Scared and Loving It

Halloween is here.  There was a time when Halloween seemed like a fairly minor event, but recently, more and more people put out lavish decorations, orange lights, ghosts and goblins on their lawns, and strange things hanging from their trees.  It is beginning to rival Christmas in its visibility in the neighborhood.  Here at the church, of course, it has also become a major holiday because of the Senior PF Haunted House.  The size, ambition, and scariness of this annual extravaganza have grown each year since its inception some ten years ago.  Each year, I am amazed by how involved, excited, and committed our kids are in making this an extraordinary event.  They seem to love this stuff; putting on makeup that makes them look like zombies, wearing truly creepy costumes, and hiding in dark places ready to terrify passers-by. 

What is the powerful appeal of all of this?  I think it is that Halloween always seems just a little magical.  There is a temporary suspension of all of the usual rules of reality.  The nights are filled with mysteries.  We behave as if witches and zombies were real.  Nothing is what it seems.  Surprises lurk behind every bush or around every corner of a darkened church hallway.  The night seems alive.  And one of the mysteries is oneself, behind the mask or the make-up or the costume.

I feel like we occasionally need the opportunity (especially we adults) to suspend our usual sense of reality.  The world often loses much of its excitement and mystery in the minds of sober, rational, practical people like ourselves.  I think a big part of us longs for a world where anything can happen; where things are not so predictable; where there are a host of things unseen and things are not always what they seem.  That sort of world is frightening, but that is part of its fascination.  Of course, the real world is pretty much that way, but we have worked hard to tame our little part of it.  We are conditioned to see only what we expect to see.  We have rational explanations for everything.  We have tried to domesticate our environment to make it maximally useful and minimally frightening.  But that also makes it poorer and a little more boring.

I’m not going to suggest, of course, that we return to a belief in witches and demons (even though the notion has some appeal), but perhaps we can find more ways to marvel at what we don’t know (which is most things) rather than reducing our notion of reality to what we do know.

One of the reasons why children on Halloween night or during the haunted house can deal with their fears, and even enjoy them a little bit, is that they are disguised (hiding behind masks or make-up).  A mask can be a very freeing thing.  It’s not just something that hides your identity.  You fear less because, in some way, behind the mask, you are not really you.  You can behave in ways that you would never dare otherwise, because the mask can take on a life of its own and draw you out of your own restrictions and fears and inhibitions.  You can “try on” another you.  I’ve seen totally shy and quiet kids behave in amazingly bold and assertive ways while roaming the church hallways as a zombie, not seeming like the kids that I knew at all.

We adults tend to get locked into the identity that we have chosen.  We burden ourselves with the need to be consistent.  We can only be how we think we are, as if that where only one thing or as if we really knew what that was.  And so we lock away so many of the surprising and unpredictable elements in ourselves.

Maybe we all need a little dose of Halloween in our lives; some sense of unreality; some more room for the mysterious in us and around us to break through.  For the fact is that God is most alive in all of those unpredictable, surprising parts of our world and of ourselves that we have so often shut out or explained away.  Finding God may well depend on our being able to experience mysteries rather than explain them.

So come to the Haunted House or take a walk on Halloween night (or any night).  Allow your imagination to see a world again that is alive with things unseen and where everyone or everything is not just what they appear to be.  Let yourself feel the presence of some of those parts of reality that we usually choose not to acknowledge.  God is there.