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In The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, the famous C. S. Lewis story which we used for our curriculum at the Trinity Ranch grade school camp this last week, Lucy, the youngest of four children, gets into the land of Narnia quite by accident. She is exploring an old wardrobe and feels around the inside of it to see what is there and begins to feel something other than fur coats. Branches stick her hands and she begins to feel the cold of Narnia. Lucy walks out of the wardrobe and into the woods and is met by a wonderful creature, Tumnus the faun (a little half-man half-goat creature), who introduces her to Narnia by having her to tea at his house. She learns that Narnia is under the spell of the White Witch, the self styled Queen of Narnia, who has cast a spell so that it is always winter and never Christmas. Narnia is a land of talking animals and interesting creatures such as fauns, dwarfs, centaurs and the like, and is normally a very happy place - but for the cruelties of the White Witch. When Lucy returns to our world through the wardrobe she calls out to her bothers and sister to let them know that she has returned and is OK. No time has passed for them, while hours have passed in Narnia. Lucy tells them all about Narnia and her adventures with Mr. Tumnus, the faun. They all think that she is making up a fine story but that she should just stick to it being a good story instead of pretending to them that it really happened. Lucy is so convincing about her story that the other three finally agree to go look in the wardrobe to see if they can get into the magical land of Narnia. Of course, when Peter opens the doors to the wardrobe and holds back the coats he is able to tap on the back of the wardrobe. They all feel that Lucy has played a good joke on them but that she should now forget about it. Lucy can't forget about the wonderful place she found and is understandably upset that no one believes her. The older children, Peter and Susan, forget about the whole thing shortly, but Edmund, the second youngest, won't let it drop and teases Lucy every chance he gets. The children are playing an indoors game of hide and seek on a rainy day when Lucy decides that she has to look in the wardrobe one more time to see if Narnia is really there. She runs up to the room after leaving the others and is about to check the wardrobe when she hears someone following her down the hall. Edmund has seen her go into the room with the wardrobe and knows that this will be a great opportunity to tease Lucy again. Lucy jumps into the wardrobe to avoid being seen just as Edmund enters the room. Edmund opens the wardrobe door, climbs in and closes the door to scare Lucy. As he is feeling his way through the fur coats he begins to feel branches and crunching under his feet. Edmund has made his way into Narnia, but is a bit frightened at not finding Lucy. As he calls and searches for her, Edmund comes across the sled carrying the White Witch. The White Witch has heard old prophecies that tell of sons of Adam and daughters of Eve (humans) taking over her kingdom and is distressed to learn that Edmund is a boy, a human child. Just as she is about to destroy him, she thinks better of it and decides that she might get some use out of this boy. She invites the shivering Edmund onto her sled and warms him with a magically conjured drink. When the White Witch asks Edmund what he would like best in the world to eat, he asks for Turkish Delight. Magically, the White Witch conjures up a box of the best Turkish Delight Edmund has ever tasted. As he gorges himself on several pounds of Turkish Delight he tells the White Witch everything that she asks about his family and his own circumstances of getting into Narnia. Edmund lets slip that his younger sister has already been in Narnia and visited a faun. The White Witch promises Edmund that there will be more Turkish Delight, but only if he will bring his brother and two sisters to her house. He pleads for more, not realizing that the magic is working on him to make him desire more Turkish Delight at any cost. As she drives away, Edmund is already thinking about how to lure his brother and sisters to Narnia. Meanwhile, Lucy is just returning from another delightful time with Mr. Tumnus when she sees Edmund and happily greets him. She is glad that Edmund, too, has finally gotten into Narnia and tells him all about her time with Mr. Tumnus, explaining that the White Witch hasn't seemed to have learned of her visit with the faun and Mr. Tumnus is still safe. Edmund says nothing about his own encounter with the White Witch and he and Lucy head back into the woods to find the wardrobe and get back to our world. Upon entering the house, Lucy excitedly runs to tell Peter and Susan that she and Edmund have both been to Narnia, but Edmund has decided that the less that everyone knows about his time in Narnia, the better off he'll be in his deception and his plans to get some more Turkish Delight. He carries on that he pretended to go to Lucy's imaginary country to appease her, which greatly upsets Lucy and makes Peter and Susan concerned for both their brother and sister. After seeing how upset this has made Lucy, they all check the wardrobe again to try and help her, but this time they all end up in Narnia, where Edmund tries to think of a way to get them to the White Witch. The reason I've told this story is because our lessons this week are about Turkish Delight. You may have read or heard something like Jesus telling someone to let the dead bury the dead; or that once you've set your hand to the plow you must not look back to be fit for the kingdom. Or perhaps you remember Paul, in the letter to the Galatians, saying that we must give up sexual immorality, "enmities, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, envy, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these". But I assure you that they are talking about Turkish Delight, the kind of Turkish Delight that made Edmund want it more than he wanted anything. The lessons describe those things that we desire more than we desire good for ourselves, our families and even more than we desire God. Another reason is to share with you a story about camp this past week that has to do with our readings as well as Turkish Delight. We had a game in which the children, divided into four groups, were to choose between Turkish Delight and a Magic Potion that had healing power and would restore people to wholeness. The young people knew the story well and knew that the power of Turkish Delight made Edmund betray his own family after they had all gotten into Narnia. Edmund had slipped off to tell the White Witch where his brother and sisters were after he realized that they were not going to follow him anywhere because he had lied about being in Narnia previously. When he arrived at the White Witch's house he could see that she had indeed turned many creatures into stone, just as he had been warned that she would do to him and his family, but he told her where to find Peter and rest, just the same. When everyone noticed that Edmund was missing, they knew that something must be wrong and were warned by talking beavers to hurry off to a place where they could be protected from the White Witch, in case Edmund had really been on her side all along. Edmund's treachery doesn't get him Turkish Delight, of course, but makes the White Witch very angry that he didn't bring his brother and sisters as she had told him. When she realizes that she will not be able to get the others she decides to kill Edmund and take no further chances with the old prophecy of humans sitting on the throne at the castle. Edmund is rescued just in the nick of time by the good creatures of Narnia, but that isn't the end of it. The White Witch knows that she has a right to the life of any traitor, and Edmund has betrayed his own brother and sisters. Aslan, the son of the great Emperor Across the Sea, decides to give his own innocent life in place of Edmund's and the White Witch accepts the bargain; thinking that she will have won everything in killing Aslan and will then be able to kill all the children as well. You can probably guess how the story continues, or perhaps you remember from reading the book. At any rate you will enjoy the ending and may want to read the story once again, or perhaps for the first time. The game we played was fascinating. The only rule was, "Get as much as you can." The game had ten rounds and the same choice had to be made in each of the ten rounds, the choice between Turkish Delight and the Magic Potion. The scoring went something like this: All four teams choose the Magic Potion (M) and all get 100 points. All four teams choose Turkish Delight (T) and all lose 100 points. If we all choose healing and wholeness, we all get points. If we all choose strife, jealousy, envy and the like, we all lose. However, if three teams choose M and one chooses T, the team that has chosen T gets 300 points and the others gain nothing. If it's divided between two T's and two M's, then the T's get 200 points each and the M's lose 200 points each. If there are three T's and one M, the T's get 100 points each and the M loses 300. As you can see, there is a lot of room for treachery in this game, as there is in life. In Round 1 two teams chose "T" and two chose "M". Team 1 and Team 2 made points and the others lost points. In Round 2 Team 1 stayed with "T" but the others chose "M", giving Team 1 the lead. Round 3 and 4 were similar, with all the teams but Team 3 moving back and forth in choosing "T" or "M". Team 3 consistently chose "M", even after it lost them several hundred points. Before Round 5 I gave all the Teams a chance to talk together and iron out what might be the best way to proceed with the game. They were all pretty sure that choosing "M" was the right thing to do, but they weren't sure that they could trust each other to make that choice and wanted some way to protect themselves from harm, some way to eliminate the vulnerability of the game. No one trusted Team 1 to choose "M" consistently because they were in the lead due to having chosen "T" most consistently. Team 1 was sure that Team 3, who had chosen "M" every time, was just waiting for a round like this, where the point value would be tripled, to suck everyone else into choosing "M" while they chose "T". After several minutes of discussion Teams 1 and 2 decided that the safest choice was for everyone to choose "T" every round to the end of the game and then no one would have an opportunity to gain any ground. Team 2 tried very hard to convince Team 3 that they should choose Turkish Delight and betrayal over Magic Potion and wholeness but Team 3 wouldn't hear of it. In fact, they became a good example of the phrase that Fr. Casey has taught us from a former Archbishop of Canterbury, "It is possible to be right, repugnantly." Team 3 decided that they had "moral hygiene" and would not spoil their "moral hygiene" by stooping to the lower choice of Turkish Delight. While I appreciated and admired their choice, I wished that they could have understood how much they were themselves responsible for breaking relationships and making the other teams feel as though they were never going to be allowed to join with Team 3, because they appeared to see themselves as "superior" in some way that set them apart, rather than seeing themselves as a group that only wanted the best for everyone and would continue to sacrifice in order to help others be whole. Although I didn't explain it to grade school children this way, Team 2 was really trying to get Team 3 to do something awful, even though the intent was to put everyone on equal footing. It was akin to suggesting that because some people have committed adultery that we should all commit adultery and we'd all feel better about it. I don't think it works that way. I asked all the teams to again make their own choices and Team 3 stayed consistently with "M" while the other teams went back and forth for the next few rounds between "T" and "M". We had another discussion before Round 8 and everyone agreed that "M" was really the best choice. After some discussion I asked them all to pick again and everyone chose "M"! Then we went to Round 9 and one of the teams (I think it was Team 4) chose "T" while everyone else chose "M". This led to a bit of lost trust. We had our final large group discussion right before Round 10, the final round, which was worth 10 times the point score. Everyone except Team 3 was unsure of what the best course was at this point, except that if everyone chose "T" it would not change the standings and if everyone chose "M" it would not change the point standing either. But if anyone chose differently, it might upset the whole game. After much discussion everyone agreed that the RIGHT thing to do was to choose "M". Team 1 was again sure that Team 3 was just waiting for this opportunity to sabotage everyone else despite their "moral hygiene". Then I asked the groups to discuss privately what they would choose. Team 3 chose "M", as they had promised they would no matter what else happened. Team 1 and Team 4 chose "M" as well, choosing to trust at the last minute despite their stated reluctance in the conversation. Team 2 surprised everyone by choosing "T". Even as they announced their choice I could tell that they were unsure of what they were doing and suddenly afraid that they might have guessed wrong about some of the others. Team 2 ended with the most points, but they didn't feel like winners. Instead, they understood betrayal better than anyone in the room and perhaps understood the need for forgiveness better than the rest. The game ended differently than I had hoped, but ended in such a way that we all learned a great deal about the difficulty of making choices and how our choices impact not only ourselves but have consequences for others as well. Turkish Delight had become the thing that made us disregard our relationships; made us betray what we knew was best for ourselves and the whole group. We chose disunity even as we knew that it was the wrong choice. We chose out of fear rather than out of the belief that we were doing what was right and good. Rabbi Kushner, in the book Living a Life that Matters, spent an entire chapter discussing shalom, the Hebrew word that we often translate as peace. It does mean peace, as the peace between nations and neighbors, but it also means wholeness, as in the kind of wholeness that we have when we are integrated in ourselves; when we can take the parts of ourselves that are at war over choosing between Turkish Delight and Magic Potion and be able to bring in what we know God would have us choose. When we are integrated, when we are living out shalom, we are able to make the choice that is good and right, even when it is a difficult choice. Kushner quoted another couple of authors in this chapter, the Reverend Norman Vincent Peale and Kenneth Blanchard, authors of The Power of Ethical Management, and summed up their book with one interesting quote. "There is no right way to do a wrong thing." Our teams at Trinity Ranch learned that lesson a hard way, albeit in a "game" rather than in business or school, but it was still a powerful lesson. We are all given the opportunity and freedom to choose between our own form of Turkish Delight and the power of healing and wholeness. The Turkish Delight takes many forms as we heard from the Apostle Paul. It may take many modern forms of money, power, a great career that we choose over the needs of family, or plain old forms of mistrust and vengefulness. It may take the form of golf or exercise, or the form of reading mystery novels, or the form of cheating our friends and family of our time and feelings. It is whatever comes between our relationships with each other and with God. It is whatever we decide is more important than relationships with God and each other. Paul said it clearly when he noted that the whole of the law can be summed up in the words, "Love your neighbor as you love yourself." He was quoting Jesus. He was also quoting Leviticus. This is the Torah, the way of God, that we should love our neighbors above all but loving God. That means sometimes making choices that make us vulnerable and sometimes getting hurt. But it means making the right choice. There is no right way to choose Turkish Delight; even though we try to excuse our choice by saying that it is for a good end, that we deserve this thing even though it will hurt others, or that we are forced to choose it because we have been hurt. "There is no right way to do a wrong thing." That is the simple and plain truth. It is the Law and the Gospel all together, integrated. "There is no right way to do a wrong thing." |