Disenchanted?

by Anne White

In the midst of a widespread January cold snap, it's easy to feel that it's always winter and never Christmas. C. S. Lewis's White Witch made it her goal to disenchant Narnia, even through the use of magic (which is perhaps why Father Christmas was allowed to appear when the imprisoning snow began to melt away). In Prince Caspian, a similar program of disenchanting was carried out not through spells but through forgetting (and punishing those who spread the old tales).

In the last post I wrote here, I referred to what has become one of my favourite Charlotte Mason quotes: 

…therefore we do not interpose ourselves between the book and the child. We read him his Tanglewood Tales, and when he is a little older his Plutarch, not trying to break up or water down, but leaving the child's mind to deal with the matter as it can. (Parents and Children, pp. 231-232) 

Now, there are all kinds of good reasons why we should read Plutarch and Tanglewood Tales, as well as reasons why we shouldn’t “break up or water down.” But here is one less common reason: by imposing ourselves and our ideas on the story, we risk disenchanting it.

In his recent book Living in Wonder, Rod Dreher writes this:

The social world that sustained this everyday view of enchantment has disappeared. This is not to say that no one still believes in God. It is to say, however, that even for many Christians in this present time the vivid sense of spiritual reality that our enchanted ancestors had has been drained of its life force…without the living experience of enchantment present and accessible, and at the pulsating center of life in Christ, the faith loses its wonder. And when it loses its wonder, it loses its power to console us, change us, and call us to acts of heroism. (Living in Wonder, p. 9)

Let’s turn that around, and say that when we allow wonder, we allow that “living experience of enchantment” to console us, change us, and call us to acts of heroism. Like those acts of heroism we read about in Tanglewood Tales and Plutarch.

Dreher also writes:

If the cosmos is constructed the way the ancient church taught, then heaven and earth interpenetrate each other, participate in each other’s life. The sacred is not inserted from outside, like an injection from the wells of paradise; it is already here, waiting to be revealed. (Living in Wonder, p. 10)

Does that sound familiar?

We allow no separation to grow up between the intellectual and 'spiritual' life of children, but teach them that the Divine Spirit has constant access to their spirits, and is their Continual Helper in all the interests, duties and joys of life. (Charlotte Mason, Principle of Education #20)

In other words, we have been given a task that is both sacred and intellectual. We are not to deny, or forget, or let our children grow up without understanding, that this world is, in its own way, every bit as enchanted as Narnia, and where, if we allow it, a painted Dawn Treader can spray real salt water in our faces.

We are careful not to dilute life for them, but to present such portions to them in such quantities as they can readily receive...[we] do not take too much upon ourselves, but leave time and scope for the workings of Nature and of a higher Power than Nature herself. (Parents and Children, p. 232)

Hold fast to those enchanted workings of Nature. Even in the snow.