Honoring Our Dragons
Michaelmas is coming! Our school will be celebrating Michaelmas with a festival on Friday, September 25. Ian and I are both planning to be there (with my camera). It’s an especially exciting year because Lucas is in the second grade, and the second graders get to play an important part!
At this time of year, the turning seasons remind us to slow down, come home, warm up, and consider. We are happier to look inward in the autumn and winter than we were during the summer months when we were busy living and doing. When we turn our attention in, we can see our own inner dragons waiting for us there. They deserve our attention again because they’ve been patient—even faithful—waiting for us to remember them. Our dragons are our fears, insecurities, failings, worries, and procrastinations.
Many years ago I started observing that life kind of went to hell around this time of year, near the Autumnal Equinox—that major upheavals happened, as though it were time to till life’s soil and bring up our mucky muck to air it out. Jobs change. Partners change. Challenges abound. We are forced to notice them, acknowledge them, and then deal with the issues, like it or not. It’s a tough time of year, it seems, for many people because old patterns of being and behaving stop serving us the way they did before.
Change and upheaval are the order of the season, it has always seemed to me. Facing our dragons, peering into the dark and letting our heart’s light shine forth is what gets us through it. So the Waldorf/Steiner story of Saint Michael and Saint George and the dragon fits just fine with my own outlook. Sometimes, all we really need to help us understand is a good metaphor to sink our teeth into.
In honor of Lucas’s special roll in facing down the dragon this year, we are making a big deal. Second graders (7- and 8-year-olds) are emotionally coming to terms with the fact that dragons do exist in our world, within humanity, and even within themselves. Things are not always good and well-intentioned and true. We must choose right or wrong. We must notice the dragons around us and within us and we must face them down. We must take up our swords and slay the dragons or tame them so that we make make this world a better place.
My musings about dragons led me on a dragon hunt here at home. This is what I found to inspire me.
Saint George and the Dragon, by Margaret Hodges.
This is a used, paperback book I bought when Lucas was 4-years-old. I waited a long time for him to be ready for it. I gave it to him this weekend, knowing that he is being told the story at school and that he is ready for it now.
Here is a detail from the battle. Trina Schart Hyman’s illustrations are very vibrant and evocative.
Illustration from Eric Carl's book, Dragons Dragons & Other Creatures That Never Were.
Dragon illustration in the Oxford Treasury of Classic Poems. It graces the page with Brian Patten's poem, "A Small Dragon." Facing it is Lewis Carroll's "Jabberwocky."
Then I hit the armor and art books to find these beautiful paintings to share.
Rover Van der Weyden, Saint George and the Dragon, c 1432 (Flemish), found in a book called Arms & Armor of the Medieval Knight, by David Edge & John Miles Paddock.
Raphael's St. George and the Dragon, c 1506, oil on panel, National Gallery of Art, Washington. This was in our book, The Great Masters, by Giorgio Vasari.
Hope you enjoyed our dragon hunt as much as I did. May you meet your own dragons head-on this season, with bravery and compassion.
October 15, 2010 at 4:33 pm
I quoted you and linked back to this post in my blog, here:
http://thewheelandthedisk.blogspot.com/2010/10/here-be-dragons.html
Thanks for being such an inspiration! 🙂
October 18, 2010 at 7:27 pm
Gosh! Thanks very much, Alyss! Thanks for reading and for linking. I’m delighted to know you!