The Dwarfs are for the Dwarfs

Most mornings lately, I wake up, and flinch with the twinging of my back.

I headed to the specialist, who took compassion on me, and wrote out a new set of exercises to do.

Lots of good stuff is happening in the world. But the bad stuff is acting like a set of weights, so depression forms a big part of my world.

A nasty thing about depression is that it steals the joy of simple things, like eating gingerbread with your friends. Or lying on a warm path under a blue sky. The joy simply vanishes.

I have been thinking about this, and how I do not want to loose the joy and gratefulness of life. Otherwise, it becomes a matter of waking up and realising, "Uhhh....it's another stinking day."

An anecdote of this comes from The Last Battle, and I found a article by a guy called Chris Erdman, talking about the anecdote:
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 The trouble of the dwarfs

Do you, who know Lewis’ story, remember the tragic case of the Dwarfs?  Dear God may they not be us!  The Dwarfs were Narnians once loyal to Aslan, but in the midst of the battle they became so disillusioned with everything that they turned in upon themselves, became embittered and blind, caring much for themselves and little for others.  In the end, they too, by the grace of Aslan, wind up inside the Stable and the world that’s bigger and better and more beautiful than anything they could have imagined.  You’d think they’d see it.  But they don’t; they’re too accustomed to trouble, too in love with the battle, and too attached to the cramped little world they think they must hold on to.  If we’re not careful and prayerful, it’s us Presbyterians Lewis could have been writing about. 

“Aslan,” said Lucy through her tears, “could you—will you—do something for these poor Dwarfs?”

            “Dearest,” said Aslan, “I will show you both what I can, and what I cannot do.”  He came close to the Dwarfs and gave a low growl: low, but it set all the air shaking.  But the Dwarfs said to one another, “Hear that?  That’s the gang at the other end of the Stable. Trying to frighten us.  They do it with a machine of some kind.  Don’t take any notice.  They won’t take us in again!”

            Aslan raised his head and shook his mane.  Instantly a glorious feast appeared on the Dwarf’s knees: pies and tongues and pigeons and trifles and ices, and each Dwarf had a goblet of good wine in his right hand.  But it wasn’t much use.  They began eating and drinking greedily enough, but it was clear that they couldn’t taste it properly.  They thought they were eating and drinking only the sort of things you might find in a Stable.  One said he was trying to eat hay and another said he had got a bit of an old turnip and a third said he’d found a raw cabbage leaf.  And they raised golden goblets of rich red wine to their lips and said “Ugh!  Fancy drinking dirty water out of a trough that a donkey’s been at!  Never thought we’d come to this.”

            But very soon every Dwarf began suspecting that every other Dwarf had found something nicer than he had, and they started grabbing and snatching, and went on to quarrelling, till in a few minutes there was a free fight and all the good food was smeared on their faces and clothes or trodden under foot.

            But when at last they sat down to nurse their black eyes and their bleeding noses, they all said: “Well, at any rate there’s no Humbug here.   We haven’t let anyone take us in.  The Dwarfs are for the Dwarfs.”

            “You see,” said Aslan.  “They will not let us help them.  They have chosen cunning instead of belief.  Their prison is only in their own minds, yet they are in that prison; and so afraid of being taken in that they cannot be taken out.  But come, children.  I have other work to do” (181-3).

If we’re not careful, Dwarfs are exactly what we could be, and if that’s what we become then we’ll get nothing more than what they got—when all around us is gold and goodness, bounty and beauty.

            The best years of the church are not behind us; they are before us.  If we don’t believe that, we’re Dwarfs, not disciples of Jesus Christ.  If we worry about the future we deny Christ’s Lordship, we dismiss his Word, we betray his command, and we fail to respond to the call of our hearts to enter fully the Kingdom of Jesus Christ, our Lord.

Probably irrelevant to my situation, but a good excuse to put that picture of  a Lego Dwarf up.