Feature ArticleNovember 28, 2001
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Traditional Scottish Prayer"From ghoulies and ghosties And long-legged beasties And things that go bump in the night, Good Lord, deliver us!"Remember those bumps in the night? Older siblings took crude delight in telling scary bedtime stories with the lights out and all the frightening sound effects possible. We squeaked with fascination while they lay on the bed beside us, but after the official lights out when they scampered away, the bumps began and imagination took over. Every creak of the settling house, every thud of a restless sleeper, or groan of the dog kicked the imagination up a notch until minor or imagined sounds begot terror. It was only on Christmas Eve when we heard very definite thuds on the roof that the terror was replaced with shivering anticipation. In those days, we were far too young to understand that dangers lurking in our minds seem more terrifying than those spawned by reality. Even now, many years later, wakefulness in the predawn hours is unsettling; problems and anxieties are blown out of proportion far more than warranted. There is something about the dark that encourages fear to displace the rationale that we can summon in the daylight hours.Many years later, we still aren't ready to face imagined fear. Television pictures and newspaper reports of white powders have sent the world into turmoil. A handful of persons in the USA have recently died from a white powder that was not harmless, and we become hysterical and dread all white powders. Several others were contaminated and cured, and still we panic. Why have we not learned? Has the educational system failed to help us distinguish between reality and unreality? Has society not accommodated our passage from childhood to adulthood? Has religion so confused our souls that reality is indistinguishable from fear of the unknown? Have governments and the media deliberately panicked us to promote their own agendas?Each year in Canada, more than 50,000 people die from tobacco, alcohol, and automobile related occurrences. These everyday fatal experiences that have personally affected many of us are truly terrifying, and, ironically, a horror that society and we as individuals can diminish if we wish. The white powder, the suspect anthrax, is a bump in the night, and in panic we search under the bed and in the back of the closet as we did years ago chasing elusive terrors."Good Lord, deliver us." Deliver us? No, that is asking for too much, the Scots are noted for trying to get the best return for their dollar. Just let us have enlightenment, experience, and sufficient confidence in ourselves that we can deliver ourselves from the terrors that originate in the darkest hours of the day. It has been said that the darkest hours are just before dawn, and remember we formally define time as a 24-hour day, not a 24-hour night. Physically we cannot push back the imagined terrors of the night, but with strength from our beliefs, self-assurance, and with reasonable and intellectual effort, we can overcome imagined fears.
