Growing Up, and Growing Up Again

I just read "The Real Reason Why Grown-Ups Love Young-Adult Fantasy Books" over at one of my favorite blogs, io9. The author, Marie Rutoski (herself a writer of YA fantasy), suggests that the most powerful element of YA Fantasy is the essence of change which is inherent in the experience of youth. I think she's on to something. Puberty is perhaps the most archetypal, embodied change that all of us experience, and it's one that continues to bewilder us. It's only natural we'd attempt to make sense of such profound transformation through stories.

Rutoski notes the odd structure of some coming-of-age stories, such as C.S. Lewis's Pevensie children, who grow up in Narnia, are transformed back into children when they return to England, and there have to grow up again. It occurred to me that this twice-growing-up might be semi-autobiographical. You see, Lewis was an atheist, and it was "fairy stories", as he called them--and an encounter as an adult with one fairy story in particular (Phantastes, by George MacDonald), that first "baptized [his] imagination" and started him on the path to conversion. You can read more about his conversion in his books, Surprised by Joy and The Great Divorce. At the close of The Voyage of the 'Dawn Treader', Lucy is heartbroken by the thought of never seeing the Great Lion, Aslan again:

“It isn't Narnia, you know," sobbed Lucy. "It's you. We shan't meet you there. And how can we live, never meeting you?"
"But you shall meet me, dear one," said Aslan.
"Are -are you there too, Sir?" said Edmund.
"I am," said Aslan. "But there I have another name. You must learn to know me by that name. This was the very reason why you were brought to Narnia, that by knowing me here for a little, you may know me better there.” 

It's apparent that Lewis himself believed that he had been drawn to the world of fairy stories so that he might encounter in some of them what he called "holiness," so that, eventually, he could recognize its original in Christianity. So, having abandoned Christianity as a child, he grew up in the world of Fantasy, and returned to Christianity as an adult, becoming "as a little child" in the faith, before growing into one of its greatest apologists.

I also recall a conversation I had with my oldest brother, years ago, when his children were very young. He said that when he graduated college, he felt like he was finally a grown up. But when he got married, he realized that he still had a lot of growing up to do. And when he had children, he felt that he was only then really starting to grow up.

Last year, I fell in love for the first time in my life. I'm in my thirties, and I thought I might have been in love once or twice before, but it had seemed like a pale thing--not at all like what others said being in love was like. I had thought that what poets and lovers called "love" must just be exaggerated, or that I just wasn't the sort of person who could feel it, until it really happened, and though I had a hard time describing it myself, there was just no mistaking it. And I discovered that I still have a lot of growing up to do, because when it comes to love, with all its joy, intensity, exhilaration, silliness, messiness, patience, hurt, forgiving, and learning to be an "Us" instead of a "Me", I'm like a little child. That first love made me glad, and it made me grow, even after the relationship itself was over. Every time we open our hearts, we grow--the more we open our hearts, the more we grow. I still have a lot of growing to do.

Two weeks ago, my youngest brother got married. He's just a couple of years younger than me, and it's been a privilege to grow up with him. In many ways, because of the physical challenges our family has faced, we had to "grow up" faster than many children do. He has been very responsible toward his family for as long as I can remember. But maturity is a pattern woven of many threads, and some are longer than others. I've admired the man my brother has been for many years, but as he stood next to his new wife, I saw a man I'd never seen before, and with a heart full of sisterly pride, I thought "Now he's really grown up." Then my oldest brother's words echoed in my memory, and my second thought was "No, this is just the beginning of really growing up."

I don't think we ever stop growing up. All life is change, is transformation. Adolescence and young adulthood may be the most tangible stage in the process, but for all its "firsts", it's by no means the most profound. The end of all our "growing up", after all, is to become as our Father in Heaven is. Jesus taught that we must become "as little children," humble and teachable, if we are to grow into the kinds of beings who can inherit His kingdom, and this, I think, is a process we must repeat again and again, because every time we think we've finally grown up, we discover we still have much more growing to do. The sorrows, hurts, griefs, and shames of mortal life--those are growing pains. But for all its awkwardness and agonies, youth, with all the revelations of first experiences, is also often a period of ecstatic joy. So, I'm looking forward to growing up, and growing up again.

Redwood Forest, May 2010. 

That's my brother who just got married, 

looking at a tree several hundred years old, 

which still has plenty of growing up to do.