There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb...

and he deserved to know he was loved as a dragon-and as a boy.

We were raised to hate Eustace. It is both ironic and telling I suppose, that we were “raised” to hate anyone- albeit, a fictional someone. But the fact remains.

In C.S. Lewis’s classic children’s series, “The Chronicles of Narnia” we’re introduced to a character who is supposed to exemplify everything ugly about humanity. It did more than that for me, which I’ll tell you after a brief recap.

In the fifth book, “The Voyage of the Dawn Treader,” Eustace’s bent toward greed and selfishness led him to a dragon’s lair full of treasure. Eustace fell fast asleep atop the piles of gold after slipping a gold ring around his leg for safekeeping and awakened to find that he has become a dragon himself.

He is at first delighted at this discovery, but that delight quickly spirals into despair and loneliness as he discovers how cut off he is from community, and finally from pain as the gold ring becomes tight and his leg swollen with constriction.

Aslan found Eustace in agony and led him to a pool of water with the instruction that he had to “undress” before getting in. Eustace tried to peel off his dragon skin to no avail- it would only take a brutal lion’s claw to rip the skin from his body before he could finally soak in the pool and be renewed.

While this allegory is often used to describe our “sinful nature”, as an object lesson for those who desire things, “not of God” and displayed the violent act of tearing skin with claws as redemptive, this communicated four things for me as a child:

1. Our hearts were evil, full of greed and not to be trusted

2. To want things simply to want them will lead to imminent disaster and pain

3. The only way to “recover” from our humanity is to suffer for it

4. I had to be laid bare, naked, and humiliated in front of God (undressed) before I was allowed access to God and healing (the pool).

Before I get an onslaught of hate mail, let me be clear: I love The Chronicles of Narnia. I love allegory and fantasy and magic. I love the complexity of its analysis. I love the language. I love C.S. Lewis, for crying out loud. I even love Eustace’s storyline, and as an adult, I am able to hold the nuances of it in a tender and loving way. I don’t even necessarily believe that what I internalized was what was intended.

I can see the pain in poor choices, and I have lived in the recovery of them. It is a deeply familiar and true storyline.

But all of that doesn’t change the fact that I carry with me some deep, religious trauma concerning my worth, a lack of trust in my own body, a misunderstanding of desire and suffering, and a transactional understanding of what the word, “deserve” really means.

I wish the over-arching narrative was that Eustace was loved: as a dragon, and as a boy.

And I wish the perpetuation of this messaging wasn’t in every nook and cranny of my life as a former evangelical.

As a worship leader, I sang Jesus Culture/Kari Jobe’s “Revelation Song” over and over, for years. It wasn’t until I was sitting with unexplained tears steamrolling their way down my face as my therapist sat quizzically after she simply told me I was worthy of the rest I needed that I was able to mumble-

“Worthy is the lamb who was slain. Holy, holy is he. I sing a new song, to him who sits on heaven’s mercy seat” that I realized how embedded the idea of how worthless I was, really was.

It’s within the walls of the verse- between the lines. The inference that we are NOT worthy. It is the suggestion that to be slain in the ultimate act of holiness. It is the perception that he (HE) who sits on a throne I cannot see is the only one who can grant me pardon for things I wasn’t sure were wrong in the first place.

I didn’t know until that exact moment on a sofa in an office that it was the same message I had heard over and over. In the stories I read. In the songs I sung.

I wasn’t worthy.

I was without worth.

I was nothing without God.

I was nothing.

To unlearn this kind of conditioning takes a lifetime of work- and in truth, I’m not really sure I’m up for it most of the time.

What keeps me going, you ask?

The story of a fictional boy who desired too much and paid for it dearly, and the image of a people who listened to me lead them in chorus after chorus that denied their own worth.

I wish Aslan had held Eustace to his chest whilst still in dragon form and whispered how worthy he was of living a full life in community with others. I wish he held his hand as they made choices to strip the skin that wasn’t serving him together, waist-deep in the pool. I wish Aslan told him he loved him as a boy and as a dragon, both. Even if he never chose to change.

I secretly wish Eustace had kept the color of the dragon’s eyes and a piece of gold.

I wish he was told he had worth before he ever walked into that pool.

I can’t tell him myself; Eustace isn’t real.

But you are.

So, I’m telling you instead.

Perhaps to try and make amends.

Perhaps to really know it myself.

Maybe it’s both.

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Nourishment has come this week in the form of :

1. Smitten Kitchen’s pulled pork recipe: https://smittenkitchen.com/2019/07/crispy-oven-pulled-pork/- You can serve it with the slaw she suggests OR you can turn it into ridiculously good grilled cheeses on Texas toast with kimchi. Seriously. Try it.

2. Rick Rubin’s “The Creative Act: A Way of Being” is so much more than I thought it would be. I’m taking my time through listening to it.

3. “The Body is Not An Apology” is a lot to take in, for someone like me. I’d love to chat if you’ve read it. https://www.amazon.com/Body-Not-Apology-Second-Self-Love/dp/B08SQ2QRHF/ref=sr_1_1?crid=25Q7XYVZZE4QA&keywords=the+body+is+not+an+apology+first+edition&qid=1685661978&s=audible&sprefix=the+body+is+not%2Caudible%2C100&sr=1-1

4. The perk of having an insane dog is that I haven’t missed a single morning walk in over two months. Rain or shine, I have to get out. It’s saving me.