Here Be Dragons
When I was younger I especially enjoyed pirate books and movies. Treasure Island was a favorite for a long time. The Voyage of the Dawn Treader was another wonder of my youth. The vastness of the worlds these and other similar narratives created was inspiring. The sea was big enough to carry plenty of stories, unknowns, heroes, and villains to keep my young mind and book-lover’s heart content with each turning of the page.
In those pirate stories there is a somewhat haunting phrase spoken time after time: “Here be dragons”. Back when the globe felt new and unexplored, cartographers would mark uncharted areas with depictions of dragons, warning sailors and explorers of the perils of such locations. The pirate and explorer books and movies of my youth picked up on this old practice and adopted the language as a means of warning. “Here be dragons" is one of the exciting, somewhat haunting phrases from my childhood of reading and watching old movies. It has stuck with me and sometimes comes up as a clever way of playfully warning someone of something ahead. As I’ve gotten older, my love of pirate stories has given way to other narratives and films, but I’ve never been able to shake off those dragons.
“Here be dragons” has become my go-to, internal phrase when I approach theology—especially the kind of theological work that doesn’t get wrapped up with a nice, orderly bow (which is basically all theological work in some sense). Sometimes the work of thinking about God feels a lot like stepping off into the unknown. Uncharted waters rise as we wrestle with God much like Jacob. Sure, others have gone before and mapped out a good deal of the landscape, but dragons still linger over the next hill or deep in the next lake.
Those ancient cartographers knew more than many of us are willing to admit—there are things we do not know. There are places we have not been. There are churning waters of uncertainty that threaten to swallow us up. It seems to me the sooner we can admit to the dragon’s existence, the sooner we can begin to move forward in our explorations. Denying the dragons’ existence was never an option. The question before us is what are we going to do about said dragons.
Those ancient cartographers knew more than many of us are willing to admit—there are things we do not know. There are places we have not been.
There are signs and posts along the way, guiding us forward. There are some pillars that have stood the test of time. There are maps that are trustworthy as we keep to the old roads. But the dragons are still out there, waiting for us as we journey through life. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I don’t want to be the same person today that I was a year ago. I want to meet new dragons as I wrestle out my theology. Part of me wants to feel their hot breath threaten as I chart new territories of my own thoughts and understandings of God. I’m young but I feel like I have at least slayed a few dragons. I know there are more just an inch over on the map.
Theology isn’t clean. It isn’t straightforward. It isn’t math. It is more like a journey laced with comings and goings, with mourning and dancing, with the ancient and the new. Here be dragons, but maybe, just maybe, we don’t need to be afraid.
