If I end up in a classroom again, I would open with a discussion of the ending scene from the first season of True Detective.  Two veteran detectives are outside a hospital looking at the night sky.  When one says there is only one story, the oldest – light versus dark, the other replies that it appears that the dark has more territory.  The first – Yeah, you’re right about that but you’re looking at it wrong.  Once there was only darkness, you ask me, the light is winning.

A friend, a former nun who now lives by the ocean, once told me that everyone needs to look at the banner flying over them to see which side they are fighting for.  Regardless of a person’s belief system, I think this framework holds a lot of water.

It is light versus darkness.  We are either life givers or life takers.  I don’t think there’s a middle ground here.  As Geddy Lee of Rush puts it – If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.

But I understand that this can be a tough sell in a world that contains and rewards so much brutality and darkness.  

Another scene that I’ve found profound is from the Netflix adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s Sandman.  Morpheus, the Lord of Dreams, is in a thought battle with Lucifer.  They try to one-up each other with concepts – I’m a direwolf.  I’m a hunter.  I’m a serpent.  So on and so forth.

Lucifer, thinking she has made the killing and final move, goes “I am anti-life.  The Beast of Judgment.  The dark at the end of everything.”

Lucifer taunts “What now, Dream Lord?  What would you be now?  There are no more moves.”

Morpheus, now prostrate on the ground, seemingly defeated, gets a pep talk from his servant raven – “You know what survives the anti-life?  You do.  Dreams don’t f——— die.”

Staggering to his feet, he replies “I am hope. What is it that kills hope?”  Even Lucifer cannot bring herself to respond because she maintains hope of seeing heaven again.

Nothing kills hope.  And the raven is right about dreams.