The way of imagination

     In today’s passage, the tragic narrative of Genesis 3 – 11 finally turns the corner.  With the call of Abram, hope is restored for a future where the Creator’s project for humanity can go forward… RECAPPING…      Genesis 3: Out of Eden.   The first two humans in the biblical narrative disobeyed God and ate of the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of good and evil (Gn. 3.1-7).  In his (merciful) judgment, God then threw the man and the woman out of the Garden of Eden, thereby removing their access to the Tree of Life and thus preventing them from attaining to immortality in their rebellious state (Gn. 3.22-24).  Even in the midst of judgment, the Creator remains committed to his creatures, and does not destroy them for their rebellion, but rather takes a fatherly stance vis-à-vis the primal pair and clothes them in animal skins and directs them toward an – admittedly harsh – future, but a future nonetheless....

WHO IS THE TRUE RULER OF NARNIA?   Towards the end of his life,  C.S. Lewis  (1898 – 1963)  began to write children’s books.  He began with a supposition – suppose that Jesus had been incarnated into a world of sentient, rational animals ?  What would that look like…?  In The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (1950; movie : 2005), the four Pevensie children – Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy – stumble through the wardrobe into Narnia and discover this magical world to be “frozen” in a state of perpetual winter under the rule of the White Witch.  Before long, they begin to hear tell of a certain “Aslan” who left Narnia some time ago, is the sworn enemy of the White Witch, and whose imminent return is rumoured throughout Narnia.  In fact, so the children are told, it is Aslan who is to blame for Narnia’s sad state of affairs: “always winter, but never Christmas”.  Once the four siblings meet Mr. and Mrs. Beaver, the rodent couple tell ...