Editorial: Coping with the Wild Things

Kirsten Beachy’s review of “Where the Wild Things Are” opens this issue of DreamSeeker Magazine because it seems not only to capture the spirit of the film so well but also to invite us to consider how we cope with all the Wild Things of life. In the film as Beachy portrays it, there are wild things and power struggles and hurts and aches for love tumbling everywhere. There is no magic wand for straightening everything out—except maybe being humbled enough to know we all need a mom. 

And I’m struck as I ponder what else is in these pages that boy we do need something, and maybe a mom is as good a way as any to visualize it. The responses and letters engaging atheism, faith, and homosexuality remind us again what a ragged set of issues tumbled through the pages of the Autumn 2009 issue and many of our lives. And the poets continue to tumble through more issues. 

Then Mel Leaman dares to enter the wild traumas of his family’s history. Dan Liechty assumes we all must cope with Wild Things—and that one way we can work at this is through taming our feelings by seeking to act as “Mensches.”

Renee Gehman worries that as the norms shift, wildness is unleashed. She helps us ponder how to use norms to tame things that get too wild. Tim Stair worries that maybe things are too wild at Salvation Church—but then maybe what he ends up feeling is not too distant from, okay, there is a mom we can trust here. Deborah Good helps us see how important, amid our daily wild events, a community of those who care can be. 
Alan Soffin evokes the wild racist things that stalked his own mom—and manages nevertheless to leave us haunted by images of those whose fragile sainthood was stronger even than anything thrown at them. 

Rachael Moore-Beitler turns toward the wild dynamics and issues posed by her and our lifestyle choices, and finds hope in the mantra of the fish Nemo, “just keep swimming.” Then maybe the wildest thing we face is death. What does death entail? Is there anything like a mom after that? Dan Hertzler reviews a book on heaven bearing on such matters. Then quickly we shift to Noel King, whose light touch reminds us in turn to lighten up. 

I wrap up this issue with memories of the day the road itself became the wild thing I needed to be preserved from. And I was. A mom or dad or Something seemed to join me in that mud.  —Michael A. King