Thanks for pointing out the lambda specs.  I was just going on the way the example in the documentation (which uses a "render" function) worked and how that render function was passed via implicit parameter by the Javascript implementation.  Javascript allows extra parameters to be passed implicitly and just silently ignored if not referenced but Common Lisp does not, which is why I had to try calling the lambda both ways.  As far as safety level 0 goes, I didn't test that (unless your library compiles at safety level 0?).