Oddly enough, Halloween brings me comfort.
Seeing all the monsters and goblins decorating people’s lawns, the billboards for haunted houses, reminds me how easy it can be to run from what scares me–to avoid the difficult, terrifying truths about myself, about others.
In his book The Idolatry of God: Breaking Our Addiction to Certainty and Satisfaction, Peter Rollins writes: “There is a deep sense in which we are all ghost towns. We are all haunted by…those with whom we feel we have unfinished business … The problem, however, is that we tend to spend a great deal of energy in attempting to avoid the truth. We construct an image of ourselves that seeks to shield us from a confrontation with our ghosts.”
Ghosts, Rollins says, are all around us. We can choose to pretend they’re not there, but salvation only comes when we confront them, when we, as Jesus commanded, take the log out of our own eyes so that we may more clearly see the speck in our neighbor’s.
Halloween reminds me that facing my demons–my ghosts–is not just transformative, but necessary.
This message is excerpted from “Facing demons: Finding hope in Halloween” by Sarah Carson from the October 31, 2016, blog of the Women of the ELCA. Today is Reformation Day. Today is Halloween in the United States.
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Time to face my fears. Thank you.
Excellent!