“… a curious little procession was approaching— eleven Mice, six of whom carried between them something on a litter made of branches, but the litter was no bigger than a large atlas. No one has ever seen mice more woebegone than these. They were plastered with mud— some with blood too— and their ears were down and their whiskers drooped and their tails dragged in the grass, and their leader piped on this slender pipe a melancholy tune. On the litter lay what seemed little better than a damp heap of fur; all that was left of Reepicheep. He was still breathing, but more dead than alive, gashed with innumerable wounds, one paw crushed, and, where his tail had been, a bandaged stump.”
- Prince Caspian, C.S. Lewis
I have been thinking about the overzealous and puffed up little mouse Reepicheep this week. If you’re never read Prince Caspian or Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C.S. Lewis, you may not know this mouse. He over-compensates for his small height (he is, after all, a mouse) by poking his sword into people who dare challenge him and defending his honor at every turn. He is a good knight. He is willing to die for his King Aslan and fight for the Old Narnia. But he is a tad vain. He’s too ready to see offense where there is none, too ready to rush headlong into battle and is not always able to see that in fact, no, not everything is about him.
C. S Lewis wrote often about pride. In Mere Christianity he says, “The Christians are right: it is Pride which has been the chief cause of misery in every nation and every family since the world began…For pride is spiritual cancer: it eats up the very possibility of love, or contentment, or even common sense.” As someone who had a great intellect, who worked at Cambridge and Oxford, he was aware of the temptation.
Whenever I read the Chronicles of Narnia, I like to think I am a Lucy or a Peter, but most likely I am a Reepicheep. A small little soul with an outsized sense of importance. Of course, we don’t loathe Reepicheep the way we do some other characters. For all his grandiousity, he’s immensely lovable. Just a bit silly. Maybe that’s why Lent is good for us. Perhaps it helps us see we are actually a bit silly.
Does Reeicheep see it? After Lucy administers her healing potion, brings him back nearly from the dead, is Reepicheap totally transformed? When he discovers his tail is still chopped off, we get this scene…
. “I am confounded,” said Reepicheep to Aslan. “I am completely out of countenance. I must crave your indulgence for appearing in this unseemly fashion.”
“It becomes you very well, Small One,” said Aslan.
“All the same,” replied Reepicheep,” if anything could be done… Perhaps her Majesty?” and here he bowed to Lucy.
“But what do you want with a tail?” asked Aslan.
“Sir,” said the Mouse, “I can eat and sleep and die for my King without one. But a tail is the honour and glory of a Mouse.”
“I have sometimes wondered, friend,” said Aslan, “whether you do not think too much about your honour….
Ah, here is the thing about mercy, I think. Quite often it works this way — the humble receive mercy because they realise they need it. We do not deserve it, but precisely because we don’t deserve it, God is merciful. The lion’s weight of his good character is much stronger than our mousely sins. There is often a formula in the prayers of the Bible. Daniel says, “Give ear, our God, and hear; We do not make requests of you because we are righteous, but because of your great mercy.”
Even in the Common Book of Prayer has the “not because we are _____, but because you are _____” formula. “We do not presume to come to this your table, O merciful Lord, trusting in our own righteousness, but in your abundant and great mercies. We are not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under your table; but you are the same Lord whose character is always to have mercy...”
This is humility, I suppose, to have a right perspective. Not too low a view - we are not slugs, helpless worms, rotten to the core. We are just mice, mice not quite worthy to gather crumbs from the table. We have good zeal for the Kingdom. We have good intentions. We want to do great things, but in fact a good lot of it is mixed up with our own pride. So as Christians, we don’t trust it. Instead we trust the fact that God has a lion share of goodness and mercy.
Tim Keller, in The Freedom of Self-forgetfulness says, “True gospel-humility means I stop connecting every experience, every conversation, with myself. In fact, I stop thinking about myself. The freedom of self-forgetfulness. The blessed rest that only self-forgetfulness brings.”
Here is the thing about the mercy of God, though. There’s this unfathomable wildness1 to it. It is not so shocking that God should show mercy when we ask for it. It is not so surprising that when we are humble, God lifts us up.
What is shocking is that he often does so even when we are not. Sometimes, we can’t humble ourselves, so he humbles us — by letting our tails be cut off, for example. Sometimes we are still too proud to ask for what we need and yet he allows our friends to carry our broken, muddied bodies to him, allows them to sometimes rip through the roof and lower us to his feet, allows them to do for us what we cannot do for ourselves. Sometimes it is not the pain that humbles us, nor our own self-sacrifice. Sometimes we are humbled by the undeserved goodness of others. Sometimes the great lion-heart of God is not conquered by our zealous good works, our our piteous state, or anything we have done, but by the great hearts of our friends. Or even the great heart of our Greatest Friend.
Listen to Aslan roar, to his chuckle. Listen to his commendation. Not because of Reepicheep, but because of the love of his friends. That is how a mouse conquers a lion.
Why have your followers all drawn their swords, may I ask?” said Aslan.
“May it please your High Majesty,” said the second Mouse, whose name was Peeiceek, “we are all waiting to cut off our own tails if our Chief must go without his. We will not bear the shame of wearing an honour which is denied to the High Mouse,”
“Ah!” roared Aslan. “You have conquered me. You have great hearts. Not for the sake of your dignity, Reepicheep, but for the love that is between you and your people… you shall have your tail again.”
“While I can, I sail east in the Dawn Treader. When she fails me, I paddle east in my coracle. When she sinks, I shall swim east with my four paws. And when I can swim no longer, if I have not reached Aslan’s country, or shot over the edge of the world into some vast cataract, I shall sink with my nose to the sunrise.”
- Reepicheep, Voyage of the Dawn Treader
Just Beautiful Links
This Lent I have been thinking about the beatitudes. What a strange, strange list. Could it really be true that when you have nothing to own, when you’re crying alone, when you’re the guilty with nowhere to go, you will find the road to the Kingdom of God? It’s a road that doesn’t always feel #blessed. (This is blessing?! I feel like rubbish, thanks a lot Jesus). And yet Jesus says those are the blessed ones. I’ve been listening to this song by Jon Guerra and thinking about how he manages to capture the pilgrim homelessness and loneliness we feel in following Jesus. And yet he weaves in the Psalm 23 imagery of God shepherding us all along the journey. “Our cup runneth over for now and forever.” I can’t help but think of this:
“There was a young couple strolling along half a block ahead of me. The sun had come up brilliantly after a heavy rain, and the trees were glistening and very wet. On some impulse, plain exuberance, I suppose, the fellow jumped up and caught hold of a branch, and a storm of luminous water came pouring down on the two of them, and they laughed and took off running, the girl sweeping water off her hair and her dress as if she were a little bit disgusted, but she wasn’t. It was a beautiful thing to see, like something from a myth. I don’t know why I thought of that now, except perhaps because it is easy to believe in such moments that water was made primarily for blessing, and only secondarily for growing vegetables or doing the wash. - Gilead, Marilynne Robinson
Maybe we are a bit lost and lonely on this road to the Kingdom, but maybe also grace like a cascading shake of dewdrops falls on us. Maybe we are not alone. Maybe our cup runneth over now and forever. Maybe it doesn’t always feel like blessing. But maybe we are washing our dishes and our dirty clothes in baptismal water, blessing all around. Maybe Lent is hard, maybe the road to the Kingdom is narrow, but maybe this Easter will be a moment where we realise we are under a storm of luminous water, and we can find laughter and take off running.
Speaking of water, I’ve been listening to Christopher Tin’s water cycle The Drop that Contained the Sea: Waloyo Yamoni. Anything which features a massive orchestra and the Sowetho Gospel Choir has my ear.
Can’t get enough of this chicken peanut noodle goodness- the perfect sweet & salty combination.
I was doing some research for another project and now I want to got to Pretoria and see all of these statues marching in the park towards freedom. How cool!
Speaking of artwork, these images are so powerful. The artist himself is a migrant. I love how the very bags and luggage of the past that the migrants carry is actually the structural support keeping the statue together. Such a beautiful fusing of form and function to make meaning in art!
Speaking of migrants, this picture book I got at our local library was a really beautiful way of communicating what it feels like to move into a new country and culture and language. I LOVE the way the artist depicted different languages, and the metaphor of a blanket as your “familiar culture/language”
Thanks friends! As always, it’s a joy to write these (although it takes time) — and so to those of you who have joined as paid subscribers — my deepest thanks! It is a way for me to say “no” to other paid work, so I can write these for you all.
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See you in Eastertide!
Steph
“There is a Wideness in God’s Mercy, As the waters 'o’re the sea” is an old hymn. I always heard it “There’s a wildness” and I pictured God’s mercy like these huge unpredictable ocean waves that would just sweep over anything.
I just reread this post actually. Do you attend an Anglican Church? I noticed you quoted the Book of Common Prayer. My husband is an Anglican priest and I thought this was near.
This is lovely! Thank you!