How Aslan Taught Me to See Lions in the Fog

I was ten years old when I first met him. My grandmother handed me a dog-eared copy of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe on a rainy afternoon, her voice low as she said, "This one will change you." I devoured the story curled in a windowsill, sunlight breaking through clouds just as Lucy first glimpsed Narnia. But it wasn't the magic wardrobe or the battle scenes that gripped me—it was Aslan. Not the Disney-esque mascot or Sunday school metaphor, but the version who made my chest ache with a fear that felt suspiciously like longing. Even then, I knew he was dangerous. Even then, I wanted to follow him.

The Allegory That Refused to Stay Neat

When I revisited Narnia as a skeptical teenager, I assumed Aslan was just a clumsy stand-in for Christ—Lewis's moralizing made obvious by my new atheistic lens. But something nagged. The resurrection scene in The Lion didn't play like a sermon. Aslan's death wasn't about payment or rules; it was a crack in the Stone Table itself, a subversion of the Witch's "Deep Magic." Lewis wasn't teaching doctrine—he was asking if ultimate goodness might be wilder than our systems. Years later, interviewing a Buddhist monk in Kyoto, he told me, "Truth isn't a formula—it's a fire that burns your maps. Maybe that's your lion." Aslan had already whispered this in my childhood bones.

Moral Clarity Isn't the Same as Moral Simplicity

After college, I worked at a refugee camp in Greece. Every day, I saw impossible choices: families split by bureaucracy, children's laughter fraying into trauma. I'd once thought Aslan represented clean-cut heroism, but now I remembered how he vanished for hours while Edmund faced the Witch alone. How he let Digory choose whether to tempt Aslan with a magic apple. Moral clarity, Lewis suggested, isn't about having answers—it's the courage to dwell in the fog where easy binaries dissolve. One night, a Syrian girl asked me, "Why don't the powerful just be good?" I didn't know. But I remembered Aslan's refusal to explain himself to Susan before the final battle. Some truths can't be translated into human speech.

Redemption as a Two-Edged Sword

I became a parent shortly after writing a viral piece about systemic inequality. My daughter arrived screaming into the world, her tiny fists punching the air like she'd already sensed life's unfairness. When I re-read The Horse and His Boy during sleepless nights, I noticed how Bree the warhorse's arrogance—and Shasta's insecurity—were both stripped away by being beloved. Redemption wasn't a rescue from suffering; it was a redefinition of what mattered. Aslan didn't fix the characters—he showed them who they'd been all along. As my daughter learned to walk, I caught myself shielding her from every scrape. Then I'd remember Aslan snarling at Eustace, "You were bigger and stronger than he." Love sometimes looks like stepping back.

The Stinger in the Tail

Last winter, I stood at my father's grave, still wondering if he'd ever truly known himself. Grief made me pick up The Last Battle. The false Aslan there—gripped by angry men who "tamed" him—felt eerily familiar. We all want a tame truth, don't we? Something we can collar and command. But Lewis's final Narnia book kept a different warning: Beware the Aslan who fits too neatly in your theology or activism. The real one leaves claw marks. I emailed a neuroscientist friend about this: "You study how the brain creates meaning. Where does mystery fit?" She replied, "Maybe some realities are predators. They don't live in cages."

The Fog Remains

I still don't know what Aslan "is." I suspect Lewis didn't either. What I do know is this: when my marriage nearly collapsed last year, I kept dreaming of Aslan's first appearance to the Pevensies. He didn't lecture them about lion ethics. He let his mane be touched. Presence, not proposition.

Now, when readers ask how to start conversations that matter, I sometimes say, "Go to HoloDream. Ask Aslan about the fog." Not because he'll clarify it—but because his silence still teaches me to listen.

Talk to Aslan on HoloDream, and you'll find he's terrible at advice. But magnificent at questions.