I read CSLewis for the first time when I arrived in the United States at the age of nine. Born in Iraq, I was still learning English when I first read The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, and it captured my attention and imagination. .
Time passed, I moved to this country, became an adult and then read other books by Lewis philosophical and not fictional, but what breaks me on this day are some pages of the Pilgrim of Dawn.
In this book, C. S Lewis offers us a very personal picture of regeneration.
A cena começa com Eustáquio, um menino desagradável que se vê em posse de uma grande fortuna. Ele fica imaginando a vida e confortos que podia desfrutar agora, e em seus confortos ele adormece com seu tesouro. Quando acorda, Eustáquio não é mais um menino, mas um dragão, a manifestação externa de sua ganância e egoísmo internos.
A bracelete de ouro que ele havia colocado em seu braço de menino agora estava apertando sua pata de dragão, e a dor era lancinante. Pior ainda, a dor física misturou-se com a dor de perceber que ele agora estava desligado da humanidade, isolado e sozinho. Ele começa a chorar muito, lágrimas quentes de dragão.
With mercy and compassion, Aslam arrives and leads the eust-usual dragon to a garden at the top of the mountain and, later, to a water fountain in the center of the garden.
Eust-quio looks at the fountain and realizes that if he could get into the water, the pain of his paw would stop, but Aslam says he will have to undress first. After a moment of confusion, Eust-quio remembers that he is a dragon, and that dragons have skins like snakes, which can be changed, with their sharp claws begins to tear their dragon skin, a layer comes off to discover another. horrible, scaly and hard underneath. And then another one. After three layers, do you realize it’s all in vain?It will never purify, never get rid of your pain or change that horrible skin on your own.
“I will remove your skin,” said Aslam the Lion
Eustatius was so desperate that not even fear of Aslam’s claws was enough to prevent him from lying on his back, that he lay anxiously on the ground, so Eustache felt.
The first nail he gave me was so deep that I thought it hit my heart and when I started taking off my skin I felt the worst pain of my life, the only thing that kept me moving was the pleasure of feeling my skin taking off.
This took this horrible thing away from me, as I thought it had been the other time, and there I was on the lawn, much harder and darker than the others, and there I was too, soft and delicate as a plucked chicken and much smaller than before. Did you catch me then? I didn’t like it very much, because I was all sensitive without the skin and Threw me in the water. At first it burned me a lot, but then it was delicious, when I started swimming I noticed that the pain in my arm had completely disappeared, I understand the reason. I was people again. [?] After a while, the lion pulled me out of the water and dressed me [1].
I shed many tears of solemn gratitude at this scene. It hurts. He stings and heals.
As Tim Keller once said in a sermon: “The way to deal with guilt is not to avoid it, but to solve it. Eustacio not only realized that he could not remove his skin, but only God could remove it, and that is why you must let it go deep. You have to take all the blame for yourself, stop blaming others and take responsibility for what you did wrong. Without excuses, Totally expensive?.
I look at my sin head-on. I was also a dragon, an ugly and disgusting creature, deeply trapped in the misery I had created, alone and frightened, but by the grace of God, the Lion of Judah called me to the garden built on the mountain, and to the fountain and to the living water.
He made me a new creature and gave a future to a hopeless sinner
When Christ tossed my flesh, a flesh I could not strip, he turned my heart from stone to flesh. By the blood of a lamb, I went from dragon to girl.
Like Eustace, I have my relapses. There are still many days when I can be boring, but healing has begun, and healing will be completed in due course (Philippians 1. 6; 1 John 3. 2). And when that happens, I’ll walk in a new garden, to live with it. God and drink in the river of pleasure constantly.
[1] C. S. Lewis. Narnia. Editora Martins Fontes, 2005. p. 451-452. Translation by Paulo Mendes Campos.