My favorite Johnny Cash song is a cover of a famous hymn. It goes:
. . . the voice I hear, falling on my ear,
the Son of God discloses.
And He walks with me, and He talks with me,
And He tells me I am his own
There is a deeply magical thing to breath. In the first act of creation, the spirit of Elohim or his breath, ruach in the Hebrew, tames the chaos waters ushering in the coming forth of all things. When God forms man, he breaths into him and calls him a living being and in Eden, the breath of God, his ruach, walks in the garden in search of man. In John’s gospel, he says of Jesus, “he breathed on them and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit’”.
I think it is too often the case that we have grown accustomed to seizing things in our hectic world that demands a constant state of doing and producing. Like worn out runners we are panting for breath. I see myself there caught busy between the moments of college, tiring work in a kitchen, the chores of a roommate, and finding moments amidst it all to write and pray. I find myself in the space between a great exhale and a great inhale. In the moment between letting out a great gust of breath and waiting to draw a new one, there is a silent space to reflect on the very first breath that man drew into his lungs. It was the breath of God breathed into him which he only had to receive.
It’s a funny thought which I like to think that God made us to breathe in and out so there is that sacred and magical space between breaths. If we quiet ourselves and sit in the pause after an exhale, we may remember the God that gave the first breath as a gift, not a thing to be seized. Space and presence are perhaps one of the greatest needs in our humanity. Creating space in our lives and trusting God to be in the business of filling empty spaces with his presence is how I often think of the Holy Spirit. I think of God’s insistence on showing up in places where people said surely, not here. Nothing can come from this.
One of the great beauties of the triune God is that. Christ comes from Galilee, a region where people scoffed and thought, no good thing can come from there. Christ makes wine in a place where no ingredients of wine are. Salvation is breathed into men and women who have none of it together and the Holy Spirit enters empty homes. Where culture tells me, prove yourself and you bring it all to the table, Christ says, receive my body and blood and receive the Holy Spirit too.
Matthew Dickerson has written a wonderful new book called Aslan’s Breath concerning the question of where the Holy Spirit can be found in Narnia. The title offers an answer, but more than that an invitation to return to a land. Not so that you may go through Narnia and know it better through scholarship and research, but so that Narnia may go through you.
Historian Kevin Belmonte observes:"How seldom, these days, do we meet with books that are genuine friends for the journey. In the pages of Aslan's Breath, we find an author's voice that is conversational and winsome—a presence that comes alongside the reader. Matthew Dickerson knows the realm of Narnia very well indeed and shares many insights that bring richness to walking the paths of this good country. An air of discovering pervades this excellent book. What's more, and what is best—the gift of C.S. Lewis' writing about the Holy Spirit, amid scenes of comfort, reassurance, and peace, shines in this book. So, in these pages, we have a true gift: one that illumines the seven books of the Narnian Chronicles."
Dickerson walks one through the land of Narnia with the wisdom of a guide well acquainted with the terrain of his land, but also with the excitement and love of an explorer for that which may lie ahead. In some ways, the book feels like an introduction to a wonderful new friendship with Aslan who is full of all sorts of mysteries and complexities which you didn’t see in him before. Dickerson’s reflections on the imagery of Narnia shows the warmth and wildness of Aslan experienced by the characters of Lewis and calls the reader to go “further up and further in” in their own experience of the Holy Spirit.
—blog post by Iman Mozoffarian
