TWENTY-FIVE
SWORDS OF THE ANGELS
From a kid’s perspective, maybe the best thing that happened in 2005
was the release of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. During the
Christmas season, we took the kids to see the movie on the big screen.
Sonja and I were excited to see the first high-quality dramatization of C. S.
Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia series, books we had both enjoyed as kids.
Colton was more excited about a movie that featured good guys fighting
bad guys with swords.
In early 2006, we rented the DVD and settled into the living room for a
family movie night. Instead of sitting on the furniture, we all sat on the
carpet, Sonja, Cassie, and I leaning against the sofa. Colton and Colby
perched on their knees in front of us, rooting for Aslan, the warrior lion, and
the Pevensie kids: Lucy, Edmund, Peter, and Susan. The house even
smelled like a theater, with bowls of Act II buttered popcorn, hot out of the
microwave, sitting on the floor within easy reach.
In case you haven’t seen The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, it is
set during World War II when the Pevensie kids are deported from London
to the home of an eccentric professor. Lucy, Edmund, Peter, and Susan
are bored to death, until Lucy stumbles on an enchanted wardrobe that
leads into a magical kingdom called Narnia. In Narnia, not only can all the
animals talk, but the place is also inhabited by other creatures, like
dwarves, hobgoblins, and centaurs. The land is ruled by the lion Aslan, who
is a good and wise king, but his archenemy, the White Witch, has cast a
spell on Narnia so that it will always be winter, but never Christmas. Back
in the real world, the Pevensies are just kids, but in Narnia, they are
princes and princesses who also become warriors fighting on the side of
Aslan.
That night, as we were watching the final, fantasy/medieval battle scene,
Colton, then six, was really getting into it as winged creatures dropped
boulders from the sky and the battle-dressed Pevensie kids clashed
swords with the White Witch’s evil army. During the fight, Aslan sacrificed