QUESTING FOR DRAGONS

In a recent email to a friend regarding roles and status of men and women, I stated the time for such deference paid to women as holding doors, sending flowers, doffing hats, carrying bags, and sending little notes of endearment is over. My premise was that such deference is in fact degrading to women because at its source, and what it reinforces, is that women are somehow inferior to men and incapable of handling their own affairs or managing their own lives. She responded that from her perspective there is still a place for such things and they do not have to have the meaning I ascribed to them. She then concluded by sharing some of the mundane things she had been doing and that it would be: “Much more fun, quite frankly, to go off on the quest for dragons.”

As an Anglophile of British literature of the first order, the thought of questing for dragons struck a familiar cord. My quest for dragons began, as it does for every student who studies British literature, with the Medieval Epic poems Beowulf and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. However, as “knight” is a loan word from German to Medieval English, the correct pronunciation of the word is not “nite” but “nikhtttttth” and I have a fond memory, as I believe does everyone exposed to the “Green Nikhttttth,” of our class “nikhttttth-ing” each other and our professor to death.

But I digress. Questing for dragons opens new vistas of self-revelation. My sons, who are in their senior year of high school, are delving into Beowulf and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight for the first time. They are profoundly fortunate that they have a teacher who truly appreciates Beowulf and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight because there are those who question the value of teaching them in 21^st century America. They question the relevance of literature that is first British and secondly medieval when juxtaposed with our technologically driven American xenophobia.

Of course, that is precisely the point. The very reason, the necessity of teaching Beowulf and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, is that they are the base compound of the antidote for America's technologically driven xenophobia. Why? Because they speak to the condition of the human soul unencumbered and unfettered by the countless layers and centuries of "progressive civilization" heaped upon them, which compared to their purity of spirit, is nothing less than a fetid dung hill.

The tragedy of our technologically driven 21^st century American xenophobia is that, like little Jackie Paper, we have no more use for dragons. Their green scales have fallen like rain and they have retreated into their cave never to be seen again. The loss, of course, is ours as we have substituted acid rain and radioactive nuclear rain for Puff's green scales. In doing so, we have chosen to rape the magic of Puff the Mighty Dragon by deifying the Industrial-Military Complex as foreseen by President Dwight David Eisenhower.

The old general was right. The danger to America, American values, and the American way of life was not the Soviet Union but rather the danger posed by the baser urges within his own Republican Party - urges that had already taken root in the radical right-wing John Birch Society. Did Ike also foresee the melding of this new phenomenon of right-wing super patriotism with radical right-wing Christianity?

We will never know but it is instructive that the old general had no need to affiliate with formal religion of any kind until he became president of the United States in 1953, fell under the influence of Billy Graham, and finally consented to be baptized as a Christian 12 days after his inauguration. How are we to understand Ike's sudden need to "get religion?" If one studies the years of the Eisenhower presidency, it is obvious that he brought the same pragmatism and sense of strategic planning to the presidency that he exercised throughout his illustrious Army career most notably in the planning of the Normandy invasion that was the beginning of the end for Germany in World War II.

As such, Ike's presidency was focused on the build up of the Cold War, the threat posed by a space dwelling Sputnik that whizzed over America several times a day, and a nuclear armed Soviet Union. A major part of this focus was to try to find ways to make the American people understand just how different the Soviet Union was from America. It was the threat posed by this difference that justified and launched the post-World War II Industrial-Military Complex Ike would warn us about a few short years later as he left office.

Placed within this context, it is much more likely that Ike's baptism was what is called in Catholic theology, "an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual truth" than a personal spiritual awakening. We may presume this because the defining difference between the Soviet Union and America was the insistence by the Soviet Union that it had transcended religion and was an atheist nation while America perceived itself a Christian nation. What better way to demonstrate this difference, this “outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual truth” to the American people than for its president, as soon as he took over the reigns of government, to personally embody this national spiritual truth than to be baptized in the White House? Through his baptism, Ike became the sign and symbol – a human, living, sign and symbol in flesh and blood – of America’s perception of itself. Thus for Ike, baptism was a political act and as such transformed him to a status not unlike that of European royalty in the age of the Divine Right of Kings where both God and the state were represented within the personage of the sovereign.

If one still doubts that Ike's "getting religion" was a political expediency rather than a personal revelation of God, consider that in 1957 the conservative Roman Catholic men's organization, The Knights of Columbus, dedicated to the Virgin Mary suggested to the president that the phrase "under God" be included in the Pledge of Allegiance.  Even if Ike had had a personal revelation of God, does it seem even remotely possible that he understood his God – a Billy Graham fundamentalist God - as being the same God as understood by the Knights with their dedication to the Virgin Mary, as being synonymous with what it means to be America? Again, as understood in light of the balance of his presidency, the only conclusion that can be drawn is that Ike, ever the pragmatist and strategic planner, immediately saw the propaganda payoff for America to claim God for itself which is why he so enthusiastically presented the Knight's proposal to Congress.

There is no room for dragons in the world of pragmatists and strategic planners. There is no room for dragons in the world of right-wing super patriots. There is no room for dragons in the world of radical right-wing Christians. There is no room for dragons in the Industrial-Military Complex. There is no room for dragons in the world of 21^st century technologically driven xenophobic America.

It is precisely because there is no room for dragons in the world of pragmatists and strategic planners, right-wing super patriots and radical right-wing Christians, the Industrial- Military Complex or 21^st century technologically driven xenophobic America that we so desperately need them.

Dragons, moreover our quest for dragons, is both fundamental and foundational in bringing us back to a time when chivalry reigned, when knights wore girdles and ladies gave their champion a baldric as a token of love and protection. Dragons, moreover our quest for dragons, brings us back to the spiritual purity of our search for the Holy Grail. Dragons, moreover our quest for dragons, leads us to that quiet place, that still small voice, within our heart where we here God calling, “Who will speak for me?” that Rudolph Otto described as, “the core of our being” that makes us truly human.

My friend was absolutely right. What I should have written is that tokens of respect and love, given and received by both genders, are the stuff of legend and lore. Yet, they are much more than that. These seemingly frivolous courtesies of the chivalric age, where baldrics and manners were as common as Puff’s green scales, are the essence of what makes us human and determines the depth of our humanity.

This is why it is so important that my children, all of our children, need in the words of Sir Francis Bacon in his essay, "On Studies" to, “read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest” Beowulf and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.

The reason it is so important for our children to study Beowulf and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is that through them they learn it is possible to recreate the world of dragons, chivalry, honor, and truth; the truth of what it means to be human and that it is possible to bring that truth into their lives and into the life of America.