Once Upon a Wardrobe

Reason is how we get to the truth, but imagination is how we find meaning.

I’d believed— fool that I was— that because I knew this end was coming, I was prepared, that I would not grieve as I had. As if one can pre-grieve and get it out of the way. It’s not true. Grief is the price I paid for loving fiercely, and that was okay, because there was no other choice but to love fiercely and fully.

The fantastic and the imaginative aren't escapism . . . Good stories introduce the marvelous. The whole story, paradoxically, strengthens our relish for real life. This excursion sends us back with renewed pleasure to the actual world. It provides meaning. . . It takes us out of ourselves and lets us view reality from new angles. It expands our awareness of the world.

Every 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 thoughts, you must be very careful.

The way stories change us can't be explained,' Padraig says. 'It can only be felt. Like love.

Stars are made of dust and nitrogen; they are balls of gas and hydrogen. But that isn’t what a star is; it’s only what it is made of.

Maybe we are each and every one of us born with our own stories, and we must decide how to tell those stories with our own life, or in a book . . . Or could it be that all our stories come from one larger story?

Once upon a wardrobe, not very long ago and not far away,

...by now he understood that all books worth loving were worth rereading over and over.

All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.

For a breath or two, I wonder about this magical world we live in. It’s a mystery we can never understand. For a moment, a small and breath-holding moment, I know it to be true: there is more, something more I can’t see, a vivid truth that can’t be described by logic or words alone, a truth that delights the heart.

With stories, I can see with other eyes, imagine with other imaginations, feel with other hearts, as well as with my own. Stories aren’t equations.

Some babies are born closer to the end of their story than others, and this little boy was one of those.

Good stories introduce the marvelous. The whole story, paradoxically, strengthens our relish for real life. This excursion sends us back with renewed pleasure to the actual world. It provides meaning.” “Yes,” Warnie says. “It takes us out of ourselves and lets us view reality from new angles. It expands our awareness of the world.

Whenever you are fed up with life, start writing: ink is the great cure for all human ills.

So many bad things happen.” “Yes, they do and always will, and yet, all will be well.

says. “George knows you can take the bad parts in a life, all the hard and dismal parts, and turn them into something of beauty. You can take what hurts and aches and perform magic with it so it becomes something else, something that never would have been, except you make it so with your spells and stories and with your life.

The fantastic and the imaginative aren’t escapism.

I know you think the whole world is held together by some math formula.” His voice has an unaccustomed annoyance in it. “But I’ve thought about this a lot, and I think the world is held together by stories, not all those equations you stare at.

A thought soars across my mind: how lovely it is when someone, out of nowhere, calls your name. You can be going about your business with your mind fluttering and thinking its thoughts, and the call of your name can make your heart rise.

During those long afternoon walks in nature he came to believe that one must shut the mouth and open the eyes and ears, for nature only asked of him to look, listen, and attend.

Yards out past the cliffs, the sea thrashes the jagged and steep rocks with all its might, then retreats, only to try again. These broken walls and half crumbled towers had been seen by a young boy named Jack, who turned it into a magical place where goodness and love conquered winter, and a lion rose from the dead, and four children unexpectedly sat on royal thrones.

I don’t know the right answer to anything these days.” “Neither do I, Mum. I don’t know if anyone does. Only math problems seem to have right and wrong answers, far as I can tell lately.

Like I said, everything began with images: a faun… At first there wasn’t even anything Christian about them; that element pushed itself in of its own accord. And archetypes, he says. You know about those? p 217

I’d believed—fool that I was—that because I knew this end was coming, I was prepared, that I would not grieve as I had. As if one can pre-grieve and get it out of the way. It’s not true. Grief is the price I paid for loving fiercely, and that was okay, because there was no other choice but to love fiercely and fully.

Hello, my loves." Padraig enters carrying a stack of wood. My heart reaches for him; it has never stopped moving toward him since the evening at the castle, or maybe even before, on a bridge over the River Cherwell when he ran after me to walk me halfway to the Kilns. Padraig's hair is silver, pure silver, as if a child with a paint box took his bright red curls and painted them. His face is lined with wrinkles to mark his smiles. Twenty best-sellers my husband has written now, fairy tales and legends of the Irish countryside, even while tutoring at Merton for all these years. But the book young George and I are reading? Once Upon a Wardrobe. I wrote it. My brother illustrated it. Of course, he hadn't known he was illustrating a book; he merely drew while I told him stories. The book came later. Much later. Padraig drops the logs into the fire and comes to kiss us both. "What part are we on?" "The end," George says, "until we read it again." I look up to Padraig, and he smiles down at me with that crooked and dear grin that melts everything in me. I think of the first time I knew what that smile meant - on my front porch on Christmas morning - but it was at my brother's final good-bye that I knew for sure.

Is he...God?" I ask outright the question I've been thinking. This is what I want to tell George: Aslan is God; all is well. There is a place where things are made right and good again. There is hope. "That is the question I get all the time. What I did when crafting this tale, Miss Devonshire, was to suppose that there was another world, and God entered it in a different way than he did here on earth. And so there you have Aslan. It's a supposal, if you will.