The Guns and the Bad Guys

This week in my Spirit Play class, one of my friends wanted to show me the block structure he made.  As with all our classroom materials, they are intended to be used one way, in this case to build churches, and they are actually used in a multiplicity of ways.  I crawled over to his structure and he began telling me about it.

He told me that inside were the “bad guys” and that he had made towers with guns to shoot them.  I listened.  I lost my center for a moment.  Here I was at church, a place of love, after just telling a story specifically speaking against violence.  I was uncomfortable.  I asked, “Do you think the guns are love guns?  And when they shoot a bad guy, they instantly turn him good?”  This was followed by a dismissive gesture from my friend and another launch into the dramatic story of the bad guys and the guns.

I am grateful that I have read the book “Killing Monsters” in which Gerard Jones makes a case for the role of make-believe violence in children’s play.  The gun, for most of our children is a metaphor and a tool for power.  They don’t understand the reality of a gun the way we grown ups know it.  This is one way children play with their own agency.  They play with the idea of power and using their power to defeat things that are “bad” “scary” and out of their control.  So, I re-centered and tried to remind myself that this play is actually sacred play as much as anything else happening in our classroom.  I reeled myself back in and continued to listen.  Here is what the “bad guys” were doing in there.  They were angry.  They stomped into the room and threw their toys all over.  They threw toys at the windows till they broke them.  They threw toys and made a big mess.  They were loud and they yelled.  Hmmm, with my parent ears on I hear that the “bad guys” were throwing a big tantrum.

I asked my friend, “Wow, those bad guys are throwing toys.  Do you ever feel angry like that?  Do you ever want to throw your toys?”  The answer was no, and he moved on.  But friends, of course, the answer is actually yes.  I have been doing my own shadow work lately.  I have been naming my own bad guys and monsters that live inside my self.  I have been writing their stories.  They will always be bad if they have to live in my shadow, cut off from my acceptance and love.  What I know about this work for myself is that if I cannot face my own evil, my own capacity to harm myself and others that those impulses come out anyway, I just can’t see them for what they are.

Walking with Black Lives Matter on Monday I had opportunity to witness what happens to the collective shadow when we don’t own it and bring it back into our circle of consciousness.  Racism, targeting, violence, segregation and separation happen.  We create bad guys where there are just people; brothers and sisters.  We create a “need” for guns when we really need love and witness and community.  Fear colors our vision and we hurt each other and allow each other to be hurt by the system we have set up and then pretend not to have anything to do with it.

My little friend doesn’t own his anger right now.  It may be too scary for him to think about a rage coming out of him that breaks a window.  And I wonder, what is the offering that can help him express that energy honestly and safely?  What kind of witness might observe his anger, to see it, see him and take it seriously?  What would be the best way to honor that true feeling in him?  And then, what would be the antidote to bring him back into loving connection with his feelings, himself and our larger community?

Encounters with the shadow are truly terrifying, but we must be willing to hear what the shadow, the monsters, the bad guys have to say.  Listening brings their stories into the light.  In the Light we can see that all of those entities bear our own face and they are crying out for witness and understanding.  In the Light, they lose their power to wound and destroy and gift us the keys to work reconciliation and love and healing.  What are your bad guys?  What are they doing in there?  How can you disarm yourself and offer love and peace?