It is parable season. We have been enjoying over the past weeks the parables of Jesus in our Godly Play classes. While the six golden boxes equally cradle these parable gifts, the parable of the Good Shepherd somehow takes a special presence in the classroom.
The presentation blends Psalm 23 and John 10. The good shepherd leads each named and known sheep from the sheepfold, to the green grass and the cool clean water. If you sit at a certain spot in the circle, it looks like there is a dark place or face with no light in the eyes and a frown. The good shepherd carefully guides the sheep through the dark places and if any go astray will go anywhere to find them and bring them back to the sheepfold for a great rejoicing. The ordinary shepherd allows the sheep to wander and when the wolf comes, the ordinary one runs away.
This simple story has led thousands of children and adults to new insight and glimpses of a divine relationship: self, others, spirit and nature. The insight in the responses never fails to surprise me as a storyteller. Lately, I’ve been intrigued by a trend about the dark place that is very telling about our culture. Over the past three or so weeks, I’ve told this story to three different groups of children in two different countries.
The first group were older elementary children, the week of the airplane crash in the Hudson River with all passengers surviving. When our circle began to wonder about the dark places, they immediately connected the dark place as being back at the cool clean water. The cool was too cold; the calm surface was hard like concrete. The dark frowning face, for them that day, was an island of safety to cling to out of the chaos of the water.
The second group of children was in Honduras a few days later. When this group of children wondered about the dark places, their experiences were different than others I’d heard. One eight-year-old boy had a story about the dark place. He had accompanied some adults to the top of the mountain with the herd of cows, when the adults suddenly had to leave and he was alone to care for this whole group of cows. He expressed fear, but also pride in overcoming his fear and taking care of the herd.
The third group of children were three large classes of four and five-year-year olds. When these children wondered about the dark places, they had been afraid, but like the first group, not from primary experiences. No straying off a trail at the park, no slipping into the creek. Their fears were of movies they had seen and haunted houses they had been to at Halloween.
I wonder what this could really mean? I wonder if our children are robbed of the adventure and growth of the dark place, by our safe, sanitized culture. Joining the false security we wrap our children in, we allow them access to terrifying information (out of their control) in the guise of them knowing about their world.
It is hard to let them go off the trail, out of our grasp. I certainly don’t want children to be in real danger, but maybe enough to overcome some authentic obstacles and grow from it. I like the idea of the dark place being the quiet satisfied smile when the child grows from it, coming back to the shepfold with stories of appropriate adventure. Does the truly dangerous, dark places our adolescent children encounter come from a deep place of needing adventure or some self-discovery? Often times that dark place smiles, too, but in a sinister and inviting way.
Something to wonder about, to be sure. While I don’t think I’ll be leaving my seven-year-old on a hilltop with the herd of cows anytime soon, I might encourage the dark places to smile a bit.