Befriend the Dragon
Fairy tales are more than true
Fairy tales are more than true not because they tell us dragons exist but because they tell us dragons can be defeated.
– Neil Gaiman, paraphrasing GK Chesteron, from the opening pages of “Coraline”
I’ve always loved this quote. It’s inspiring—fairy tales and dragons and self-empowerment. It threads the needle between fantasy and reality, highlighting the interplay between what we know to be true and what we feel might yet be.
It’s the kind of quote that someone like me, fascinated by the spiritual insights of fantastical stories, is naturally drawn to, a quote I’ve used in writing assignments and speaking engagements and as justification for the stack of fairy tale anthologies on my shelf.
It’s the kind of quote you might want to hang on the nursery wall for your daughter, the kind of project you might spend not an inconsequential amount of time combing through the internet to complete.
And so I did. In the months before our firstborn’s arrival, I mapped out this dream piece of childhood art.
The quote was easy—I can type and cite with the best of them. But what image would I pair it with? What would enchant the eye of my baby girl as she grew and learned and wondered? I wanted to find something epic.
But I encountered a problem: This quote—and my subsequent Google searches—tended to attract one bloody, violent image after the next. A girl rushing into battle with a fire-breathing monster. A girl holding high a severed head. A girl thrusting the tip of her blade into the belly of a giant beast.
Not quite the vibe of a nursery. Violence, bloodshed, battle—this wasn’t the raw material of fantasy and dreams that I hoped to offer my children.
I fine-tuned my search parameters. A new genre of image appeared: A quiet girl sitting alongside a dragon. A young girl patting a monster’s head. A small girl sharing a cup of tea with a great scaly beast.
Something else soon became clear, too: I don’t actually want to teach my children to wage war against the many inevitable dragons in their lives. I want them to befriend those dragons. To make peace, to offer a branch of mercy, to nurture curiosity and wonder.
Because, as the Chesterton/Gaiman quote makes clear, dragons aren’t really real. We rarely come face-to-face with great fire-breathing monsters. But we do pull our hair out with anxiety and worry and fear and shame and despair and sorrow.
These un-real dragons seem to cause us harm all the same.
How easy it is to fight and to hate these sorts of dragons. But when we lob of the head of anxiety or fear or fill-in-the-blank, three more sprout up in its place. (Am I mixing up my mythical creatures?)
We spend so much time thinking we need to wage war against these dragons when really we need to understand them and embrace them and realize they’re part of the adventure, part of the journey. Instead of plunging our blade into their gut, we might instead offer them a cup of tea. We might sit alongside these dragons, petting their tails.
That’s quite a different image then a solitary soldier hacking and slashing with a dulling blade until her arms grow weary and the dragon eventually consumes her. Instead, put down the blade, take off the armor. Befriend the dragon.
Perhaps that’s the artwork I should hang on my daughters’ bedroom wall. Perhaps it’s the artwork we should hang in our hearts.
And another thing:
I share my thoughts on the first season of “The Acolyte” over at America Magazine. Check it out.
This week’s “Now Discern This” is all about my recent trip to the Sistine Chapel. Give it a read.
Are you near Annapolis, MD? Come hang out with me at Barnes and Noble! I’ll be around from 12 - 3 PM today, Saturday July 20, signing copies of “My Life with the Jedi: The Spirituality of Star Wars!”
