And so these poems came to life. It’s my hope and prayer that they can be an encouragement to someone.

I heard You clearly,
I know Your voice.
I saw You near me,
I made my choice.
There on the mountain, 
My head was clear.
That blessed fountain
Dispelled my fear.
But now Your warning
Resounds in me.
I woke one morning
And could not see.
My mind is clouded
By thicker air.
The truth is shrouded
By all my cares.
Where is assurance
Of what is right?
I need endurance
To win this fight.
But in this battle,
The sides are blurred.
A constant prattle
Is all that's heard.
Enchantments mingle
With what I know,
And every single
New day must show
How I have faltered
In hearing You.
I've built an altar,
But precious few
Gifts have I offered--
I should have stayed.
But now the scoffers
Call me away.
My mind against me--
What hope have I?
Can I still be free?
I wonder why
You do not pierce all
The lies at first.
Perhaps if I call,
Then all the worst
Of fears will then cease,
With patience, yea,
I can still find peace--
I know the way.
So here I am now,
I'll still come back
When I forget how
You guide my track.
Through this confusion,
You are the same.
In these intrusions,
You know my frame.
I've heard You clearly,
I know Your voice. 
I've seen You near me,
I've made my choice.
At blessed fountain,
My head was clear.
As on that mountain,
Dispel my fear. 

“Where sky and water meet,

Where the waves grow sweet,

Doubt not, Reepicheep,

To find all you seek.

There is the Utter East.”

~C.S. Lewis, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader

Welcome to the next installment of The Narnia Project! Today, we feature the poems based on The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, one of my favorites of the Narnia books. I don’t have very much in me to write a whole introduction, so I’ll let these poems speak for themselves.

Enjoy, and if you like them, please pass this post on to someone else!

Where Is The Utter East?

Where have you gone, O Fair Adventurers?
What paths did your prow seek?
What was beyond the peak
Of rising waves unknown?
What glories thence were shown?
Did you come to Utter East? 

"Here I have come, O Questing Mariner:
The gale found me a life,
Estate, and then a wife. 
This land is pleasant, yea,
In comfort I shall stay.
I need no more to sail
In quests that may yet fail.
Where is the Utter East?"

Where have you gone, O Fair Adventurers?
What paths did your prow seek?
What was beyond the peak
Of rising waves unknown?
What glories thence were shown?
Did you come to Utter East? 

"Here I have come, O Questing Mariner:
I found a wild land
With secrets close at hand.
How fearsome I became
When greed had marred my name!
Despairing, here I fell;
Now if you know, do tell:
Where is the Utter East?"

Where have you gone, O Fair Adventurers?
What paths did your prow seek?
What was beyond the peak
Of rising waves unknown?
What glories thence were shown?
Did you come to Utter East? 

"Here I have come, O Questing Mariner:
My comfort was my death,
Relief was my last breath.
A curse is on this place,
And only One can chase
Away the gilded thoughts
That are in evil wrought.
Where is the Utter East?"

Where have you gone, O Fair Adventurers?
What paths did your prow seek?
What was beyond the peak
Of rising waves unknown?
What glories thence were shown?
Did you come to Utter East? 

"Here I have come, O Questing Mariner:
I heard of dreams come true--
Alas! The good are few.
This darkness of my mind
Will never let me find
Escape from my own fear,
Whence nightmares come appear.
Where is the Utter East?"

Where have you gone, O Fair Adventurers?
What paths did your prow seek?
What was beyond the peak
Of rising waves unknown?
What glories thence were shown?
Did you come to Utter East? 

"Here we have come, O Questing Mariner:
To land as fair as day,
Where many long to stay.
And yet in quarrel great,
We all did seal our fate.
And in a star's own keep,
We fell to magic sleep.
Where is the Utter East?"

Where have you gone, O Fair Adventurer?
What paths did your prow seek?
What was beyond the peak
Of rising waves unknown?
What glories thence were shown?
Did you come to Utter East?

Here I have come, a Questing Mariner:
Returning with a sigh
From having said goodbye.
A kingdom I must rule,
And yet it seems so cruel.
As I fulfill my task,
I cannot help but ask:
Where is the Utter East?

Where have you gone, O Fair Adventurer?
What paths did your prow seek?
What was beyond the peak
Of rising waves unknown?
What glories thence were shown?
Did you come to Utter East? 

"Here I have come, O Questing Mariner:
I sailed the seas of white,
At last gave up the fight.
Far mountains call to me,
Their peaks now I can see. 
I sought this all my days,
And I have found a way.
There is the Utter East." 

Where have you gone, O Fair Adventurers?
What paths did your prow seek?
What was beyond the peak
Of rising waves unknown?
What glories thence were shown?
Did you come to Utter East? 

"Here we have come, O Questing Mariner:
To places of our own,
We'll reap the seeds once sown.
Our own world we must love
In faithfulness thereof.
But longings deep yet stay,
New purposes at play--
We saw the Utter East."

“But no one except Lucy knew that as it circled the mast it had whispered to her, ‘Courage, dear heart,’ and the voice, she felt sure, was Aslan’s, and with the voice a delicious smell breathed in her face.”

~C.S. Lewis, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader

Courage

Courage, I said, Courage, take heart.
'Tis but a dream, merely a part
Of nightmares I see, gone with the start
Of day that shall come. Courage, take heart!

But I could not take heart.

Courage, I said, Courage, be free!
'Tis but my fear speaking to me.
These lucid dreams are all that I see.
I shall wake soon--Courage, be free!

But I could not be free. 

"Courage," He said, "Courage, be still.
Dreams may not end, but tightly I will
Hold you to Me till times are fulfilled.
My love is strong. Courage, be still." 

And at last I was still. 

This day’s question was “What would your theme song be? DAFY.”

My space was one of the last left open, and I anxiously waited to see what someone would write for me. Finally, my friend Mercie said, “What’s that song that plays in the credits of Prince Caspian? I think that fits you really well.”

The song was, of course, “The Call” by Regina Spektor, which is just ironic on a number of levels, given the Immortality jokes and how every Immortal has a call. But this moment was before any of that, and I wasn’t sure how to take it.

My theme song was the one that made me want to cry every time I watched the movie of Prince Caspian? The background to Peter and Susan leaving Narnia, being told they could never return? And not to mention the fact that only a year earlier, I’d recorded a cover of the song with a dear friend who lived out of state, and we hadn’t seen each other since. The song was like an anthem of our friendship, and it always made me miss her.

I know I don’t usually give an introduction to Narnia Project poems, and this is technically the second one for this set. But even if I wasn’t directly thinking of “The Call” when I wrote these, the lyrics permeate their meaning.

“Now we’re back to the beginning,

It’s just a feeling and no one knows yet.

But just because they can’t feel it too

Doesn’t mean that you have to forget.

Let your memories grow stronger and stronger

Till they’re before your eyes.

You’ll come back when they call you,

No need to say goodbye.

~Regina Spektor

I used to know an innocence
Before I learned fear's impudence
To constantly return,
To never leave me peace. 
I know so much
I wish I could
Forget. 

I can't go back. 
I can't go back
To enchanted shores where white gulls cry,
To Neverland's bright starry sky. 


Adventure once hung at the door,
A thing to love, to be sought for. 
But now I love the fight,
Not just for honor shown
In battle, but
Because I can
Relate. 

I can't go back.
I can't go back
To enchanted shores where white gulls cry,
To Neverland's bright starry sky. 

In innocence, I still knew grief;
I knew of death, that life is brief.
But I did not yet know
How painful it could be.
I'd heard of death,
I feel it now
Within.

I can't go back.
I can't go back
To enchanted shores where white gulls cry,
To Neverland's bright starry sky. 

I'm grown up now, the years have passed,
Those childish whims aside are cast.
But still I long to find
The places that still make
My heart to soar,
Yet longing to
Believe

I could go back.
I could go back
To enchanted shores where white gulls cry,
To Neverland's bright starry sky. 

And then one day, when all is done,
I'll see this battle clearly won.
The innocence is gone,
But purity has come.
I won't forget.
I still believe

I will come back.
I will come back
To enchanted shores where white gulls cry,
In better lands with starless sky. 






***







I knew this time was coming--so did they:
Adventures always end with more goodbyes.
I think they'll understand it too, someday.

But even now, it seems like something died,
My peace of mind at odds with what I feel:
In silence, I just want to sit and cry. 

How am I ever now supposed to heal
When I can never go back to that place,
That world that only we four knew was real?

We thought that we had gone without a trace
While we were ruling as the kings and queens,
But we came back into our lives in pace

With how our world had ever, always been.
And now I'm home again, and I can't tell
If sight can pierce once more beyond the screen.

I know within that all will be made well.
I'll take what I have learned and use it here.
But still, this sorrow I cannot yet quell. 

The innocence of childhood, I fear,
Has gone away and cannot be regained.
I'm now too old for what became so dear.

I bade farewell to all those who remained
And took a step out through that magic door,
To live the life for which I have been trained.

And yet, I cannot help but think that more
May come to us: we do not know the end. 
For only One sees all that lies in store.

In time, my broken heart will start to mend,
The memories of good will carry me
As I move on to where I have been sent. 

For once a king or queen, so always be:
I think, perhaps, that we shall meet again.
What joy shall come when you once more I see. 

I wrote these poems at separate times, for different reasons, but in the end, they fit together well and come to the same conclusion. So, I wanted to share the story that together, they tell.

But that story does not start with The Chronicles of Narnia. It starts with The Lord of the Rings.

This is a good week to dip my toe into the waters of J.R.R. Tolkien. Did you know that March 25th is Tolkien Reading Day? That’s because according to Tolkien’s timeline, March 25th is the day the Ring was destroyed. And so, at the encouragement of the Tolkien Society, fans celebrate the day by reading favorite passages of Tollers’ (as his friends called him) writing.

I’ve been a Tolkien fan ever since I was 6 years old and my dad bought me a copy of The Hobbit. It was only three years later that he began reading The Lord of the Rings to me, and we would celebrate finishing each book by watching the movie. Jokingly, I could say that my life changed when I was 9 because of that, but it’s honestly not an exaggeration. I became a hard-core Tolkien nerd, and sometimes I wonder if my parents ever regretted turning me into one.

A few years later, I followed up with The Silmarillion and didn’t understand a word of it. But later down the road, I returned to it and fell in love with Tolkien’s mythology of Middle-earth and the inspiration he drew from real-world mythology. But I didn’t really know anyone else who was quite as into Tolkien as I was.

I think that was one of the reasons I fell in love with The Habit, Student Edition as early as I did. My first class by Jonathan Rogers was, of course, Writing With Hobbits. I had never been part of an online class before, much less one that came with a built-in community of writers. While I enjoyed the lectures, it was that community that drew me in. I met people who were just as nerdy about Tolkien, Lewis, and the Rabbit Room as I was. For the first time in my life, I was able to talk to someone other than my dad about The Silmarillion.

But the class was more than a book club. It was, as Jonathan Rogers often says, a writing class, not a literature class. We would have writing exercises every week, and for the first time in my life, I realized that people actually wanted to read my writing.

I was devastated when the six week class ended. I’d never known such a community before, surrounded by other writers who enjoyed the same things I did. I had very few in person friends at that time in my life, and the ones I did have had very different interests than me. Writing With Hobbits had made me feel like I belonged somewhere.

And so naturally, when I found out about the next class, Writing With Feechies, I asked my parents if I could take it. They agreed right away, and I went on after that to take Writing With Caspian.

Sometime around the second or third class I took, a very exciting announcement was made: the amazing Mrs. Andrea Yenne had pitched the idea of a year-round student forum, much like the adult Habit Membership, and offered to moderate it. To my excitement, Jonathan Rogers agreed.

In fact, I was so excited that Mrs. Yenne tells me I was the first person to post on the SE (as well call it). I watched as people began to join, and I quickly made friends over shared interests, favorite books, and reading each other’s stories.

Those early days weren’t without hiccups, though. It was chaotic, bringing together a bunch of teenaged writers who were just finding community like that for the first time. We were over the moon to have that opportunity, and unfortunately, our energy was a little too much at times. But the friendships forged were real, and I’m still in touch with several of those people.

Time went on, and the forums changed. People left, and each new class would bring a flood of new faces joining our ranks. Some stayed for the year-round membership, while others only came for a class or two. After a few years, it got so big that we had to split into two separate cohorts.

As time went on, those of us who had been around from the beginning began looking back and talking about the changes we’d seen in the SE. A handful of us being Tolkien nerds, we began comparing the different eras of the community to the Ages of Middle-earth.

For those of you who aren’t as familiar with J.R.R. Tolkien’s works, basically the idea is that Middle-earth’s timeline goes in Ages.

There’s the Age of the Trees, when the Valar, angelic guardians of the created world, live at peace in Valinor.

This overlaps a bit with the beginning of the First Age, when the Elves awaken and inhabit Middle-earth, eventually relocating to Valinor, at the invitation of the Valar. But Feanor leads one of the Elven tribes, the Noldor, to rebel against the Valar, and they go back to Middle-earth, where many battles and adventures take place as the Elves try to defeat the first Dark Lord, Morgoth, and Feanor and his sons continue to make trouble. The end of the First Age comes when Morgoth is defeated.

The Second Age is most notable for Sauron rising to power and taking Morgoth’s place. He gains control over much of Middle-earth, and with the help of the Elf Celebrimbor, forges the Rings of Power. This is also the time period when Númenor, Tolkien’s version of Atlantis (and my favorite part of Middle-earth’s history) rises and falls.

The Third Age is the one most fans are familiar with. It’s the time period when The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings take place. This is when Hobbits live in The Shire, Elves and Dwarves are at odds, and the race of Men is rising to power. The Third Age ends on March 25th, 3019 T.A., when Frodo destroys the One Ring (or, more accurately, Gollum destroys himself, and consequently, the One Ring as well).

The Fourth Age marks the beginning of a change in Middle-earth. Sauron is defeated, and the time of the Rings is over. The Elves, who still bear three of the Rings of Power, begin to fade and return to their home in Valinor. Men begin to rule, and Middle-earth slowly turns into the world as we know it today.

Those of us Tolkien nerds who had been in the Habit, SE from the beginning marked the Ages of the SE. We began with the Age of the Trees (though we called it the Pre-First Age) when we took classes before there was an official Habit, Student Edition, and we went all the way down to where we were then in the Third Age.

Of course, half the fun of a bunch of nerdy writers online together was changing our profile pictures to obscure characters. So we “Pre-First Agers” decided to change our pictures to Elves who had lived in Valinor. There were many options to go around, including Feanor, , all of the Sons of Feanor, High King Fingolfin, and my favorite, Finrod Felegund (Tolkien really had a thing for F names).

But for me personally, I chose Galadriel as my Pre-First Age persona. She seemed to fit well what I was experiencing in the SE. I had been there since the start. I had contributed to the chaos at the beginning, but hadn’t been involved in the most crazy parts, much like how Galadriel left with the Noldor, but didn’t follow Feanor’s group. I had watched people come and go through all the Ages of the SE, until in the end, I was the oldest member, one of the handful who had stuck around that long. I very much related to the opening lines of The Fellowship of the Ring movie when you hear Galadriel’s monologue begin with, “The world is changed.” (Though the book purist in me would like to point out that in the books, it’s actually Treebeard who delivers that line.)

There was also a sobering reality that came with being the oldest member: I didn’t fully fit anymore. I was so much older than some of the youngest members, and over the space of a year or so, I gradually came to realize that it was time for me to move on. I didn’t, right away. I thought that maybe I still had some part to play in the community, so I invested more in relationships with \people, and I was rewarded with what have become deep friendships.

But still, the time came, and after our second in-person Gathering, I bid farewell to The Habit, Student Edition, proverbially leaving Middle-earth and sailing away, just as Galadriel does at the end of The Return of the King.

Leaving the SE was one of the hardest decisions I’ve ever made. I was leaving behind such a beautiful thing that I wasn’t sure I’d find anywhere else, and a lot of my friends were staying behind. But I knew I couldn’t stay. Sometimes, I questioned my resolve and wondered if I could spend a little more time there. But I knew I couldn’t, and in the end, I chose to “remain Galadriel,” knowing when my time was coming to say goodbye.

I compared it to Galadriel sailing to Valinor, but as the time approached for me to leave and in the weeks following, I found a more apt comparison: Peter and Susan at the end of Prince Caspian, being told they’re too old to return to Narnia.

Because that’s what this was all about. I was growing up. I was too old and had received everything I could from the SE. Now, it was time for me to move on to the adult world and implement what I had learned there, instead.

The summer of 2025 was when I really grew up. Leaving The Habit, Student Edition cut ties with the last of my childhood/teenage years that I’d been clinging to, and immediately after returning from the Gathering, I got promoted to a management position at work, throwing me into a very adult role. Two weeks after that, I volunteered at a Joni and Friends Family Retreat, helping to lead a group for neurotypical siblings of the campers with disabilities—the same group that I had gone through myself as a teenager. I was no longer the kid looking to the leaders for encouragement; I was the leader trying to encourage the kids.

That was how I learned to appreciate Prince Caspian in a new way. I knew what it was like to leave behind something that had been so important in my growing years. To realize that I was too old for it was heartbreaking, and it took a step of faith to leave, trusting that God had something just as good on the other side.

These next two poems are written from the perspective of Peter Pevensie, all about leaving Narnia. And I poured my heart and soul into them as I processed everything I just wrote about, as well as other things that happened leading up to the decision to leave.

Maybe you’ve been in that place, too, having to move on because you’re not a child anymore. Maybe some of you haven’t gotten there yet, but know you will. Or maybe you’re in the weird in-between place like I was for so long, watching like Galadriel on the outskirts, but not totally removed yet. Wherever you’re at, I hope that these poems can encourage you.

See you next week, with the next installment of The Narnia Project.

A poem written from the perspective of Lucy Pevensie, based on The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis.

The wardrobe door called my name.
I ran in, no hint of shame.
Though my stay at first was brief, 
I fell not to unbelief. 
No doubt came to my young mind,
There I learned the faith to find
Truth that lay beyond my sight
As I trudged through winter’s night.

I did not betray my kin.
All my hope was trusted in
What I heard, the greatest name,
One of power, love and fame. 
I found more than simple wood,
I found lands I never could 
On my own, without your call,
And I came, the first of all.

Now my faith is further blessed,
In your love, I learned to rest.
I see you now, your golden mane.
You’ve become this death’s own bane.
As I rule in this new land,
Most of all, I see your hand. 

Just as when I stumbled here,
I walk in faith, and not in fear. 
Once, at dawn of time, the stars
Sang with you from heights afar.
I will sing of joy and grace,
For over all, I saw your face. 

I’d been taking Writing With classes since the end of 2020, and my favorites of them had always been when Jonathan Rogers ventured into the world of Narnia. In fact, my favorite of his classes still remains Writing on the Dawn Treader, because it brought me back to the reason I write.

Yes, I was very much looking forward to studying The Silver Chair through the eyes of a writer. I fully expected it to give me some great new insight into my writing life.

But that’s not what happened. I did receive insight, but into my personal and spiritual life, instead.

I’d been dealing with anxiety on and off for a month or so, and while it wasn’t as bad as it had been when I was a teenager, it was enough to be annoying. I kept thinking, “I thought I was over this! God gave me victory and freedom. So why am I feeling this way again?”

One night, at my Bible study I was attending, I voiced a thought that was both mind boggling and sobering.

“I’ve been struggling with anxiety for ten years.”

First of all, how was I old enough to say something had consistently lasted for ten years? But more importantly, why was the struggle still going on?

The ladies I talked with were encouraging, and I felt glad for having gotten the frustration off my chest, but the really crazy thing came when I got home.

I still had some time to kill that evening, so I decided to catch up on my reading for Writing with Puddleglum the next day. There, in The Silver Chair, I found a quote that stopped me in my tracks.

“Prince Rilian shivered as she [the witch] spoke to him. And no wonder: it is not easy to throw off in half an hour an enchantment which has made one a slave for ten years.”

(Italics mine)

I’m pretty sure I started crying when I read that. Honestly, that’s my reaction to a lot of things. But this is where the timing was insane: I hadn’t been reading all of The Silver Chair. I knew the story well enough that I could follow the classes without actually doing the homework. But the night that I finally admitted to someone that I’d been dealing with anxiety for ten years, I just happened to decide to do my homework, and stumbled on that?

It was clearly the Lord, reaching through pages of my favorite books to touch my heart, once again.

That was the first time I realized what C.S. Lewis meant when he wrote to his goddaughter that “someday you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again.” It’s not that I ever got really tired of the fairy tales, it’s that my understanding of them changed. I was no longer a child, so I didn’t see them through that lens anymore. Reading The Chronicles of Narnia as an adult was a completely different, and yet wholly good, experience.

I already told you how I wrote a poem about Susan after The Last Battle. I decided to try another one, this time about Prince Rilian learning to live after his disenchantment. That led to one of the most raw, vulnerable poems I’ve ever written, but also an idea: what if I reread all of Narnia, and wrote poetry about what new things stood out to me?

That, my friends, became The Narnia Project, which I am going to start sharing with you this weekend.

I’m doing two posts this week because I wanted to give a proper introduction to these poems and why I’m writing them. I’m going to be sharing them in order of the books: poems about The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe, ones based on Prince Caspian, etc. In publication order, of course, because that’s the only way to read it, in my opinion (and because I may or may not have no poems for The Magician’s Nephew yet…give me time, Jonathan Rogers is about to start teaching Writing With Digory). So I do apologize, it’ll take a while to get to the poems about Rilian or Susan.

I’m so excited to share these with the world, and I really hope they can encourage someone.

Keep your eyes open Saturday, when I’ll be posting my poem about Lucy Pevensie.