Moon Child

 There was a point, back in the day and when I say back in the day I mean WAY BACK in the day that everyone wanted a luck dragon.  If you don't know what a luck dragon is the rest of this post will make zero sense well most of it will but as I have said before, Google is your friend as is the ability to stream movies.  Anyway the point is in the movie that I'm talking about there were a few things going on.  There was this kid who had to save this world and there was this other kid on a horse, and the kid that had to save the world thought he was reading a book but in reality he was kinda in the book through he boy with the horse but they both ended up there to save this world and the princess, you get the idea.  The idea of the Luck Dragon was cool though it was this really neat looking white dog looking thing that flew and could make things better because well he was a warm fuzzy flying dog looking thing that was really chill.  

I would love to have a luck dragon right now but we all know dear reader that no matter how much I want one it just won't ever happen.  The world keeps moving on and life is what it is there is no changing int no matter how hard you try.  No this post isn't going to be about how amazing it would be to have a luck dragon, it's not going to be about the boy that saved the princess and the world even, well maybe a little bit but not so much.  It's not even about the kid with the horse.

The antagonist in the movie is called The Nothing.  It barrels through the world assimilating everything in its path.  The nothing has not real desire to know what it is eating for lack of a better word.  It just rolls on and on and in it's wake there's this wolf thing that's also a bad guy and yeah you get the picture the wolf thing serves the nothing and the nothing destroys things.  The thing that always got me was the fact that the wolf thing or Gmork, don't judge me dear reader for knowing that, would really have no place to do his bad guy wolf things once the place was destroyed and yet he kept going fulfilling his purpose to the nothing and to the story.  He chased the kid on the horse around and the other kid that was in the story but didn't know he was in the story cheers and yeah all that stuff.

The thing about Gmork and The Nothing is that they serve a purpose to drive the story forward. Every protagonist needs an antagonist to make a story worth while.  So we watch this world being torn apart, we watch Gmork chase the hero, we watch the kid in the story that doesn't know he's in the story, and yes I know his name and the kid on the horses but that's just too much geekiness for one page or post, and we know that there is going to be a positive end somehow because it's Hollywood, it's a movie and it's a kids movie at that and usually, not always (Old Yeller) kids movies have positive happy endings. 

What I've learned though is that The Nothing is real, we find it when we don't even realize it's there, we see it in our lives when all seems hopeless, the nothing doesn't care about what is fair, or what should be, the nothing just eats away at you a piece at a time or sometimes all at once swallowing all the things that mean the most that bring meaning and purpose.

It's in these times when the wolf is beating at your heels and the nothing is consuming all that is in front of you that choices start to matter.  The problem is when you are in the middle of the two big bad things your choices seem severely limited.  Which brings me to the entire point of this post, well at least the point of the name of this post. 

At the end of the movie the princess or empress or whatever we are calling her (again I know what she really is but you've already seen the silly geeky part and you're going to find out how much more geeky I can be in a moment so lets just leave it at that.) tells the kid that's reading the story, that thinks he's just an observer that he's so much more.  The only way for him to save the world and the boy with the horse and the girl and all the other things he's met along the way is to acknowledge not just the girl but is to call out her name, a name that no one can know but him.  He has this power to sidestep the nothing and dodge the wolf and make the world that the boy and the horse and the girl and all the other things not be so bleak.  All he has to do is call out her name.  Which in the movie he does...yells it actually in this windy stormy unable to be heard or made out or understood voice, which was on purpose I suppose because then we can all name her whatever we want and be the hero...except that's not how it really was, there was an actual name that the person who wrote the story had come up with and being the geek that I am I had to know what that name was so of course I did the research and I found it.  It's Moon Child.  Go back and watch the movie or skip to the end and you'll hear it clearly now that you know.  

So what's this have to do with life today and all that's going on.  We are in a very difficult place right now. With the monsters that I talked about on one side and this impossible nothing chewing up so much of what's in front of us.  What's in front of me.  I have heard from several people and they are all worried, all well meaning, all want to be encouraging.  Some are more so than others.  It's interesting to me that we feel like we have to say things when really sometimes we just need to listen and let the person that is going through the dark places, that's being chased by the monsters and facing the nothing that's eating away at all that they know and understand and feel makes the world work.  Because here's the thing, there will come a point and believe me I'm not there yet, but there will come a point when we will have to stand up in the face of the nothing sidestep the monsters and speak all the words of hurt and angst and sadness and let it all go, washing out of us allowing for something different to be put back.  

I'm not going to tell you that it's easy to contemplate calling out this name that can make things move forward. Right now I'm doing good to walk a step at a time, but I do know that the name that we are calling on, the name that I'm calling on late at night, even if it's in anger and frustration and hurt, is the name that is above all those names.  The name of the carpenters son from some backwoods town in the Middle East.   The name of the one that hung out with sinners, that talked about feeding the poor and visiting the prisoner and all those things.  The one that had compassion, the one that cared and that restored, and while it's hard for e to see all those things now it don'ts make them any less true. That's the thing about what I am, who I am and who we are.  We know the things that are true and even though they are not a comfort now, we also know that there will come a time when they will be.  I know that there will come a time when they will be.  

Having said all of that please know this.  Right now I am not ready to accept or hold onto or grasp some of the things that we have all said and say when tragedy strikes.  Just because it's true don'ts mean it's something that make sense, or is even right at this point.  So I would ask that you pray for us, I would also ask that you understand that we may or may not be able to really agree with some of what we know is true because right now to us it rings hollow.  It doesn't mean we, or to be more pointed I don't love God, it doesn't mean that I'm going to renounce my faith, run off to the woods, become some hermit that writes a manifesto and leaves what and who he is.  It does mean that we need time, and we need you.  It's hard to go from the person that is supposed to meet the need to the person that has the need but we...I am trying. 

And so dear reader until I can scream out that name in the storm of the nothing with the monsters at my heels I'm asking you to do it for me and know that I appreciate it and that there will come a moment that I can and will scream that name.