Lilly had a bad dream last night. I purposefully get up earlier than my girls so I have can have some time alone to sit and pray (and drink coffee...which is its own form of prayer really, every sip a plea for personal revival but more on this another day). No sooner had I settled onto my sofa this morning than I heard the pitter patter of feet down the hallway above me...the steady thud down the stairs followed by 5 seconds of silence before my door creaked open.
"What's up Pal?"
"I had a really bad dream Dad. My school was on fire and you were trapped in the classroom and..."
I'll spare you the details but...yeah, I'd say that qualifies for the bad dream department.
Fortunately for her (and apparently for me because dream-me was more burnt than my toast this morning), it was just a dream. The wakefulness of morning and the assurances from Dad were enough to put her back to bed.
Unfortunately, part of human maturity is the growing realization that nightmares exist in the waking world far more than in our dreams.
It is for this reason (I think) that I have always loved "Fairy Tales". Sure, it's maybe not cool to admit that, but I've given up hope on ever being cool. For as long as I can remember, I've been taken up by stories of adventure and cunning and danger and rescue. By the time I left middle school, I'd practically memorized The Lord of the Rings (appendices included).
I've come to think a lot more about this recently. Why was it that I was so taken up with these stories in my childhood? And why do I have such a deep appreciation for them now? And why do my kids feel the same way? Why, in our play, do I have to embody the Dragon that must be slain or the Monster that must be defeated to save the village from certain doom?
Growing up in East Tennessee, I faced a lot of pressure to put this personal fascination away...not from my family of course, but it was a cultural pressure. Ironically, this pressure came from some well-intentioned (I believe) Christians: an institutional perspective that literary "magic" and "fantasy" deserved to be banned. The fear was that young minds, easily influenced, would take these things too seriously or too literally and be swept up into the world of the dark powers and principalities.
While I appreciate the concern, I think they rather missed the point. Disease and War and Insecurity and Hatred and Fear and Death - these are a few of those dark principalities and powers roving our world inflicting their ravages upon humanity. And I certainly didn't find them in a book. All I needed to do was turn on the news - I vividly remember the coverage around 9/11, for example, and the way our society was gripped by fear.
I like what G.K. Chesterton said on this point:
Fairy tales, then, are not responsible for producing in children fear, or any of the shapes of fear; fairy tales do not give the child the idea of the evil or the ugly; that is in the child already, because it is in the world already. Fairy tales do not give the child his first idea of bogey. What fairy tales give the child is his first clear idea of the possible defeat of bogey. The baby has known the dragon intimately ever since he had an imagination. What the fairy tale provides for him is a St. George to kill the dragon. Exactly what the fairy tale does is this: it accustoms him for a series of clear pictures to the idea that these limitless terrors had a limit, that these shapeless enemies have enemies in the knights of God, that there is something in the universe more mystical than darkness, and stronger than strong fear.
I guess where my rambling reflections lead is here: there is profound darkness in the world and everyone knows it. What everyone does not know is that the Darkness is not the preeminent power in the World. The Darkness loses in the end. We have a generation of young people who are anxious and stressed and wondering about the world they will inherit. And the Church all too often has failed to set a compelling vision of Life before them.
On the heels of a year where Darkness has seemed all too present and all too real, we need to remember Dragons can be slain, kingdoms can be saved, and bold knights laugh in the face of Fear and Death. We need to remember that a small band of committed friends can overcome legions of the Evil Horde. We need to remember that heroic sacrifice and small acts of love deal deadly blows to the Enemy.
Perhaps most of all, that's what these stories do for me. They remind me of something profoundly true about reality - that the Kingdom of God is at hand and a Light shines in the Darkness and the Darkness cannot overcome it.
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