4 - No story but your own The Lion's World

No story but your own

Aslan loves his world and yet he cannot spare it – in the sense that he cannot make the experience of meeting him easy for persons who habitually settle for much less than the truth in their account of themselves and their world. And one of the simplest and most popular distractions we have developed so as not to have to cope with the truth about ourselves is to spend time and energy looking at others and their failings. A recurring theme in Narnia is the warning not to be lured away in this fashion from the actual moment and from our own specific condition. It is part of Aslan’s sometimes unwelcome respect for the reality he has created that he will not allow us either to comfort or to console ourselves by thinking ourselves into alternative histories. Things are as they are; our choices have been what they have been and have made us what we now are; there is nowhere else to begin...