Parents create barriers for their children to keep them from harm. A toddler sees this wonderful world without consequences—whereas a parent understands danger lurks. The little hands reach almost involuntarily, without a concept of poison or pain, speaking desire “let me grab, let me hold, let me taste.”

Some parents will go as far as to invent the Boogyman as a reason why not venture too far given a child’s lack of ability to grasp the more complex monsters of the chaos that exists in all directions going beyond the extremely controlled environment of their home and community—protecting their innocence.

For two days in a row I had a dream featuring enormous snakes on a shoreline. Details have become murky, but in both of these episodes the real breathing monsters morphed into stylized symbols of the creature. Were these reel beasts subdued? Or, making this an allegory, has our modern life just so thoroughly shielded us from these elements that they no longer appear as real?

It makes me think of those medieval maps with sea monsters on the edges. These did not simply represent mythological peril. There was serious danger in venturing too far from the familiar coastlines. Ships swallowed whole, entire crews disappeared without a trace, it could be storms, savages, and unspeakable things of the deep. The seafarer was given a warning in these symbols—this place is an uncharted water enter at risk of all.

I’ve deliberately, a few years ago, charted a course beyond those safe moorings of my religious cloister. It wasn’t out of a sense of adventure. Nor was it all pleasant. It was half tumbling into space without a tether; the other half sailing around the world and finally find love and meaning in a place that had been forbidden.

The Boogeyman vanquished, but now a real evil staring back from the darkness. It’s the snake in the garden—hidden amongst those fruit trees—as well as that which exist in the world beyond Eden. It is the sound of those children screaming while burned alive while the world watches in silence. The thousand horrors never called a Holocaust.

My taste of this ‘real’ came years ago with a sudden death. Saniyah passing left me no choice but to stare into the void. It was not that I had expected her to live forever. But it was just that theory doesn’t prepare us for a soul crushing tragedy. I managed to finally bury it back down, this existential dread, yet the snake always lurks on the edge, within, and throughout. Denial doesn’t make it go away even if it provides small comfort.

Childhood is ideally a time of protection to give a chance for growth. But there are the ones who live a charmed life who can still believe a logic of bad things only happen to bad people or simply have maintained a big enough separation from themselves to this awfulness to be temporarily safe. However, for most there will be a reckoning the being a moment that knocks off those rose tinted glasses and allows them to finally question the foundations of their world.

Faith is easy until you’re Job staring at the ruins of all you built, dreams shattered, and a pain of loss you can’t put into words. One blessing we have is our forgetfulness. If we can power through the mourning phase, the excruciation of limb torn from body, facing a pit of emptiness, then we can rebuild and move on. Unless you’re my grandpa (facing the end of his life without any of the people who brought him there—still more fortunate than those who never had children let alone great grandchildren), you’re life is still ahead of you if you keep your hope.

A mind is resilient, the soul remembers. I have clawed back from total devastation, reinvented myself, and yet come through all of it profoundly changed.

The question is what navigational charts do I give my children?  We are on different seas now and those hazards I have survived are not relevant to them.  They will face storms, things I can’t begin to imagine let alone prepare them to battle.  Even things blogged here a decade ago do not apply to the current generation. 

As I sit in this liminal space of life.  My course set.  I realize there is not one safe space on the map ahead, the serpents below the waves have not gone away from my mind—there’s evil that lurks among us, the uncertainty about tomorrow, and the reality of the dying of the light. We must go, wise, courageous to fight those monsters of the darkness all around.