One of the things that I love the most about being a mom is reading books to my kids. I love that they love to be read to and I love curling up at night before bed and having them cuddle up on my lap waiting to hear their favorite stories, and to see their reactions to their favorite book,having memorized their favorite lines…you know the ones that they can read to you by heart.. is as close to paradise as I can come at the end of the day.
Maurice Sendak wrote and illustrated a book called Where the Wild Things Are, one of our favorites. There is something about monsters and kings and conquering our fears that adults of all ages love to experience. I find this book to be very fitting for the season of Lent.
Max, the little boy in the story, is wearing a wolf suit and his mother called him Wild Thing. Max’s response to his mother was I’ll EAT YOU UP!. So his mother decides to send him to bed without any dinner. As Max lies in his bed, his imagination grows a forest that is all around him. Thick vines, and giant trees filled every room in his mind and hisbedroom. The walls of his room became rock hard and it was a dark place filled with things that was sure to scare him. Pretty soon a rough ocean appears with a private boat for Max, and he decides to sail on that boat for almost a year to where the wild things are. And when he arrived where the wild things live, he heard their terrible growls, their terrible roars, and the gnashing of their terrible teeth. Max says to the wild things “BE STILL!” and he tamed them with the magic trick. They became frightened of him and called Max the most wild thing of all and made him King of all the wild things. Max joins the wild things and then asks them to stop being wild. He sends them to bed without their supper…And Max the king of all wild things was lonely and wanted to be where someone loved him best of all. The wild things roared, gnashed, and rolled their eyes and showed their claws and proclaimed their love for Max. Max gave up being king and stepped into his private boat and waved good-bye, sailing for over a year, back into his own bedroom where he found his supper waiting for him.
The season of Lent is upon us, and it is all about facingThe Wild Things in our life. Max and Jesus have a lot in common:
Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan
and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness, where
for forty days he was tempted by the devil. Jesus ate nothing
at all during those days, and when they were over he
was famished. The devil said to Jesus, “If you are the Child of God, command this stone to become a loaf of bread.” Jesus answered, “It is written ‘God will command the angels
Concerning you, to protect you, and on their hands
They will bear you up, so that you will not dash your foot
against a stone.’
Jesus said, “Do not put your God to the test.”
Having finished every test, the devil departed
From Jesus until an opportune time.
Then Jesus, filled with the power of the Holy Spirit,
returned to Galilee, and a report about him spread
through all the surrounding country.
Max’s mother sends Max into a timeout, in his bedroom. Her hope is that the “wild thing” in him be corrected. What mother can’t relate to that? (Please, God, take the wild things out of my child or I might do something wild to him!) There, hungry and alone in the night, in his bedroom, Max is faced with what is in the dark. A wilderness grows all around him and fills his room. A choppy, stormy ocean comes to him and he gets in a boat and goes deep into the night where the wild things live and move.
This Lent, Christians will hear about Jesus going off by himself, taking a time-out from the things of this world, to go into the wilderness of his mind, where he knows all temptations lie, and he faces every one of his “wild things”, the thoughts that aren’t of God. Jesus goes there filled with the Holy Spirit and he comes back filled with the Holy Spirit. Jesus didn’t meet a real red monster with horns, gnashing teeth, a fiery tongue, and a pitchfork. Just like Max, the Wild Things he faced were the last few thoughts inside him that kept him separate from God. Instead of thinking those same thoughts over and over, he doesn’t continue to feed those thoughts by giving his attention over to them. He starves them by turning his attention to God only. Jesus knew that the only way that he could allow the Holy Spirit to correct those thoughts, and to completely transform him into who he was meant to become, was to make his way into the darkness of his mind and stand before those monsters face to face. Max ends up becoming one of those monsters and feels what it is like to be a monster and to be called King. The thought inside Jesus that told him he could be a very powerful “king” of this physical world was a temptation he had to face. Jesus had to become his thoughts in order to get it straight in his mind what “kind” of king he was called to be, and where his authority and power came from, and it wasn’t anything in this world. Max decides that being King of the Wild Things just wasn’t what it was cracked up to be. Jesus knows that he has been tempted by a false power, and that there is nothing that is more powerful than love. Only love builds a kingdom. Love is the only power that counts. Max knows that the only thing he wants is to feel loved.
Both Max and Jesus told their “wild things” to BE STILL. That is the real magic that both Max and Jesus practiced. When our thoughts become monsters, the “magic” we need to practice is to remember to say to those monsters, “BE STILL! You are not my God! You are not where my power lies!” Both Jesus and Max, having spent some time facing their “wild things” return to love. Max not only returns to love. He returns to find his supper. Jesus, his mind corrected, having starved all thoughts that aren’t of God, returns filled and returns with the purpose of filling others. Having been fed the holy food of God, he returns to feed others and teach them how to practice the holy magic of God.
Sometimes we have to become the monster, in order to be made aware of the Wild Things inside our minds and hearts. Sometimes we have to go away by ourselves, and be led into the wilderness of our minds, so that we can fully see what thoughts and beliefs that we give false power to, in order to give our minds to God and return to the feast of love. Once returned, we can love others and have “supper” waiting for the hungry in our lives.
