Rev. Cn. Richard Hogue Jr.
Happy Comic Con Sunday everyone!
Some Scriptures, such as today’s reading from Hosea, strike many people as “horrible,” and not completely unfairly. But what if I told you that things we consider horrible can often be the key to finding out who we are and how we best live in the world? It may seem counterintuitive to intentionally look at things that seem horrible, or in the shadows, to find a reflection of oneself, but I believe it is not just an interesting thought, but a necessity to consider. As Cindy Schuricht pointed out in her excellent letter in this week’s cathedral E-News regarding Comic Con Sunday, Jungian thought tells us to look at our shadows to have a full sense of self. To be clear, in analytical psychology our shadow is not horrible or evil, per se, but it is the parts we repress for the sake of societal cohesion, which when left unattended, to quote Cindy: “Our shadow sides can run amok if we ignore and leave them unloved and unsupervised.”
I must admit I love horror as a genre; it explores the space of our humanity most people typically shy away from out of fear or repulsion. Whether we acknowledge it or not, the shadow in us is as alive as the parts we praise. Horror keeps us honest about the trauma and visceral reality we live and move within our daily lives. When we push it further into darkness, ignoring it entirely, we open ourselves, and the world, to greater and deeper harm.
I think we see this play out not just on a personal level, but on a societal, national, and international level as well. Look at ongoing concerns about our own POTUS, or Hamas’ attack on October 7th, 2023, and Benjamin Netanyahu’s brutal siege of Gaza since then. Or look at the slow and methodical genocide of Muslim Uigurs in western China by Xi Jinping’s Chinese Communist Party, powered directly by the money we spend on the smart phones in our pockets, and other devices, like the one I am using now. Or look at Putin’s war against the whole population of Ukraine, and conflicts on the African continent, South America, and so many more. Each of these are presented by the perpetrators as a righteous cause, protecting something sacred. Are these not our repressed shadows run amok? Some call it evil, and I say that evil is a choice, it’s a choice we make individually and collectively. Joseph Conrad’s The Heart of Darkness and Stanley Kubrick’s timeless adaptation of it in Apocalypse Now, and The Shining, all point us towards this fundamental truth within ourselves.
But let me bring us closer to home and down to a personal level, since everything is a choice, and we make choices with our whole psyche, ideals and shadows, informed by everything from our waking life to our shut-eyed dreams and nightmares. I want to tell you about a recurring nightmare I had growing up, that progressed slowly during that time. I dreamt I was in a large mansion, dusty and unkempt with cobwebs and stale air. Boarded up windows and doors let slim slits of light hit the floor in seemingly endless hallways and staircases. As I wandered those foreboding passages, a figure emerged behind me, she moved ever closer from the far end of whatever corridor I had traversed.
She floated silently through flotsam in an aging wedding dress or baptismal gown, her veiled eyes somehow gleamed with exuberant contempt, and sharp teeth would emerge from a malicious grin, like something out of James Wan’s Insidious series. Her arm would lift to reach for me. I forced my way through a door to the outside, where the mansion stood alone among fields and rolling hills of golden wheat as far as the eye could see. I would run through the fields, and she would follow, eyes alight, smile wide, reaching closer. Eventually, I would see my friends of that time, all in or around a van resembling Scooby Doo’s Mystery Machine, waving me on, shouting encouragement, ready to leave the scene. The last time I had the dream I had nearly reached them, and she me. That final vision poses a lot of reflective questions, but two stuck out to me for today’s purposes. First, where do I end up in that dream realm? Second, and far more frightening in that phantasmic frame, which character am I? [pause] But it also gave me strength: first, a confidence in the dark, and second, a sense of what malevolence looks like.
Malevolence exists in our minds, even if we don’t act on it. Like the quick and deadly rage infected zombies of director Danny Boyle’s amazing films 28 Days Later and 28 Years Later, they only exist in imagination, but they can help us understand what it looks like to live in mindless reactivity. Even the most well-intended people unwittingly become unrecognizable monsters when we put blinders up and see only what we want to. Cain and Abel both offered their best to God, but no one had to teach Cain how to kill his brother. The real horror, the true malevolence of humanity, need not come from a mythical creature or elemental force in the universe. It is our unwillingness to let go, to let live, to understand another perspective, and a refusal to recognize the part we play in it all. Cruelty knows no political party or creed; it doesn’t care about the boundaries we think we draw around it. It exists in each of us when we think we know better than everyone else, believing we ought to force our way of life on others, thinking we have all the answers.
Like the most recent iteration of the movie Wolfman, or Zach Cregger’s brilliant trope bending film Barbarian, well intended people can become monsters and cause irreparable harm when we lose sight of our own fallibility in a self-righteous quest for safety and security of the things we value most. The abused can become abusers, the oppressed can become oppressors. Holding things too tightly can mangle and destroy the very things we seek to protect.
It’s a living limbo, between community, safety, acceptance, and the viciousness of unbridled, malevolent self-righteousness that we walk as people. As Psalm 23 says:
The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.
He makes me lie down in green pastures;
he leads me beside still waters;
he restores my soul.
He leads me in right paths
for his name’s sake.
Even though I walk through the darkest valley,
I fear no evil;
for you are with me;
your rod and your staff—
they comfort me.
The green pastures and still waters are just on the other side of the darkest valley, the valley of the shadow of death. Yet we need not fear evil, because God walks with us as shepherd, a companion, and a friend! Our patronal figure, the Apostle Paul, writes in today’s reading from Colossians “These are only a shadow of what is to come, but the substance belongs to Christ. Do not let anyone disqualify you, insisting on self-abasement and worship of angels, dwelling on visions, puffed up without cause by a human way of thinking…” Even the Lord’s Prayer develops this shadow: “…forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us. And do not bring us to the time of trial.” The time of trial is giving into our worst instincts.
We cannot know it all, we cannot see it all, we cannot understand it all, but we can trust that by walking in faithfulness even in the shadows, loving the stories that inform our way of being, and acknowledging the potential for harm in ourselves, we can explore and embrace the shadow in ourselves. We can incorporate the things we try to hide into our fullness and even find some hidden strength. Heroes and demons abound, but we need not go to the ends of the earth to find either, we need only look in the mirror. God promises us that
“Mercy and truth have met together;
righteousness and peace have kissed each other.
Truth shall spring up from the earth,
and righteousness shall look down from heaven.”
And Jesus promises that if you “search… you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened.” That door will be in the shadows more often than we might imagine. Wherever that door is, I hope you explore it with confidence in the spirit of Comic Con Sunday, inspired stories you love most. So, explore the dark, don’t be afraid, seek mercy and truth in everything, we may find strength where we once sensed fear, and in unexpected places. Amen.
