SIMPLY NAKED: SIMPLY FREE

Carlo Carretto, in his book about Francis of Assisi entitled, I, Francis , observed:

"At least once in our lives we have dreamed of becoming saints, of being saints.

Stumbling under the weight of the contradictions of our lives, for a fleeting moment we glimpsed the possibility of building within ourselves a place of simplicity and light.

Horrified at our own selfishness, we burst asunder the chains of the senses, at least in our desire, and glimpsed the possibility of true freedom and authentic love.

Bored by a middle-class, conformist life, we suddenly saw ourselves out on the streets of the world - bearers of a message of light and love, love of all sisters and brothers, and ready to offer, on the altar of unconditional love, the witness of a life in which the primacy of poverty and love would make communicating and relating an easy matter" (vii).

This reminded me of that scene from Chapter Seven of  The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, where Eustace is trying and trying to shed himself of the dragon skin he'd wound up in as a consequence of greed. You remember it?

"So I scratched away for the third time and got off a third skin, just like the two others, and stepped out of it. But as soon as I looked at myself in the water I knew it had been no good.

"Then the lion said - but I don't know if it spoke- 'You will have to let me undress you.'...the very first tear he made was so deep that I thought it had gone right into my heart. And when he began pulling the skin off, it hurt worse than anything I've ever felt. The only thing that made me able to bear it was just the pleasure of feeling the stuff peel off" (C.S. Lewis, pp. 108-109).

The first time i read this, i was 19 years old, in a fishing lodge in Newfoundland with my family. We had been swimming all day in a pristine river, watching the wild mink fish for salmon. Satiated from an abundant supper, i was cozied up in my down sleeping bag next to the field stone fireplace...as i read, i began to flush...my ears felt hollow...was i embarrassed?...the tears stung my cheeks...seeing Eustace, i saw myself...

Who was this great lion, this frightening Aslan, that his mercy was so severe? It was the first of many longings to be still enough for the "lion" to liberate me from the uncomfortably familiar skins of "stuff."