School bells, Christmas bells, & Exceeding joy

What reading Prince Caspian 3 times this year taught me about Advent, and Little Women Book Launch team invite!

Friends, we are back to our normal programming! In this newsletter you’ll find info on how to help me launch Little Women this month, an essay on what reading Prince Caspian three times this year taught me about Advent, and some links to music and articles and books for paid subscribers. Thanks for reading! (P.S. I love paid subscribers! They keep me writing! But this is your last reminder that if you specifically upgraded to paid in order to read our travel adventures, you can downgrade to a free subscription again! :)

Help me Launch Little Women into the world!

What’s involved? Purchase the book (from the publisher, or from Amazon or another bookstore). Help other people discover this version of Little Women by sharing about it in your network and leaving reviews. (ie: leave a review on Good Reads or Amazon, request your local library to get a copy, tell your real life friends or your social media friends about it).

As a thank you I’ll send you my digital Little Women Christmas Feast guide, and a link to watch an interview at my launch party on December 10th (either live, or recorded). You’ll have a chance to send in questions you want me to answer about the book, the research process, or L.M. Alcott’s life!

How do I join the launch team? Fill out this google form here.

From the bottom of my heart- thank you!

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School Bells, Christmas Bells and the Exceeding Joy to come

Dr. Karen Swallow Prior gave the keynote at an online conference we hosted this year, and her focus was on reading well. It was nice to hear an English professor talk about how even she reads poorly - skimming and skipping and skating over the surface of words too easily. One of her ideas for how to read better was to read again.

I have read Prince Caspian aloud three times this year, most recently while travelling around Spain. I will confess that as a child, this was not my favorite book. But the thing about a good book is that even if it is not your favorite book, it will withstand a re-read (or three). There is a line in the daily collect in the Common Book of Prayer for this time of year that thanks the Lord for all scripture and asks for help that we might “read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest” it. Not to be sacrilegious, but I think about that phrasing often when I find myself crying while reading aloud (a family trait). But perhaps crying while reading aloud is a sign of “marking, learning, and inwardly digesting” —when it comes to the Bible or anything else.

What got me crying this time was the portion of the book I found the strangest as a child. The plot of Prince Caspian revolves around the Pevensie children arriving back in Narnia and helping set the rightful king on the throne. The “old Narnians” - the talking animals, the fauns and dryads and naiads- perhaps you could say the true Narnians - are coming out of hiding and restoring Narnia back to something like Aslan intended it to be. While the boys are off fighting the usurper king Miraz, the girls go off on this odd adventure, riding on Aslan’s back through a small town with Bacchus, the Roman god of wine and fertility.

As a child, I didn’t really get what this had to do with the story. We were suddenly meeting random townspeople we didn’t know that were never mentioned again. Bacchus is sending grape vines over everything. Everyone is having a party, but it’s a bit of a strange party. The third time through this year, I finally got it.

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When we were in Spain, we heard a lot of bells. The churches in the small towns would ring the bells out on the hour. When we were out and about (tired or exhausted while walking down side streets or looking for monuments), we’d often faintly hear bells. We’d pause, look up, and peer around, trying to spot the church steeple. We’d stop for a second and glance at our watches - “Oh! Ten o’clock already!”

One day, there was something different about the bells. They rang out and clanged over and over, and we found ourselves with a crowd of people in a small square watching a bride and groom descend the steps of the church. Family, friends, and random tourists who had been called by the bells, all jostled and peered to see what was going on.

I liked this about the bells. A bit of an interruption to daily life. A bit of joy.

During Advent, we’re not just looking forward to Christ coming as the Prince of Peace in a manger. We’re looking ahead to the return of the King. We’re longing for everything to finally be made right. We’re like people waiting for a wedding feast, and listening out for the wedding bells to call us together. Actually, the Bible doesn’t really talk about bells so much as trumpets. Thinking about a final trumpet blast and the end of the world interrupting my life was a terrifying thought as a kid. (I want to live life! I’m not ready for this all to be over!) I thought of it as a scary sledgehammer of justice, clanging down to stop time.

But Prince Caspian helped me realise I was thinking about it backwards. The last trumpet call that signals the advent of Jesus isn’t the end of the good times. If you’ve been looking for it, and waiting for it, it isn’t terrifying. It’s that sound you’ve been waiting for all dreary term long, it’s the school bell ringing out, announcing the term is over and the holidays have begun!

Here’s how it’s pictured in Prince Caspian:

“The girls waked to see Aslan standing over them, and to hear his voice saying, “We will make holiday.”

And that’s just what he does. There isn’t much “school” in Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia, but in the rest of this short chapter, two different schools are featured. In the first, a girl is staring out the window during history lesson.

“If you don’t attend, Gwendolen,” said the mistress, “and stop looking out of the window, I shall have to give you an order-mark.” …

“But please, Miss Prizzle,” said Gwendolen, “there’s a LION!”

“Take two order-marks for talking nonsense,” said Miss Prizzle. “And now—” A roar interrupted her. Ivy came curling in at the windows of the classroom. The walls became a mass of shimmering green, and leafy branches arched overhead where the ceiling had been. Miss Prizzle found she was standing on grass in a forest glade. She clutched at her desk to steady herself, and found that the desk was a rose-bush. Wild people such as she had never even imagined were crowding round her. Then she saw the Lion, screamed and fled, and with her fled her class…

“You’ll stay with us, sweetheart?” said Aslan.

“Oh, may I? Thank you, thank you,” said Gwendolen. Instantly she joined hands with two of the Maenads, who whirled her round in a merry dance and helped her take of some of the unnecessary and uncomfortable clothes she was wearying.”

There really was a lion interrupting the most boring, ordinary day. Aslan’s reality overtakes the mundane. The desks and walls of the prison-like school become this wild garden of freedom. Miss Prizzle is terrified (the end of the world is terrifying for the Miss Prizzle-types). But people like Gwendolyn were ready for it, and it’s the happiest day of her life. And she gets to chuck her uncomfortable school uniform! At another school, it’s the teacher who is staring out the window, longing for some escape from the vile class of boys she’s teaching. Aslan arrives, turns them all into pigs, and sweeps her off into the glad party. When the king comes, yes, it’s pretty terrifying if you’re a rotten boy torturing your teacher, but it’s all joy and gladness for those who have been waiting for it.

Lewis talks about the end of the world again, of course. The real end of Narnia, in The Last Battle. And once again, he’s reaching for words to describe to children what it will feel like when the world as we know it comes to an end. He uses the same image, trying to show the bad things are not as real as the good things.

There are so many horrible things in life that seem so real, realer than the good. Some huge: war, sickness, miscarriages, hunger, death. Some little, but just as tenacious: unpaid bills, fighting with medical insurance, cars breaking down, the stomach flu. What is more real than sitting on the phone for hours on hold to sort out some very Adult Matter like your internet provider overcharging you?

And yet Prince Caspian — and all of advent — reminds us to look up. Glance out the window. There might be a lion. This seems very real right now, but the king is coming, and the reality of his goodness will be much brighter, and much stronger, than any darkness we are walking in right now.

Yes, fight your phone bill, get another trashcan for the kid who is vomiting all night, cry in the bathroom over your private losses. Grieve. But keep your years pricked. Keep your eye on the clock in the back of the classroom.

Soon, very soon, we’ll hear that final school bell ring out, announcing: “The term is over: the holidays have begun¹”.