I often think
about how very blind we are to the beauty, grace, and life that are pulsating,
dancing, and shimmering with God’s presence, all around us. We are like the stumbling oafs in Fairytales
who walk though the enchanted forest never seeing the elves, never hearing the
trees clap their hands, and oblivious to the treasures lying on the ground at
their feet. Some of this blindness is due to not looking for it all and
focusing only on what is wrong with creation, people, and life. Much of it,
however, is due to a darkness in our souls: a shadow self that casts its spell across
all of our senses.
In George
MacDonald’s Phantastes*, not long after
waking up in Fairyland, Anodos (“ascent” in Greek) comes across a hut in which,
when he enters, is an old woman sitting on a chair reading an ancient book. As
his eyes grow accustomed to the darkness of the room, he sees a door and is
instantly curious as to what lies beyond it. Without looking up from her book, she cautions him about
going through the door. Ignoring her advice, he opens the door and walks
inside. (In Fairytales, opening doors one has been advised to not open is
Standard Operating Procedure.)
Upon entering,
he discovers a great darkness with what he thinks might be stars off in the
distance. As he stands there he becomes aware of a dark foreboding presence
coming toward him. “All I could tell of its appearance was that it seemed to be
a dark human figure.” Stepping back a bit to let this figure pass, he couldn’t
see where it had gone.
“Where is he?”
I said in some alarm, to the woman who still sat reading.
“There, on the
floor, behind you.”
Anodos looks
behind him and sees a black shadow the size of a man. Shaken, he asks the woman
what it is.
“I told you”,
said the woman, “you had better not look in that closet.”
“What is it?” I
said, with a growing sense of horror.
“It is only your shadow that has found you.”
Before
encountering his shadow, Anodos was able to see fairies and even communicate
with them. Now, as he passes through the forest, his shadow casts a pall on
everything, blinding him to the realities of Fairyland. Wherever he looks,
where there had been magical beauty, there is nothing but emptiness laden with
dreariness.
After a short while,
Anodos decides that his shadow is not casting a pall on the world around him
but is actually portraying the world as it is.
“The most
dreadful thing of all was that I now began feeling something like satisfaction
in the presence of my shadow. I began to be rather vain of my attendant, saying
to myself, ‘In a land like this, with so many illusions everywhere, I need his
aid to disenchant the things around me. He does away with all appearances, and
shows me things in their true colour and form. And I am not one to be fooled
with the vanities of the common crowd. I will not see beauty where there is
none. I will dare to behold things as they are. And if I live in a waste
instead of a paradise, I will live knowing where I live.’”
Rather than
dealing with his shadow, Anodos chooses denial, calling reality an “illusion,”
and the illusions created by his shadow, “reality.” While thinking he was no
longer being fooled by the “vanities of the common crowd,” his shadow self was actually
changing his perceptions of the world into a replica of itself.
* George
MacDonald, “Phantastes,” Wm Eerdmans Publishing Co., Grand Rapids, Michigan, 1964.
Copyright, Monte E Wilson, 2014
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