Chapter 9 A Neverland Gone Wrong

There’s a hidden room just beyond the reach of sunlight. Its moldy door of wood is covered by untamed brush and twisted branches of the ominous sort, and its hand-forged iron latch bears the weight and rust from another time and place, far outside this contemporary comprehension.

It is a room that sits on the edge of jagged crags and just beside random cliffs, deep within menacing shadows and incidental nightmares, where the air is humid and stifling and overbearing. The obscurity of it all is so frightening, in fact, that the mere presence of it fashions its own void between restless awakenings and stirred slumber.

And just outside the door, flocks of the startled can be heard taking flight, fleeing all at once, leaving an eerie silence in their wake.

I find myself inside this room, caught in my own private dream state, a Neverland gone wrong. I’m held captive within this place, for its entrance is locked from the outside. I’m pounding helplessly against its rotting, but strangely secure door, desperate -- for in this room, instead of insulating walls, there is a dark chasm, from which I’m certain I’ll never escape.

I’m angry, and terrified, of course, because I’m trapped. But a certain something, or a someone of unprecedented evil is making matters worse by competing with musty and rank odors and breathing against my skin with a clammy warmth, in such an uneasy way that I’m scared to death and I know that I’m far from home.

I'm here, again, because, in here is where I absorb and listen all too attentively to whispers, the very ones that serve to remind me how unworthy and unlovely and untalented I am; and certainly unusable and undeserving. I can hear them now, accompanied by the seething of this other being with his minor chords and clanging disharmony. But somehow, despite the messenger, all of it is simply believed as the truth, and that I should bear these brands as my own.

And then rot alone in this room of discarded potential.

But, if I could twist my body in such a way, or bite my bottom lip hard enough, or find the breath necessary to scream, then maybe, just maybe, I’ll wake up.

So, this is what I do.

And then, the bad dream draws to an end, like it always does, when the appointed person of this day, this hour, this nightmare comes to release me, and, quite frankly, whoever lets me out is undoubtedly the unpleasant person who locked me in.

I wake up, sweating, and baffled once more; my lover sleeping peacefully beside me

You see, this person, or the collective others of years gone by, well, they’ve put me and perhaps you in this place and they’ve shackled the door. My reoccuring nightmare aside, in real life, they’ve walked away while we’re screaming and all alone, but for the one they’ve left us with, where lies will be repeated, over and over again. And certainly, their words speak loudly and forcibly, for we can almost see their tongues (unwittingly or otherwise) escape as mighty swords, slashing outward at the victim it finds of us.

And then, on the wind of their bidding, we’re carried, lifeless, to this prison.

They’ve inadvertently become the key master, the warden, the very delegate of the evil one who is just beyond our sight and just beneath our mere appreciation of him. For he prowls and he seeks to devour us, in any way he can; he hides us away in this prison, perhaps just as real a captive as our imagination allows us to be.

Yet, somewhere within the depths of this man-made nether world, a Voice echoes out a battle cry that our hearts are good, and true, and beautiful by design, and this makes us more than worthy, and absolutely lovely and multi-talented; certainly usable and oh so deserving.

The Voice carries over the wind with a reverberating timbre that shakes the trees and clears away brush, and removes at once the oppressive stench of this place. And from the inside, he can be heard over the door pounding of the desperate, as he shouts:

This one is mine!

He is a locksmith of sorts, this great Rider, and so he reminds me (and I hope you) of the very moment when he fitted the door with an inside lock, with a key that we hold firm in our hands, around our necks, or ingrained upon these broken hearts that he calls redeemed.

Damn it, once again, I wasn't looking for it, and maybe you weren't either -- the key hole on the inside, and the way to escape, so instead, I stayed in the dark and believed it all, my fists bloodied against a door of arrangements made with the evil one to believe, and therefore suffer, at his hands.

If it helps you, then imagine it so. This great Lover we follow after won't stop us from going in, but he made a way out. We've been given this key and a new lock on the inside to release ourselves from bondage, to throw back shielding brushwood and to climb into the places where sunlight dances and shadows fade into the land of the living. Yes, to be a beautiful bride ransomed by her Prince from the prison depths of the too far gone.

To never again believe these lies.

And to become a new kind of church.