Narnian Ba'alei Teshuva: Digory Kirke

What is complete repentance [teshuva]? A person who confronts the same situation in which he sinned when he has the potential to commit [the sin again], and, nevertheless, abstains and does not commit it because of his teshuvah alone and not because of fear or a lack of strength.

(Maimonides Mishneh Torah, Laws of Repentance 2:1)

Maimonides in his magnum opus defines one who has achieved full repentance. Namely, it is one who finds themselves in the same exact situation in which he once fell prey to sin and this time holds back. 

I think this type of repentance was achieved by Digory Kirke. Recall, that upon visiting the world of Charn, Digory and Polly enter a hall of figures sitting in rows of chairs. In the middle of the room was a bell which promised danger to the one who rang it, but unrelenting curiosity to the one who did not. Polly was not interested in the danger and was ready to leave. But Digory exclaimed, "We can't get out of it now. We shall always be wondering what else would have happened if we had struck the bell. I'm not going home to be driven mad by always thinking of that," and physically restrained her.  

We all know what happened next. Digory did ring the bell awakening the Queen Jadis who, in Narnia, was to become the White Witch. Of course, Aslan turned the situation into a positive one. The same witch was to bring King Frank into Narnia and Aslan would eventually sacrifice himself to save Narnia. But what about Digory himself?

Unlike the Edmond who betrayed his family requiring Aslan's sacrifice, Aslan arranged a different (better?) means of repentance. Digory is given a task - to retrieve an apple from a faraway garden. With Polly and Fledge he reaches the garden only to find the same witch urging yet again. For, as we know, the apple is "the apple of youth, the apple of life," and all Digory has to do is take it, give it to his mother who is now laying on her death bed, and all will be well. " 'Oh!' gasped Digory as if he had been hurt, and put his hand to his head. For he now knew that the most terrible choice lay before him." 

A terrible choice, but perhaps one that he's seen before. Carry on with his mission or wonder forever whether things could have been different. The same situation, the same stakes (if not higher). But this time Digory holds back. He escapes and returns to Alsan.

Throughout the Chronicles, Aslan is reticent to let characters know what might have been. But this time he actually says so quite clearly. "Understand, then, that it would have healed her; but not to your joy or hers. The day would have come when both you and she would have looked back and said it would havebeen better to die in that illness." Why would Aslan reveal to Digory the might have been, but not to anyone else?

Perhaps because, at least in this way, Digory stands above them all. He is a true repentant, the one who faced sin knowing he had previously lost, but overcame. He deserves to know that his decision was right, not only morally, but on all planes. 

The Light of Darkness (Part 2)

In our previous post on darkness we discussed that, just as there are two types of silence, there are two types of darkness: complete darkness of dread and fear, and darkness which enables you to see something else. The total silence of the Dark Island was not disturbed by the sound of the oars, nor was the total darkness dissolved by the lanterns on the ship. But the silence of the Witch and dwarf enabled Edmond to hear the sounds of Spring, is there are parallel within the Chronicles in which darkness provides light?

I would like to suggest the answer is yes. One night, as the land of Narnia lay dormant ruled by the cruel King Miraz, the Tarva, the Lord of Victory, saluted Alambil, the Lady of Peace, in the heavens above. The great majority of those below were asleep, not even knowing the history of the past, they certainly would not look to the heavens to read the history of the future. Yet, two men from the King's palace stood upon the highest tower watching the conjunction. One was Caspian, Prince of Narnia who had been awoken by his teacher for what he thought was a lesson in astronomy. The other was an old sage, about to bare his heart to his young student, who knew that, as he peered through the darkness, he saw the light of redemption that he was about to spark. 

Dr. Cornelius knew that to light the fire the young prince all else had to be muted. Caspian had to see not Narnia as it was, but Narnia as it could be.  

The stars of Narnia dance, at Aslan's command, in time and step with prophecies of the future. But it is only in the darkness of night that the future can be learned. Keep on the lights and all you see is the present. Turn them off, and the future descends.  

Narnian Ba'alei Teshuva: Uncle Andrew

 Ours, my boy, is a high and lonely destiny
(The Magician's Nephew)

There are few characters in the Chronicles of Narnia as detestable as Digory's uncle Andrew. His arrogance reigns supreme through the beginning of "The Magician's Nephew," climaxing in the above statement that enables him to trick a young girl into travelling to an unknown world. Upon meeting the Witch he becomes a sickening sycophant allowing her to ruin him financially. And when he enters Narnia he becomes a heartless entrepenuer willing to sell all of Narnia to make a buck. His mind and soul are so closed to God and spirituality that he hears Aslan's songs as a lion's roars, the kind words of the talking beasts as yelps and barks. 

Yet, by the end of the book, "Uncle Andrew never tried any Magic again as long as he lived. He had learned his lesson, and in his old age he became a nicer and less selfish old man than he had ever been before." After all the hardships he suffered he reevaluated, he changed. True he did not become a great man, maybe not even a good one, but he improved, he changed direction towards the light. 

Well, at least to a point... He still had one connection to that magician past:

But he always liked to get visitors alone in the billiard-room and tell them stories about a mysterious lady, a foreign royalty, with whom he had driven about London. "A devilish temper she had," he would say. "But she was a dem fine woman, sir, a dem fine woman."

Does this matter? Is looking back at the evil witch with some semblence of nostalgia reasonable or should he look back at that time only in horror and embarrassment? 

On the one hand this reminds us of the lizard on the shoulder of the ghost in The Great Divorce who promises sweet, fresh, innocent dreams. And Uncle Andrew is still left with that, his daydream that the Witch actually liked him. He cannot fully face that she was evil and he sinned, and therefore he cannot be fully forgiven. 

On the other hand, maybe in this world we just need a coping mechanism. Can we ever fully understand the evil of our ways? Would it not stymie us from being able to move forward. Perhaps Uncle Andrew was just being realistic. He knows what he did was wrong, but cannot face the ultimate truth, so he "harmlessly" whitewashes the situation. No one is hurt by a story of foreign royalty, Uncle Andrew gets some respect and interest from his listeners and everyone just goes on with their day. 

Clearly the first option seems more just. But at times, it is sin that is used as a stepping stone to finally come to God - our Sages at times have sins transformed into merits. 

I think this needs another post to further consider. 

The Light of Darkness

A number of years ago we did a series of posts analyzing two types of 'silence' as portrayed in the Chronicles of Narnia. To quickly recap, one type of silence is that of nothingness, the silence of dread, the silence that signifies complete isolation and profound loneliness. For example, when the Dawn Treader enters the sphere of influence of the Dark Island, “Though the rowing made a good deal of noise it did not quite conceal the total silence which surrounded the ship.” This type of silence is not just a lack of noise, it is being cut off from all that is good. 

The second type of silence is what we might call the expectant silence. It is the silence that enables you to hear something else. The prophet Habakkuk (2:20) demands this second type of silence from his listeners, "And God is in His holy Abode — be silent before Him, all the earth!" Edmund also experiences such a silence as he is forced to try and move the sleigh of the White Witch. “In that silence Edmund could at last listen to the other noise properly.” The momentary silence when the Witch and Dwarf are not shouting, enables him to hear as Winter turns into Spring and as his own religious transformation begins to unfold. 

I thought of these posts as we read in this week's Torah reading about the plague of darkness. Darkness is the ninth of the ten plagues God brings upon the Egyptians, and to me, it doesn't really seem to have the same power as some of the previous ones. Fireballs of hail, billions of locusts, those are plagues! A few days of Darkness? Well, I'm sure it's not comfortable, but it seems a bit weak for the penultimate plague. 

But then I thought as follows. If silence, namely the lack of hearing, has two types, then darkness, meaning lack of sight should also have two types. One type would be the darkness of dread, fear, and isolation as the verse (Exodus 10:23) says, "People could not see one another, and for three days no one could move about..." Similar to the darkness of the Dark Island, no human interactions, none of what we expect to see. It is what is meant when we might (R"L) say, "there are dark days ahead," That doesn't mean the sun won't come out, or that it will be cloudy, but that the usual goodness of life we expect won't be there. 

But there's another type of darkness, the darkness that allows you to see something better. It's why the lights are turned off in a movie theater - because you can see the movie better without them. So, maybe the plague of darkness was not meant to be the first type of darkness. Perhaps it was meant to be the second type. In other words, the goal of the plague was not the punishment of isolation and psychological warfare. No, the goal of the plague of darkness was to have the Egyptians see something else.

What?

Actually, the bible seems to say so explicitly (Exodus 10:23), "And for all the Israelites there was light in their dwellings." The only light in Egypt was in the dwellings of the Jews, the dwellings of the people who were slaves. Which meant that these dwelling were the only thing the Egyptians were capable of seeing.  

What did the Egyptians see?

Well, presumably they saw, maybe for the first time, the lives of the slaves. Their aches and pains, their grief and sorrow. Their attempts at family life and trying to raise their children in extreme poverty. No doubt it was nothing that they did not already know, but it was a way of life that they had never seen.

The plague of darkness was not a plague at all. It was God's last-ditch effort to pull on the heartstrings and persuade the Egyptians to see the errors of their ways. "Here," God was saying, "this is the misery you have caused. You have one final chance to repent."

Of course, we know what happened. Pharoah and the Egyptian did not repent and the final plague finally forced their hand.

But interestingly enough, our Sages say there was one day of darkness left... We'll have to see what happens with that one.