the answer, why do I need to explain how I got there? Like Megs, I believed the answer was the part that had value, the rest was noise. It was much later when I realized that the systems he was trying to teach me would provide the skills I would need to solve more than just the problem in front of me.

In one of Jack's stories, he speaks of getting off the train in Oxford and being flooded by disappointment because his first view did not meet his expectations...only to find that he'd stepped out of the wrong side of train station and walked into the town of Botley. Oxford was actually behind him, and once he turned around it was as glorious as he had dreamed. Like Megs, many of us live lives in which "pain, death, and joy seem to bump into each other in [our] live[s]." It can be so easy to focus on the negative, from the life changing to the mundane. Jack's story reminds us that something as simple as a change of perspective can have immense results.

Callahan's book empowers us to take the aspects of our lives that ache, and through the magic of our spells, stories, and actions, turn them into something beautiful, something that would never otherwise have been. She states very simply through Jack's voice that "...every human interaction is eternally important," and that even if this turn out differently than we want, it is going to be okay, because it is.

Stories, myths, fairy-tales - they can make us remember things, people, and selves we have forgotten, they can change us in ways that can only be felt, and just like the people within them, they can change over time, allowing us to interpret new wisdom. Before the story ends, Megs comes to understand the purpose of words, of stories, very differently. Rather than as means to an end or an answer, she understands that our lives and our stories are deeply interconnected, flowing in and out of each other.

Returning for a moment to Lewis's belief that we desire to be more than ourselves, to see, imagine, and feel as others do, for me, this story deepened my understanding of the power of mindset, the gift of connection, and the joy of the unexpected journey. It also sent me on a quest to find a word (and I do love words) that represents the magical feeling or knowing that we are surrounded by more mystery than we can understand, and the humble awe that is felt in that moment, and I found that word in French, émerveillement.

Thank you for your time and your attention, there is no more meaningful gift.