Monsters in the Shadows

I recently finished a book called Liturgies of the Wild by Martin Shaw. The author is an Orthodox Christian, who leads wilderness trips for people of all ages. He is an excellent storyteller and uses fairy tales to help people orient to life, grow, and heal. He brings that experience to the book as he explores aspects of modern life from an ancient lens. He doesn't use the white washed "all flowers and light" fairy tales; he uses the originals that don't always have happy endings, and always have scary challenges, usually involving monsters. 

I grew up going to a camp in the piney woods of East Texas. One of the priests who led a camp session was a masterful storyteller. Many people told the camp legend of "Mad Pierre", but he told it best. I won't go into the details, but it left us frightened and looking into the darkness with a new respect. Having hiked into the dark woods to hear the tale, we then hiked all back to our campsite intact, even though one the counselors usually gave us one last scare on the way back, hiding along the trail and leaping from the shadows. 

I was reconnected with that formative experience a few summers ago when I went to a family camp in Colorado. We had a lovely night hike out to a waterfall, and we walked most of the way without flashlights. We enjoyed the stars, the sound of the stream, and I was able to tell a story. Not a scary story, but a creation story about the stars. On the way back our son, around the age of seven, went ahead with his friends, and my wife and I lagged behind enjoying the silence and darkness. When we were catching up to the group on the trail, all of a sudden, a beast shrieked at us from just a few feet off the trail! We both made our own noises, causing the group that had gone ahead to yell back at us to see if we were alright. Of course, it wasn't a beast after-all. It was a friend who had hidden and waited to give us the fright, like those counselors of my childhood. My heart beat strongly the last distance back to camp, and not because of the altitude. 

While I appreciate the lengths we go to protect our children and help them feel safe, there is something formative about appropriate levels of fear, then drawing near to our group, and realizing that while the world can be a scary place, we are likely to survive. The experience teaches respect, and gives us ground to stand on when life gets scary. The monsters of fairy tales often bring about transformation in the main characters. Being appropriately afraid of those camp monsters might just keep the campers out of danger, and close to their cabin mates where they belong. 

Reading the old fairy tales,which don't always have happy endings, prepares us to know that life will be difficult at times. It may help us to see the scary parts of life not as an undeserved punishment, but as a challenge through which we will grow stronger. Remember, Jesus himself battled death, harrowed hell, and double crossed the Devil himself to rescue the captives.