In Via
Planning a trip? Or just on the pilgrimage of daily living? We are the podcast at the intersection of faith and travel, assisting you on the journey to encounter Christ. Hear stories, discover travel tips, and learn more about our Catholic faith. Along the way, we’ll show you that if God seeks to meet us in Jerusalem, Rome, Lourdes, Mexico City, or Santiago, he also wants to encounter you - right there in your car, on your run, or in the middle of your workday.
In Via
The Spiritual Pilgrimage of Narnia: A Discussion with Dr. Lenny DiLorenzo
What if the secret to spiritual growth lies within the pages of children's literature? Journey with us as we uncover the profound wisdom embedded in C.S. Lewis's "Chronicles of Narnia." Joined by Dr. Lenny DiLorenzo from the University of Notre Dame, we promise an exploration that will leave you viewing these classic tales through a new, spiritually enriched lens.
Dr. DiLorenzo shares his fascinating journey leading to his current role at the McGrath Institute for Church Life, revealing his deep involvement in projects like the Inklings Project and the Sullivan Family Saints Initiative. Through this lens, we dive into his edited book, "Chronicles of Transformation: A Spiritual Journey with CS Lewis," which encourages readers to rediscover the magic of Narnia, not just as stories, but as guides for spiritual pilgrimage and maturity. We delve into the importance of maintaining childlike wonder, using characters like Susan and Eustace to illustrate the need for humility and presence in our spiritual lives.
Our conversation delves into the incarnational aspects of Lewis's work, using examples from "The Voyage of the Dawn Treader" and "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe" to discuss how these adventures mirror our own spiritual challenges. From the pitfalls of becoming too 'grown-up' to the joy found in the unexpected twists of life, we highlight how Narnia serves as a metaphor for our spiritual journeys. This episode is a heartfelt invitation to revisit these timeless tales with fresh eyes and an open heart, finding joy and spiritual renewal in the process.
Order The Chronicles of Transformation here.
Find more about Dr. DeLorenzo here.
Welcome to In Via, the podcast where we're navigating the pilgrimage of life. We are all in via on the way and we are learning a lot as we go. I'm your host, joan Watson. Join me as we listen to stories, discover travel tips and learn more about our Catholic faith. Along the way, we'll see that if God seeks to meet us in Jerusalem, rome or Santiago, he also wants to encounter you right there in your car, on your run or in the middle of your workday. Did you read the Chronicles of Narnia as a child? If so, you're going to like today's episode. I'm chatting with Dr Lenny DiLorenzo, a professor at the University of Notre Dame, author and editor of more than 10 books, including the book we're going to talk about today Chronicles of Transformation.
Joan Watson:A Spiritual Journey with CS Lewis.
Joan Watson:Hi Lenny,
Lenny:hi Joan, how are you
Lenny:? I'm doing great. How about you?
Joan Watson:Good, very good because I get to talk to you today?
Lenny:Oh, that's nice.
Joan Watson:So some of our listeners may not know you, which is sad for them. So do you want to start by telling us three sentences? I always limit people to three, but I'm very generous, so three sentences about yourself. What would you tell people?
Lenny:Yeah, go ahead and count them out for me as I go along but.
Lenny:I'd maybe just start by saying I'm from a little bit of everywhere, a little bit of nowhere. I was born in New Jersey, lived a couple places there, spent some of my childhood in Tennessee, both in Central and in Western Tennessee, but I grew up for the most part in Southern California and was there through high school. Then I came out here to South Indiana, went to Notre Dame and stayed here. After had been working, did my graduate degrees here. So 25 years in South Bend Indiana one sentence Number two I'm married. My wife, lisa, is from two places besides here. She was born an early part of her life in Fort Wayne or, I'm sorry, fort Worth, texas, and then raised in Roanoke, virginia, before coming here Now. Sentence three we have six kids. Our six kids are all from South Bend, homegrown Hoosiers, and I spend my time working teaching at Notre Dame in theology in our McGrath Institute for Church Life.
Joan Watson:I love it. I love you're not the first guest to talk about how they're kind of from everywhere. I think this idea of pilgrimage also, even when guests kind of think about like where are my roots, it causes them to kind of think about the fact that, like, do I have roots and where am I from? But I love that you're from the East Coast and the West Coast and the South and the Midwest.
Lenny:Right, I mean you have it all covered. I got a little bit of sayings from each place and I don't think I really sound like I'm from any of them.
Joan Watson:I love it. You're very well-rounded.
Lenny:Okay, thanks
Joan Watson:. So your work at Notre Dame, at McGrath and we've talked a little bit about McGrath on the show actually but you know, what classes do you teach? What are you working on? Now? We're just about to enter. Well, this will air in the summer, so you have the summer, but what are you working on?
Lenny:So I've just finished a year of teaching. I was actually just teaching introductory theology courses this year, which I really like. It's kind of starting from the beginning, which I think is a good place to begin. And this summer so I guess, maybe while folks are listening to this I'm teaching in our master's program on the Trinity and Christian salvation A lot of people who are in our echo program. They're being formed to be servants in the church they're in that master's program or other adults who are interested in becoming more knowledgeable in theology or something to do with their work. They're in that program as well. So that's why I'm spending a good portion of my summer.
Lenny:I'm also helping to develop some initiatives here in our institute. One is related to something we're going to talk about today, cs Lewis but that initiative is called the Inklings Project, where we're working with faculty at a number of different colleges and universities to support them and help them to build and offer courses and other educational offerings for students that relate with the Inklings in some way. So a lot of evangelizing potential in that, especially at public universities, universities where you're not having religious studies, theology courses and maybe some of the spiritual reflection is not as permitted. I also work on a couple of other projects our own podcast called Church Life Today, and then something called the Sullivan Family Saints Initiative, where we seek to promote and increase devotion to and scholarship on the saints.
Joan Watson:Love it. And we will have links to all of that in the show notes so that you can find out more about Lenny and his work,
Lenny:and I'm doing free advertising today, I guess for campus ministry and for Under Armour.
Lenny:So this is non-paid. I should send a bill.
Joan Watson:That's right. For those of you watching, you can, yeah, free advertising. Product placement that's right. Well, as we talk about finding your work, product placement and your projects, we're going to talk a little bit today about a book that you edited a few years ago called the Chronicles of Transformation A Spiritual Journey with CS Lewis, and I was introduced to the book, I think, shortly after I was on your podcast. I was kind of, you know, looking around at what you had done, and my mom and I were getting back into CS Lewis. We were reading a book by him, and I love CS Lewis, I love the Chronicles, but it had been a while since I read them, and so I, instead of rereading the Chronicles, which is probably what I should have done, I bought your book, which actually just inspired me to reread them again, which I think is a great compliment to the book.
Lenny:That's the point.
Joan Watson:So today I just kind of want to delve into the book and just what prompted the Chronicles of Transformation.
Lenny:Well, you know, some years ago we had started this small sort of lecture series in Lent to Easter and the idea was to gather people together where they would be doing common reading and they would be learning together. But as a sort of liturgical offering it was also a journey from Lent through Easter. So the first time we did this we did it with Dante's Divine Comedy and we offered sort of like public reading groups. We assembled a number of lectures, we organized materials for people so they could read through the Divine Comedy, beginning I think it was Ash Wednesday and concluding sometime in the Easter season. We did that again with just the Book of Exodus, the biblical Book of Exodus, and then, as a third iteration, we thought well, let's try and maybe broaden the reach a little bit, bring in some younger people as well. So we did the Chronicles of Narnia for that. So we created this offering where people were intentionally moving together in community in liturgical time and making this journey through these liturgical seasons. Now, part of it was just the idea that we had done that before. Right, but what we discovered, I think, in putting this together and really just moving through the Chronicles and having different people speak on them and then conversations with other readers and reading groups, is that there is a journey that takes place not only in the Chronicles but for the readers if we read them in a certain way. And of course we did have some young people, you know teenagers, maybe even a little younger, who were doing it. But we had a lot of you know, card carrying adults who were doing this as well, probably the majority of the audience both here at Notre Dame and then elsewhere, that we were kind of reaching through digital means and it was sort of I don't know if it was an epiphany, but it was. It was.
Lenny:We noticed that there was a new way of engagement of these chronicles for adults, but it required things of us as adults which in some ways is more difficult than the way in which children encounter the chronicles.
Lenny:Children are just drawn in. Narnia is I think I write this in the book Narnia is the children's world, but adults are also drawn into that world if, and only if, they will allow themselves to be somehow childlike again and it will draw them through this journey. And that childlikeness is not a lack of sophistication, it's kind of post-sophistication, to allow yourself to enjoy, to marvel at, to struggle with, to move in and through these narratives. It's the way children naturally encounter narratives, but sometimes we as adults we get a little bit too puffed up on our own sophistication. Don't let ourselves do that. So this book was really born from that and it kind of presents that journey, that possibility of that journey to people. It is indeed as we would talk, about a kind of pilgrimage, a literary pilgrimage but a spiritual pilgrimage at the same time.
Joan Watson:Yeah, I think there's a really good clarification to make, because we talk about the pilgrimage of life that's what this whole podcast is about and I think sometimes we just think about growing older, that the pilgrimage of life is growing older and the pilgrimage to heaven, and so we equate like, oh, I'll get holier the longer I live, the more I get to, and I think this challenges that to say there's a reason Jesus says to become children.
Joan Watson:And that this pilgrimage of life isn't necessarily because grownups which CS Lewis didn't like that term that grownups are necessarily better than children, but that there's a spiritual maturity that doesn't depend on our age, and so the pilgrimage of life cannot just be equated with us growing up.
Lenny:Yeah, and sometimes it actually works in the reverse direction.
Lenny:So, even within the Chronicles themselves, as you would know, a couple of the characters kind of show Lewis's take on this, like one of the four children who enters into Narnia first Susan as she grows older she becomes too quote unquote grown up, right, she loses her touch with the things that really matter.
Lenny:She becomes too concerned with and too attached to things that don't matter these you know, quote unquote adult concerns and she loses her, she never can kind of enjoy the Narnian things again. Now, at the same time, you have a child who's pulled into Narnia and is already a boring grown up and used to scrub, right, and he has to be in some ways broken from that, undragoned, if you will, um, and that, I think, gives us a little glimpse into the way in which lewis recognized precisely what you're talking about. It's not simply a linear journey or chronological journey, like the older you get, the more mature, the more the holier, the more spiritual there is, at the same time as that chronological progression, another sort of level of journey that's taking place. Maybe it's more vertical or I don't know how you would describe it, but it does have to do with a conversion, ever-going conversion to humility, to trust, to childlikeness, which is a gospel image, that we get the humility and the trust.
Joan Watson:Yeah, I always wonder if it's almost like a spiral journey into ourselves, like if we want to think of the journey as a direction. Is it a spiral not into ourselves in a self-centered, you know navel-gazing way, but into discovering who we really are and who we? Were made to be that sometimes little kids have this.
Joan Watson:They have a much, much greater idea of who God made them to be than that adult you know and so this, this, this spiral pilgrimage into who we are as Christians and who we are in the image and likeness of God, and that discovery of of the Lord in that
Lenny:I think that's right.
Lenny:I think that's right and you know, I think in those terms that you're speaking of this sort of spiral journey of, say, teresa of Avila and her interior castle. And you know, in the outer regions of the castle of the soul are all the little critters and all these other things that constantly pull your attention away, that constantly distract you, that make you so disintegrated that you would lose yourself in all the many things. And part of the journey, the spiritual journey she's teaching her sisters and those of us who come after, is the healthy detachment from those things, building up the power, the ability, the capacity for recollection to be really in one place at one time, which is the initial natural ability upon which those spiritual fruits will build. But you will not discover any of the spiritual fruits of the more inner realms that Teresa talks about if you do not first practice and work on that natural ability of being recollected and detached from the other things.
Lenny:And how much is that, you know, apparent in our lives today, like all the many ways in which we're constantly poked at and our attention is signaled and grabbed, and how easy it is and enticing and oftentimes minimally rewarding, to just split our attention that way and follow the shiny little lights. And it is and enticing and oftentimes minimally rewarding to just split our attention that way and follow the shiny little lights. And it is much harder, perhaps much harder today than ever before, to be recollected, to really be in one place at one time and be fully, fully present. And that is precisely the sort of thing that it takes not only to be really immersed in a story you have to yield to the story but also to be involved in something like a pilgrimage, like it is about definite place at definite time, with yourself, with others, and not constantly being pulled to other places and other things, even though those things have a bearing on you where you are.
Joan Watson:Yeah, yeah, we always tell our pilgrims it's about being in the present moment and it's about entering into that present moment with nothing else. And that requires attachment and that requires concentration and that requires a lot. And I think sometimes we think that little kids have shorter attention spans than we do. But look at a kid reading Narnia, look at a kid entering into a fantasy world and they are completely in that world at that moment.
Lenny:Yeah.
Joan Watson:And it's not us in our maturity that have larger, longer attention spans than our children. Sometimes it's them able to completely enter into the story.
Lenny:Yeah, they don't need a payoff for it, right, like they don't have to make something of it, analyze it, get the point, find the message, make it useful. They can just enjoy it, just be there or be troubled by it or be sucked into it, or not stop thinking about it.
Joan Watson:And because, I mean, I read them as a child, but I don't have a clear memory of reading them as a child, except for the first one, that I think grabbed me the most. But when I read them as adults I already knew the story and I was reading it as an adult and it's very different, and so I love that you told us how Isaac experienced it, so that we could kind of experience it as kids again.
Lenny:Yeah, I mean, and part of this has to do with the central figure of Aslan himself. Let's say, like those of us who come to the Chronicles of Narnia as adults, and especially if we know something about him beforehand, we are already hip to the fact that Aslan is a Christ figure. Right, yes, he is going to exhibit some of those characteristics. He's going to present them to us and we're looking for them and we're anticipating them. And when he's taken there's all kinds of spoilers in this episode, folks. So just so you know.
Lenny:So you know, when he's taken off to be sacrificed and you know it's coming, you're not surprised, in a way that it's coming. You don't feel it because of course he's going to be sacrificed, and when he appears again on the horizon, you're not that surprised. Of course he's going to rise. But that is precisely when I was awakened to the difference between my son, isaac, who was then five, and myself encountering this story. I just, I mean, I obviously had already read it, I knew it, I knew it was going to happen, but I'm just not surprised by that kind of narrative arc anymore. He was utterly devastated and utterly delighted, and there's something in that, not just about Narnia but about the Christian mystery.
Lenny:Like we've become too domesticated to the fact that, oh, he will enter into his passion and die and rise again, and we just move, you know, blithely from one to the other, because this is the way it goes and we have to be shocked by that over and over again, even though we know it. And I think that's part of the spiritual discipline that adults can reacquire by yielding to something like a children's story of Narnia, which isn't just for children.
Joan Watson:Yeah, yes, when I teach adults Lectio Divina, it's kind of my big thing is we have to be doing more Lectio Divina as a church and I always tell people you have to try to read it like you've never heard it before. Whether it's a parable, like a man who had two sons, I don't care that you know where this is going. Act like you've never heard it and like the the Jesus became man, that God became man. Act like you've never, like that's crazy. And as a church, we're just like oh yeah, god became man. Okay, going on with my day. No, that's insane, that's insanity, but we're so used to it and we need to become like little kids and be surprised by it again.
Lenny:Yeah, you should protest against it. This is not the way this works. Like what do you mean? God became man. I'm putting this book down for quite some time until I can come to terms with that. That's ridiculous, exactly.
Joan Watson:The scandal of the incarnation, you would say right. So you know, all seven of the books include a type of journey, really, and often a physical journey.
Lenny:And.
Joan Watson:I think there's this idea that we connect to this image, this story, that it's an image we can relate to, but this physical journey is, of course, indication of a spiritual journey, and that's like pilgrimage, right, like we can connect to this physical pilgrimage. We get that image, but it really is speaking about the interior journey, and so I love that Lewis uses these adventures to that's something we can cling on to.
Lenny:But the real story is that interior, that interior journey for the characters throughout the series yeah, and I think this is part of lewis's great incarnational instinct, which is that the practical and the spiritual are not separated. But in christianity, that which is most practical is the place where you will find the deepest spiritual meaning, and that which is most spiritual is that which is going to be rendered through the practical matters. So, by traversing this terrain, by taking seriously the challenges and the conquests of Narnia, by undergoing the various tests, by having character tried by the choices that you make in these specific situations, that's where the spiritual quality and the virtues are really being forged. And it's not over and above that or elsewhere, it's right in the middle of that. And in some ways I think, or in many ways I think, that Narnia, therefore, is not like a metaphor for our world, it's not a one-to-one allegory of our world. It's in some ways a training ground, a practice for what it means to live in this world, well, to reckon with the matters of responsibility and the crises of character in practical matters, because that is the very terrain that our Lord and Savior took on as his own. That's where the spiritual stuff happens.
Lenny:And we see this again, like elsewhere in Lewis's corpus, like, for example, in that marvelous little book, the Great Divorce. The terrain itself is like a character, it's almost the whole thing that reality is harsh to the feet of shadows. It says therefore, and the ghosts who come into the heavenly terrain have to become accommodated to that terrain. They have to be thickened, and it's happening to them, it seems somewhat physically, but it's happening to them in their passions, in their desires, in their affections, in their values and in their loves, and so that which is most interior is actually affecting them exteriorly, and the terrain which seems exterior is actually the proving ground for what's inside. I think this is taking place all throughout Lewis's fiction, especially, and we see that all throughout the Chronicles of Narnia. The engagement with the world, the terrain, the crises, matters Absolutely.
Joan Watson:Yeah, yeah. Just to idea of like um, this isn't, this isn't just a story, but this is a, like you said, a training ground for us. Where are the lessons to then take into our everyday life? Where?
Joan Watson:how you know, like the, the characters, we all know Peters, we all know Edmonds, we all know Eustace's. Maybe we are them and and how like we are called to go now, live the life with them and take these lessons of conversion, of redemption, of atonement into our life and, and that's the reality, and really the spirituality like this is great divorce, right, the spiritual life is the greater reality. Um, that's the greater reality than ever what we can see and touch, yes, but that discovery we're going to have to do a series on just pilgrimage in literature and you're going to have to do all the episodes and we can have an episode on the great divorce and episode on Dante.
Joan Watson:And so it'll be great. So I'll sign you up now.
Joan Watson:I think one of the great themes for me especially in Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, but I think in all the things is that theme of discovery where Lucy discovers Narnia first and we don't have to get on the rant. But I agree with you on the proper order of reading the books.
Joan Watson:That you read.
Joan Watson:Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. First, because you need to discover with Lucy, narnia, and you need to discover. But this theme of discovery, I think, can also connect to pilgrimage, that pilgrimages help us discover not just the world but then also ourselves, and so I think we see this theme of discovery throughout all seven stories, that is, that discovery of pilgrimage.
Lenny:Oh, I think that's absolutely true and I think, like you're rightly saying, the characters are discovering themselves, but that oftentimes comes belatedly. They don't just go into a corner and like, think about themselves right, you're not saying this uh, struggle and of self-confrontation, and often the self-confrontation is the confrontation with, or the encounter with, aslan or his mission, right? So you can think about Lucy who, as you rightly said, is the first one drawn into Nardia and discovers the land. But she really comes to the crisis of herself, most likely in the voyage of the Dawn Treader, when she's reading through I forget what the the book's called, the book that contains all stories and her character is being tried there and she has to be converted into the greater, uh, acceptance of her story and her greater love for aslan and letting go of, uh, some of these attachments that she might otherwise have.
Lenny:It's a I mean, it's in a, you know, probably the most quasi-mystical of the Chronicles, the Voyage of the Dawn Treader. It's like, surrounded by a lot of humor, but that particular trial that Lucy undergoes is a trial indeed. Or the trial when she has to wake up her siblings in Prince Caspian. It's a terrible task because she's got to tell them they've gone the wrong way. She knows this is painful, but her obedience to her call forces it upon her. Either she does that or she's abandoning herself in some way. And so that discovery of self is coming from these tasks, again, from the place itself, from the one who calls you there, and you don't know in advance where those discoveries are going to come from, at what point, with whom, with what. You have to actually go and be open to discover it.
Joan Watson:To live, life to live the life in front of you.
Joan Watson:Yeah, that's nice because, yeah, I mean, I think you know it is this idea nowadays like, oh, I'm gonna go off and discover myself, right yeah and you have people walking the camino, for example, to go discover themselves, and it's like, okay, actually you're not really looking to discover yourself, you're looking to discover your maker, um, and in discovering god, you're going to discover yourself. But that's an important, I think, difference that the characters aren't setting off to discover themselves, but that they discover themselves through the living of daily life and the obedience to their mission, and I think that's a really important clarification. Yeah, yeah.
Lenny:And even right from the beginning, like the one who goes in looking for something for himself, is on the wrong journey. And that would be Edmund at the beginning. Right, he's going to grasp something, he's trying to elevate himself and he has. Well, first of all, he suffers the terrible consequences of that personally and then sees the consequences of his actions on others. But he has to be broken from that, and it's when he himself is converted to a mission that he actually really discovers who he is and his not just his role in his place, but also his dignity and his strength.
Joan Watson:Yeah, that's a. It's a good reminder to us that even those people who embark on these missions for the wrong reason, like Edmund, enters Narnia for the wrong reason. He begins on the wrong foot but there's still redemption, there's still salvation, because of his willingness and really because, in a sense, I mean when he gets taken by the White Witch, it's that death to self, like he's in a bad spot and it's that his siblings' willingness to sacrifice themselves for him, and then obviously aslan's sacrifice in the best sense.
Joan Watson:But yeah um, what is? This? Might be a really difficult question, but of your seven, what's what's of the seven, what's your favorite?
Lenny:you know, for a while it was the voyage of the dawn treader. Just because it's because of that sort of more mystical quality, I had a renewed love of the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Actually, as I was first developing the lecture that then turned into the chapter I wrote for this book I, because I was organizing the whole thing I just left myself to the end if I was going to do one, whatever one, people don't pick and nobody picked Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, right, so I ended up with that one. But I really came to love it in a new and deeper way and it was precisely, by the way I tried to write about it Like this was my renewed encounter with it. So there is something about that I love. But I mean I do enjoy each of them.
Lenny:And you know not to not to sort of shamelessly plug this book, but the contributors to this volume, like what they wrote on each one was really educational for me and eye opening, like I had never encountered the Horse and His Boy, the way that Francesca Murphy leads us to encounter that, and it was so revelatory. I'd read it, you know, several times and I just saw more deeply into it and made it more delightful, or the way in which, for example, anthony Pagliarini spoke about and really taught about the misuse of language in the last battle and the redemption of language and the struggle for truth and all that stuff. It's totally eye opening, I thought so I came to a renewed appreciation for them in that way. But to answer your question directly, maybe I maybe picked the line the witch and the wardrobe.
Joan Watson:Yeah, I love it. It's a hard, that's a hard question.
Joan Watson:I mean it's a hard. It's hard to choose because in a sense, they're all very different and, um, I think at different times of our lives, probably different ones speak to us. I've always loved the horse and his boy in that and this is a big spoiler, just that image of Aslan showing up in so many different ways. I think we can all relate to that in our lives, where the Lord is unrecognizable sometimes, and sometimes the Lord even shows up in ways that we wish he hadn't, and then we realize.
Joan Watson:Oh, I'm so glad that happened right and so that is such an important part of our lives and our spiritual journey and our relationship with the lord um. But I loved when um francesca talked about that like at face value that story is really. It seems to be just an escape.
Joan Watson:He's escaping but, it really is this pilgrimage for Shasta to discover who he is Again that idea of self journey or it's self discovery, but in just this, this, every day, he's escaping and in the end, it's a pilgrimage to discover Aslan and discover who he is. Like in so many of the other stories, um, and she even says like pilgrimage. Is this natural desire of our lives that Shasta doesn't know? He's on a pilgrimage, but I think she really opened up for me too, even though Horse and His Boy is one of my favorites. She opened up a really new sense of it for me.
Lenny:Yeah, and I think she drew to our attention that, preceding even his need to escape which that need came pretty early he realized his peril, that he had to leave where he was. Even before that, there was the desire for the North, the curiosity about the North. The North was calling to him. And I think you can quickly, you know, when you're getting into the story trying to figure out what's going on, and here you get to the beginning of the drama you forget what preceded it and that's what preceded it his desire for the North. And what Francesca does so brilliantly is she helps us to see that this was in many ways a reflection of Lewis's own desire and journey. She reads the Horse and its boy especially next to, suprised by joy, Lewis' own autobiography and makes the claim she think the Horse and his Boy is the most autobiographical of all of Lewis's chronicles, that it was his desire for joy, and he had a very particular meaning for joy, this unfulfilled longing, this sort of pain, this piercing that propelled him forward, even against himself, and that I think she sees as the primary motivation for Shasta too, himself. And that I think she sees as the primary motivation for Shasta too, which is really the desire that's coming from Aslan, himself unnamed, and as yet unknown.
Joan Watson:Yes, yes, and again, that idea of that pilgrimage, that interior desire that there's something calling us. And you do meet people who go on physical pilgrimages and they don't even know why, but there's this desire. I think we see it in some people's lives, just in wanderlust, like they have this desire to go and travel and they don't realize what they're searching for. But I think they're searching for something other than themselves. They're searching for that meaning, they're searching for that desire and and that like I love what you said like propels us forward, that desire for the North, for Aslan, for heaven.
Joan Watson:Something is calling us and so I think that's again like a good pilgrimage connection that we are. There's this interior desire to move and that's our, that's our, our, our spiritual pilgrimage, the spiritual pilgrimage of life, is that desire to go, maybe outside of ourselves, but to go to that thing. I mean that thing that's going to complete us. Right, our hearts are restless until they rest in thee, and for some of us it's that wanderlust and that desire to physically pilgrimage, but on that pilgrimage we pray that people find the north, find Aslan, find the Lord.
Lenny:Yeah, and I think, find the Lord, yeah, and I think this is the good news of dissatisfaction, actually, like, maybe we call it the gospel of dissatisfaction. No, that's not right. But good news of dissatisfaction, so long as you are dissatisfied, it is. There's actually a nugget of something very good in that, which is it's the flip side, the indication that there's something more you desire. It's the flip side, the indication that there's something more you desire, that you're made for more. The real tragedy and sadness would be just blanket contentment at any point right.
Lenny:This isn't to just crave after being unsettled, but we are created to desire and not to douse our desires, not to even tame them, but actually to allow them to grow and to be enlarged, to be directed and ordered. And we will desire more and more the closer we get to our Lord. And so I think you know, maybe the most prevalent or one of the most prevalent conditions and feelings of people today is a persistent feeling of dissatisfaction, of disconnection, of not knowing what's wrong but wanting something else. And maybe we could think about that as, in a way, it's a slow motion and silent tragedy, but in another way, it is the silent throbbing of some good news Like this isn't it for you, there is something else and seek something else?
Joan Watson:Yeah, and that can be that little door opening that the Lord needs. Yeah, and that can be that little door opening that the Lord needs, that in our comfort. It's like you said, like if we're too comfortable and we're too content, we're not going to search. I was thinking, actually, about this recently when I was confronted with the Acts of the Apostles, when Paul speaks at Athens and everyone's like, oh OK, we'll hear you about this on another time. And then he goes to Corinth and you would think like, athens is academic, they're intellectual, they're seeking the truth, whereas Corinth is pretty vicious, I mean, they're full of sexual immorality, they're lewd right. So you think, oh, the better audience would be Athens. But no, he leaves Athens to go to Corinth. And I thought I wonder if Corinth makes the better converts because they are searching Like that, that that viciousness is never going to fill their needs.
Joan Watson:And so they are searching, whereas Athens can be like. Oh well, we have our philosophy and we have our answers, and you know, like it's? It's a fascinating like God works in ways I can't understand sometimes. But, is it that contentment that is actually bad? Because you stop searching.
Lenny:Yeah, you know, yeah, nothing spoils the taste of good ordinary food quite so much as bad magic food, which Lewis says in the first chronicle, right, and in this case, like it may or may not be bad magic food, but it might be, you know, tasty little philosophical discourse. And it might be a pleasant and cordial life and it may be a comfortable neighborhood and a good enough routine. And it's hard, I mean, it's hard for me, it's hard for all of us when we get into those places because they are so nice to want to shake out of them. But one of the things I learned from, say, mother Teresa, I think one of the secrets to her holiness was her willingness to leave happiness to find joy.
Lenny:She left home, which she described as a very happy home, but she left home to go first to Ireland and then to India and she probably wasn't ever going to get back to that home, to her happy home. And when she was in India initially and she was a sister of Loretto, she said she has never been happier than when she was a sister of Loretto. She loved her community, she loved her work, she loved educating in the way that she was educating, but when the call came to her to abandon, to leave where she was and to go seek the poorest of the poor. There was a real price to be paid in that and it was the price of happiness to go seek that joy. And it came with a lot of struggle and pain but there was transformation in the end. And that transformation was not what she was looking for or expected. It looked like a lot of loneliness and abandonment but it was all within. It seemed, the crucible of becoming ever more fit for fuller joy.
Joan Watson:Yeah, and that's what we, yeah and I. Again, to bring it back to Pilgrimage, that idea of, like people, go on the Camino not to suffer, but you're going to suffer, you're going to be stretched. We were joking on this podcast earlier that we need a better marketing slogan. If our slogan is, come on pilgrimage to suffer, but at the same time we are so comfortable as Americans, we have to step outside of that in order, in a sense, to leave happiness, to find joy sometimes, whether that's putting ourselves in an uncomfortable place, putting ourselves in a place that stretches us, that just takes us out of our comfort zone a little bit, in order to find joy. I think there's something really powerful there.
Lenny:Yeah, and sometimes that's going with other people right. This is not going to go exactly the way you want it. There will be sometimes compromises, sometimes things you just have to give up. Scheduling is not going to be always right. It's hard to move groups of people. Best laid plans, they just don't come through right. And that too is part of the pilgrimage Absolutely. That too is kind of a yielding and a being more docile and more responsive to what's coming towards you. It has to do with the rocks on the ground and it has to do with the interruptions in the schedule, both of them at the same time.
Joan Watson:Yes, so often we ignore the crosses we're supposed to carry because they look too ordinary. They look like I want some grand, like big blister as I'm walking across.
Lenny:Oh, I don't want that.
Joan Watson:You know the arid Camino and I want the Camino blah blah but then if I go to Rome with a bus full of people and they're annoying me, oh, that's not what I want, right?
Lenny:Like don't want this roommate.
Joan Watson:I don't see exactly, like I or you know, like the bus is late or the the tour guide didn't show up, like I don't want that sacrifice. And so we waste all the sacrifices and the crosses that the Lord gives us because they look too ordinary and we want this dramatic, you know, pilgrimage, and it's like what about all the little things? I mean that's our?
Joan Watson:daily life too right Like I don't want that coworker or that? You know snoring spouse.
Joan Watson:I want you know that's what we're called. That's what we're called too. So I have a very important question as we wrap up. Why Turkish Delight? It's bothered me since I was little. Have you ever had Turkish Delight?
Joan Watson:It's disgusting.
Lenny:I was actually just in Turkey. I had Turkish Delight, sorry.
Joan Watson:Is it better in?
Lenny:Turkey. I have never been able to say that before. This is my first time there.
Joan Watson:Look the Turkish delight we had was actually Well when I was in Turkey last week.
Lenny:It was actually incredible which I've also had Turkish delight. I had it, you know, I think once somebody brought it to a meeting and it was awful, like I just thought it was terrible. But apparently there's like all different kinds of varieties of Turkish delight in this stuff. So what we had in this little turkish market I didn't buy any, but they gave us some was really lovely and delightful.
Joan Watson:so okay, that makes me feel better. That's always bothered me because I've had it and I was like really edmund, for this, really, this is you give.
Joan Watson:Yeah, for ice cream maybe, but for whales, yeah, exactly, exactly, I was like maybe that's what cs loose was trying to tell us but uh, but okay, that makes me feel better that yeah, you know when you were humble brag in turkey last week you had better. So, um, is there anything you'd like to add or anything you want to say before we wrap up, anything maybe we missed? I mean there's a ton we missed, because these are seven magnificent books along with, I would say, your book is the eighth. I would really recommend it to people.
Joan Watson:Um, I would say, like, go back to the Chronicles if you haven't read them since you were little. If you've never read them, go back to the Chronicles and read this as a companion. You know, read the, read Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, and then read Lenny's essay. Um, it's spiritual reading. It is fantastic. So, thanks for giving this gift to us. But, yeah, is there anything that we missed?
Lenny:No, I mean, I love what you said right from the beginning, that, like you, first of all picked up this book instead of the Chronicles, but it led you back to the Chronicles and, as we say, or as I read at the introduction to the volume, that's in very many ways what we wanted to do. It's not about analyzing the Chronicles, it's about learning to enjoy them again, and we those of us who have written about this have done some of the work of analyzing, but only because we enjoyed them first. And so, like what we do to help maybe readers see a little bit more position themselves, a little bit more is really to the end of learning how to enjoy again. But I'd also say I think a couple of the things that are distinctive about that volume are, first of all, the original illustrations that are there from our friend and colleague Stephen Beraney. He created an original illustration for each of the seven chronicles and those I think deserve not only to be enjoyed on their own but almost studied on their own, like they're really insightful and profound illustrations that he gave us.
Lenny:And then, alongside those, there's an original poem cycle that runs throughout the volume as well, by Madeline Lewis. Infantine wrote an original poem for each of the seven chronicles, and they are not only delightful but profound and insightful and lyrical in a really astounding way. So you know, there's a lot of things have been written about Lewis and about the chronicles and if we were going to do something else on this, we were going to have, you know, our essays on each of the chronicles, which we thought added something. But these two pieces of art, the collection of illustrations and the poem cycle were yet another way in which we wanted to offer something different and new.
Joan Watson:They're beautiful. It's such a fun way to return to these really well-beloved stories and see them and again, not like dissect them in a way, but just to enjoy them more and just to return to them.
Joan Watson:So, it's really delightful Listeners. I hope this has helped you see kind of that. The idea of pilgrimage can be present in a lot of different ways. Maybe after listening to many episodes of this podcast, I hope that your eyes are kind of open to the idea that this image of journey, this image of discovery, this image of pilgrimage is in our lives, and in a lot of different ways. This image of discovery, this image of pilgrimage is in our lives in a lot of different ways and we can see it because it really is this natural desire of the heart pulling us to the north. And so, whether we see that in literature, we see it in movies, we see it in liturgy, we can see our lives really being directed towards this greater journey, this greater spiritual, this greater pilgrimage of life. So thanks for joining us, Lenny oh it's been a real pleasure, thank you.
Joan Watson:And again in the show notes you'll find how to get this book, how to find more out about Lenny's projects, and we hope you share this with another friend, maybe someone who has read the Chronicles, and maybe this is another way for them to find out about pilgrimage through this lens. So thanks for listening, God bless.
