For All Ages: Here Comes the Boogeyman! Watch Out! And The Boy Who Cried Wolf.

In a few weeks, we'll celebrate Halloween. It's time fun time, when we get dressed up, sometimes in scary costumes, and when we play fun tricks on each other. Perhaps, you like going through spook houses, that are dark and filled with creepy things. Most of the time, this is lots of fun. I like it, how about you?

It's a funny thing, to find being scared fun. But it can be. But, sometimes, we get too scared and instead of screaming with delight, we end up crying and wanting to be held by someone who will protect us. Has that ever happened to you? It has to me.

When I was a child, I used to get ready for bed, I would get down on my knees and look under my bed, just to make sure there were nothing was there. Of course, I never found a Boogeyman hiding, but it helped me go to sleep knowing I was ok and there were no monsters to eat me up.

Well, as we come to Halloween, I want you to have fun, but just in case your imagination gets a bit too big, remember, there are no such things as Boogeymen or monsters. It's all play. So, take care you don't let you imagination get the better of you. Now, I tell you an old, old story of a young boy who found out what can happen if we play mean tricks to scare people.

There once was a shepherd boy who was bored as he sat on the hillside watching the village sheep. To amuse himself he took a great breath and sang out, "Wolf! Wolf! The Wolf is chasing the sheep!" The villagers came running up the hill to help the boy drive the wolf away. But when they arrived at the top of the hill, they found no wolf. The boy laughed at the sight of their angry faces. "Don't cry 'wolf', shepherd boy," said the villagers, "when there's no wolf!" They went grumbling back down the hill.

Later, the boy sang out again, "Wolf! Wolf! The wolf is chasing the sheep!" To his naughty delight, he watched the villagers run up the hill to help him drive the wolf away. When the villagers saw no wolf, they sternly said, "Save your frightened song for when there is really something wrong! Don't cry 'wolf' when there is NO wolf!" But the boy just grinned and watched them go grumbling down the hill once more.

Later, he saw a REAL wolf prowling about his flock. Alarmed, he leaped to his feet and sang out as loudly as he could, "Wolf! Wolf!" But the villagers thought he was trying to fool them again, and so they didn't come.

At sunset, everyone wondered why the shepherd boy hadn't returned to the village with their sheep. They went up the hill to find the boy. They found him weeping. "There really was a wolf here! The flock has scattered! I cried out, "Wolf!" Why didn't you come?"

An old man tried to comfort the boy as they walked back to the village. "We'll help you look for the lost sheep in the morning," he said, putting his arm around the youth, "Nobody believes a liar . . . even when he is telling the truth!"

A Reading Before the Sermon: A Parable for Our or Any Time: The Bears and the Monkeys by James Thurber

In a deep forest there lived many bears. They spent the winter sleeping, and the summer playing leap-bear and stealing honey and buns from nearby cottages. One day a fast-talking monkey named Glib showed up and told them that their way of life was bad for bears. 'You are prisoners of pastime,' he said, 'addicted to leap-bear, and slaves of honey and buns.'

The bears were impressed and frightened as Glib went on talking. 'Your forebears have done this to you,' he said. Glib was so glib, glibber than the glibbest monkey they had ever seen before, that the bears believed he must know more than they knew, or than everybody else. But when he left, to tell other species what was the matter with them, the bears reverted to their fun and games and their theft of buns and honey.

Their decadence made them bright of eye, light of heart, and quick of paw, and they had a wonderful time, living as bears had always lived, until one day two of Glib's successors appeared, named Monkey Say and Monkey Do. They were even glibber than Glib, and they brought many presents and smiled all the time. 'We have come to liberate you from freedom,' they said. 'This is the New Liberation, twice as good as the old, since there are two of us.'

So each bear was made to wear a collar, and the collars were linked together with chains, and Monkey Do put a ring in the lead bear's nose, and a chain on the lead bear's ring. 'Now you are free to do what I tell you to do, ' said Monkey Do.

'Now you are free to say what I want you to say,' said Monkey Say. 'By sparing you the burden of electing your leaders, we save you from the dangers of choice. No more secret ballots, everything open and aboveboard.'

For a long time the bears submitted to their New Liberation, and chanted the slogan the monkeys had taught them: 'Why stand on your own two feet when you can stand on ours?'

Then one day they broke the chains of their new freedom and found their way back to the deep forest and began playing leap-bear again and stealing honey and buns from the nearby cottages. And their laughter and gaiety rang through the forest, birds that had ceased singing began singing again, and all the sounds of the earth were like music.

Moral: It is better to have the ring of freedom in your ears than in your nose.

Sermon: M. Night Shyamalan Meets the Grand Inquisitor Meets the Homeland Security Advisory System

My cumbersome title this morning will come clear in a moment. I begin with a scene from John Irving's novel, The World According to Garp. As I recall it, Garp and his wife Ellen stand in a driveway outside of a home they are considering purchasing. As they talk, a single engine plane crashes into the house. After a shocked moment, a pilot emerges, waves and says, "I'm ok."

Garp turns to Ellen and declares, "Ellen, let's buy it!" "But, Garp," protests Ellen, "a plane has just crashed into what would be our bedroom." "Yes, think of it. It will never happen again. We'll be safe here."

Perhaps some of you had that same notion after Charley came thru. It couldn't happen again. We'll be safe. Then, there was Frances. Then, there was Ivan. And then, Jeanne. By then, I know you let go of the "never happen again" idea. Yes, bad things can and do happen - more than once. How fearful do we need to be? What does it take to make us safe?

To feel safe and secure are primary human desires. It's why we have police and locks for our doors. It's the purpose of smoke alarms, insurance, and airport screening. It's the reason for plywood on our windows and weather tracking stations. We want to protect ourselves. We may not prevent all calamity, but it is wise and prudent to take steps to make you and your loved ones safe.

Yet, as Helen Keller warns, "Security is an illusion . . . Life is a daring adventure." I have realized anew in these weeks what a house of cards I have built to shield me from the stormy blast. That naked vulnerability is almost unbearable. So, I hasten to board up my windows against all future wind and rain. At times, I feel like I'll do nearly anything to make my world safe again. What about you?

M. Night Shyamalan's latest movie, The Village, is about this need and this temptation. It tells the story of a small group determined to create a village where all its members will be safe. The elders, driven by a deep secret, declare, "We have to protect the children's innocence." I won't give away the surprise ending. Suffice it to say that the village is a small, 19th century, Amish-appearing idyllic community, set vaguely in the north woods. People are happy and loving.

Eden is tarnished, however, by one thing: in the surrounding forest are creatures, horrible, red-clad entities. An uneasy truce prevails as long as the villagers remain within the border, brightly demarcated by yellow flags. Fearing Those We Don't Speak Of, the villagers never venture into the forest or to the towns beyond.

The drama unfolds as one of the village's young men is injured. Lucius Hunt (Joaquin Phoenix) is a free thinker, a skeptic. He complains, "This Village has too many secrets." His wounds become infected and the elders are faced with a dilemma: should they break the rule and send someone to the Towns for medicine? If so, who? It doesn't help that just the night before, one of the creatures had invaded the village, ominously marking doors with paint, or is it blood? The Village is at code Orange, at least (see below for the Homeland Security Agency's color alert system).

Necessity drives the elders to draft a young woman, the blind but spirited Ivy (Bryce Dallas Howard) to go to the Towns for help. Her journey through the woods and utlimately to the Towns is truly terrifying. She returns, successfully, with medicine. Lucius is saved and the village secret remains intact - kept by those who cannot see.

Go see the movie. You'll like it. But first consider this: In the world of marketing, an important principle is that you induce people to buy by dramatizing a threat with bad consequences, and then to link your product or service with the remedy for this problem. Scare people; they'll be more likely to try your salve. (By the way, there have been dozens of letters to the paper in recent days to this effect, each arguing what disaster is about to befall us if Mr. Kerry or Mr. Bush is elected.)

Shyamalan's fable is a morality play, profoundly apt for our day. He warns us: If you scare people sufficiently, if you surround them with fear and secrets, you can keep them blind to the realities they need to face. Even more, you can manipulate their fear and control all that they do.

As you might surmise, the monsters are not aliens, but the elders dressed up in costume to keep the children innocent of the world beyond them. That's their secret. The motive is love, to be sure. Any parent wants to protect her children from danger and harm. Yet, it is not a love of the children's freedom and dignity. And, the day will come when they want to venture forth on their own. The recovered Lucius surely will follow Ivy.

The illusion here: Keep children afraid and you can keep them down on the farm. In marketing, fear pushes product. What does it do in a society yet recovering from 9/11? As the movie ends, you wonder, have the elders succeeded? And who is fooling whom?

Watching this scene, I recalled the Grand Inquisitor chapter in Dostoievski's Brothers Karamazov. As with The Village, it is a tale within a tale that asks: are humans capable of handling freedom, knowing the full truths of their lives, and being responsible for their destinies? Or are we happier when we have someone to look after us, to protect us from things that go bump in the night?

In brief, here's the tale Ivan tells his brother, Alyosha. The scene is 16th century Seville, at the height of the Spanish Inquisition. Christ returns to walk among the people. As before, he heals the blind and raises the dead.

The Grand Inquisitor, the aged Cardinal is well satisfied with himself, having only the day before dispatched nearly a hundred heretics at a fiery stake - all, of course, to the glory of God. He senses the danger Christ represents and has him arrested. That night, the old man, nearly ninety, comes to see a silent Christ. He berates him. Arguing that perhaps a few can choose freedom - such as himself - he asks "what is to become of the millions . . . who will not have the strength to forego the earthly bread for the sake of the heavenly? Do you care only for thousands of the great and strong? ... No, we care for the weak too. They are sinful and rebellious, but in the end they too will become obedient. They will marvel at us . . . because we are ready to endure the freedom which they have found so dreadful and to rule over them . . . "

Which is love - to protect the innocent or to give freedom to those not yet ready for it? Dostoyevsky does not dodge the question. He has the Cardinal say humans suffer "no greater anxiety than to find someone quickly to whom (they) can hand over that gift of freedom with which the ill-fated creature is born."

Less than a hundred years later, Erich Fromm, trying to understand the rise of tyranny, wrote "Freedom is a difficult thing to have, and when we can we tend to flee from it." (Escape From Freedom, 1941) Fromm agrees with the Cardinal's claim, "Did you forget that men prefer peace, and even death, to freedom of choice in the knowledge of good and evil? Too, too well will they know the value of complete submission! And until men know that, they will be unhappy." Anticipating George Orwell, the Cardinal concludes, "Oh, we shall persuade them that they will only become free when they renounce their freedom to us and submit to us."

In the end, the Cardinal releases his prisoner, saying, "Go, and come no more . . . Come not at all, never, never!"

Subsequent to the tragic events of 9/11, our nation has wrestled with this dilemma. Freedom is scary; we want to be safe. I ask you, in these last three years, have we become more willing to consider the Cardinal's offer: give us peace of mind, make us safe. Yearning for protection from terrorism, are we tempted to obey any who promise to give us shelter? Am I alone wondering whether the Homeland Security Agency might act as self-appointed elders and use fear to keep us in line?

The question is not either absolute freedom or absolute safety. The odds are neither can be achieved in any event. But, where, where along a continuum is the better place for a people? How can we be watchful against real dangers and yet not let our fear drive us, well, nuts?

If you go to the website for the Homeland Security Agency you will find these statements: "Terrorists are working to obtain biological, chemical, nuclear and radiological weapons, and the threat of an attack is very real. All Americans should continue to be vigilant . . . " The site also declares: "Terrorism forces us to make a choice. Don't be afraid. Be ready."

The agency, eager or desperate to have a way to let us know when the wolves are near, has devised a simple warning system, consisting of five colors: Green, low risk of an attack; Blue, be on guard. Yellow is elevated, the current status. Orange tells us the risk of an attack is high. And Red, not surprisingly, says the terrorist wolf is about to bite. You wonder, what tips the switch from one color to the next. And it is not at all clear what one is supposed to do.

Skeptics find the whole scheme silly. (Local governments, by the way, have learned the various colors do require things of them, for which no monies have been allocated. These newly added costs have created a deep resentment among officials as well as skepticism.) It certainly has not helped that recent Orange alerts were based on obsolete and discredited information.

As with car alarms in parking lots, most of us just go on about our business. We ignore little boys who cry wolf. Yet, heaven help us if the cry is real and the wolf is at the door. Or, perhaps worse, heaven help us if it is not, and we allow rings to be put in our noses. It is this latter possibility that I ask you to think of today.

In medicine, there is a phenomenon known as the auto-immune reaction. It is a pathology of your own defenses. The body turns on itself, unable to distinguish self from what is alien. (Some examples include lupus, Crohn's, psoriasis; possibly rheumatoid arthritis or multiple sclerosis.) Something similar happens to anxious groups. We turn on one another. Trust goes down. Suspicion goes up. We see the other as boogeymen lurking under our beds, and perhaps someone to throw out of our village. (This is sometimes referred to as Societal Regression - an overall lowering of a society's maturity level and diminishment of healthy adaptations, with a corresponding rise in the willfulness and the use of coercive methods to gain social control.)

Lest something wicked this way come, we eagerly turn to those who promise to safeguard against the terror which cannot be named and cannot be seen. It's a peculiar infection, caused by fear.

Do you recall Stephen Stills song of 1966, another anxious time (For What It's Worth for the group Buffalo Springfield)? He wrote:

In recent weeks, we all have been tested by four hurricanes. Informed preparedness morphed into generalized anxiety. Sunshine or not, everyone's jumpy. Add to that the swirling anxiety instilled by the alleged ongoing terrorist threat. Add to those, the deep divisions over the direction of our country, and, well, we all ought to look more carefully as to what's going down, everybody, lest paranoia strike deep. And we get sick, really sick.

The other day, health guru Dr. Andrew Weil sent subscribers the following:

"Been feeling stressed out after watching or reading the news lately? A "news fast" - may help renew your spirits . . . Studies show that violence, death and other negative images can provoke changes in mood and aggravate anxiety, sadness and depression. Feelings of depression and sadness can lead to a negative view of your own life. Perceiving the world as violent, unsafe and hostile can have negative effects on your body, as well. By taking a news fast, you can . . . promote greater mental calm within yourself . . . Give it a try!"

That says it as well as I could. Being informed is good. Being obsessed, however, warps reality into a caricature. You begin to see danger and Boogeymen everywhere. At one point last month, I told an anxious friend, "Stop watching the weather channel, you're turning yourself into a wreck!" The choice isn't between being informed or being ignorant. It's about paying proper attention. It's about keeping perspective.

So, what's my point?

If you have been caught up in the emotional wash of recent events, that's ok. It has been a slow motion disaster. We know enough about hurricanes to know it will repeat itself again in some way next year. But, for now, it is important to stop, and rest. Yes, we're all feeling more vulnerable, but that does not mean you are a victim. Yes, you may need a little help, but you don't lose your dignity in asking for it. Yes, the times are dangerous, but you don't need to give away your freedom for protection. Be skeptical of those who ask you to trade it in for safety.

Roosevelt warned the greatest thing we have to fear is fear itself. This is a spiritual issue. It's ok to feel frightened of things that go bump in the night. It is a sign that you are alive and alert. That's good. However, don't scare yourself into foolishness.

Unitarian Universalism teaches that life is a daring adventure. But you don't have to go it alone. You have this loving community. We can hold onto one another in trying times. You have this community to keep perspective. And you have this community when faith burns low, your courage wanes, and you just want to give up. Together, we can find the strength to carry on.

The important thing, always though, is to remain steadfast in our resolve to promote human dignity. May we wake each morning, not in fear, but with, as the song says, our minds stayed on freedom. May that resolve guide us in all our days. Amen.