If I had influence with the good fairy who is supposed to preside over the christening of all children, I should ask that her gift to each child in the world be a sense of wonder … - Rachel Carson
~
Once upon a time, I was absolutely convinced that no parent should willfully deceive a child with stories of the Tooth Fairy or the elaborate fairy tale about a jolly old man in a sleigh pulled by flying reindeer. I argued that too many adults cling to harmful fantasies. For example, while the world burns, people still believe that climate change is a myth. Children deserve the truth!
Though readily agreeing with my point about climate change, my wife suggested that perhaps I should wait to make up my mind about such things as fairies until we actually had children.
About four years later, our three-year-old son trailed behind us, as she and I strolled through our neighborhood. Our pride and joy kept pausing to consider the creepy-crawlies making their own way along the side of the road. Suddenly, he shouted, “Daddy, wow!”
I turned around, expecting to see a particularly colorful centipede; instead there was a tiny tooth in his outstretched palm! He grinned, revealing a window in his slightly bloodied smile. I hadn’t even known the tooth was loose.
Our son had already heard of the Tooth Fairy from some older children at church. But his little brow furrowed at the idea of a whisper-winged creature sneaking into his room while he slept. Lying beside him that night, as he snuggled his trusty blankie, I assured him that this fairy was good.
The next morning, he came downstairs clutching a silver dollar and exclaimed, “I love the Good Fairy!”
Any lingering desire to cling to my previously held beliefs against magical stories was dispelled the following Christmas Eve. Our son lay in bed much too excited to sleep. He wondered just how do reindeer fly? He didn’t give me time to answer before rushing on: How does Santa carry all those presents? How does Santa make it all the way around the world in one night? And what about kids, like his best friend from preschool, whose homes don’t have chimneys? How does Santa bring their presents inside?
Finally, he sighed, “Daddy, it’s such a good story.”
~
Now my wife and I have two more children, which means more stockings hung by the chimney with care. On Christmas Eve, the kids will leave out cookies and milk, and our firstborn will insist upon carrots for the flying reindeer.
But at no point during the holiday season will you find the Elf on the Shelf―the elf who infiltrates a child’s home in order to document any misbehaviors throughout the day. Each night this elf-spy then rushes back to the North Pole to report infractions to Saint Nick. This is such a terrible story.
I understand that actions have consequences, and that parents want to teach children the difference between right and wrong. But the Elf on a Shelf is designed to shame. Shame is never a part of the solution, but its own problem. Shame is about power over someone else.
As both parent and pastor, I wish to maintain a critical distinction between shame and guilt. Shame kills and therefore should never be tolerated, including in religion. But admitting our guilt can actually save lives. Confession may be life-giving.
~
Perhaps “confession” calls to mind certain booths in Roman Catholic churches. Entering, you would pull the curtain behind you and sit to wait for the wooden slot in the dividing wall to slide open, offering just enough space for you to whisper your uncomfortable truths to a priest in the adjacent booth. But it is not necessary to have a booth or even a priest. The genius of personal confession is that, by speaking your guilt, you can let go of shame―the truth shall set you free.
This saying was uttered by the same ancient rabbi of Nazareth whose birthday many Americans celebrate in December. We have also domesticated this rabbi’s call to confession, making salvation strictly a personal matter. This despite the most well-known and oft-quoted Bible verse that God so loved the world.
In many religious traditions, a public worship service invites the entire community to pray or sing aloud. Whether public or private, no prayer should ever shame, for confession should never belittle and demean. But we must tell the truth. Public confessions dispel fantasies of our innocence by naming the sins in our society. It is the role of a prophet to call us to admit the truth. Climate change activist Greta Thunberg is a fearless example of this kind of truth-teller.
Like a biblical prophet of old, Thunberg speaks truth to power by reminding world leaders that they will be judged in the future by their actions today: “I want you to panic. Our house is on fire.” But her fundamental message is addressed to all of us. She holds up a mirror to our sins, pointing out the error of our dependence upon fossil fuels, and prophesies a cataclysmic future unless we immediately change our ways. As of ancient times, she is a voice of truth crying in the wilderness: “If not you, then who? If not now, then when?”
We are guilty. If the world is to be saved, we will need to answer the call to confession.
Yet Greta Thunberg does not shame. Shame immobilizes, shame isolates. As our modern prophet of climate change, she rallies people across the world to participate in events like the strike for climate change on September 20th through 27th, 2019. This young woman understands and applies ancient spiritual truths: first, we must acknowledge guilt; then, true confession leads to action.
~
In order to emphasize the critical distinction between shame and guilt, I think we need another kind of prophet. If I can liken Greta Thunberg to the truth-telling child shouting that the emperor has no clothes, Rachel Carson reminds me to experience the natural world in quiet, childlike wonder.
At the end of her life, Carson wrote, “We live in an age of rising seas. In our own lifetime we are witnessing a startling alteration of climate.” This author and biologist died before she could fully realize the truth of her prophecy.
Though best known for her book Silent Spring, a damning exposé of the sins of chemical manufactures and their harmful pesticides, Carson was a poet of the sea long before she became famous for decrying the dangers of DDT.
Nor can we know the vicissitudes of life on the ocean floor, where sunlight, filtering through a hundred feet of water, makes but a fleeting, bluish twilight, in which dwell sponge and mollusk and starfish and coral, where swarms of diminutive fish twinkle through the dusk like a silver rain of meteors, and eels lie in wait among the rocks. (from “Undersea,” 1937)
I wonder if some prophets “twinkle through the dusk” like a good fairy. While acknowledging the mystery with such beautifully crafted words, Carson also wrote, “The lobster feels his way with nimble wariness through the perpetual twilight.” Carson, too, explored what she could know of the natural world. In her last book The Sense of Wonder, she described taking her nephew Roger down to the shore to search for sand dollars, dig for mollusks, and watch the sandpipers on their spindly legs dash from the ebb and flow of the tide. While recognizing the urgent ecological crisis of her day, the prophet Rachel Carson still made time for the unearned rewards of the creation’s munificence. Indeed, she felt both were necessary: “The more clearly we can focus our attention on the wonders and realities of the universe about us, the less taste we shall have for destruction.”
~
My reading of the biblical stories, as well as the words of these two modern prophets, leads me to believe that a genuine prophet does not seek that mantle; rather, a prophet feels compelled to tell the truth even at personal expense and sacrifice. I marvel at such resolve while confessing that I am often unwilling to pay attention to the painful consequences. Mea culpa.
I do plan to participate in the upcoming climate strike and public protest. Daily, I do try to focus on the wonders around me, including joining my son in paying attention to the creepy-crawlies along the road. And I take a such good story to heart.
After the first “Good Fairy” visit, my son lost another tooth the following summer while we vacationed at the beach. Another “Daddy, wow!” moment. Only this time, instead of a coin, he awoke to discover a little wonder.
A Father’s Advice to Himself
Don’t worry. The tooth fairy knows this beach house.
She will put a starfish under your son’s pillow.
When he wakes, his tongue wiggling in the hole,
dream she flew through the crack in the window.
And when he wonders, over the cereal bowl,
if she knows Santa and his eight reindeer,
consider how they all might vacation together,
might even be here for all we know!
Notice every beautiful nothing, and
make his world magic as best you can.
Put on your swimsuits, walk down to the sand.
Trail behind, step in his footprints and listen,
when he holds the conch shell to your ear,
Daddy, it’s a walkie-talkie with the ocean.
Andrew Taylor-Troutman serves as poet pastor of Chapel in the Pines Presbyterian Church in Chapel Hill, NC. His fourth book, Gently Between the Words, will be published in 2019.