Page 8 - News and Views Autumn WInter 2024

Fearful or Courageous? – The Lion man & the Iceman Kit Pearce

An Estonian town is locked down. Police cars broadcast an announcement: “A dangerous lion is on the
loose! Stay at home…” The Chief Constable deals with the unprecedented emergency, made worse by
loud and lairy lion-deniers! Meanwhile, a timid Council employee is scared witless, even though he’s
already home. But (wouldn’t you know it?), a door is open. The lion enters. Just as the man is about to
his escape his house, it blocks his only exit: he’s stuck – can’t go forwards, can’t go back. He must
confront his paralysing fears. He inches past the old moth-eaten lion. It’s so close he feels its breath on
his skin, smells its fetid musk. He escapes unscathed and is transformed, determined to live more boldly
in future.

This is the storyline of a radio play, based on Estonian Martin Algus's short story, ‘The Lion’. [1.] I was
intrigued: had an Old Testament proverb seeded the plot? The slothful man saith, “There is a lion without;
I shall be slain in the streets.” (Proverbs 22:13; KJV)

Having known many fear-full ‘duvet days’ in my time, I’d
always been more interested in what the lion represented,
not the social taboo against laziness. Wouldn’t anyone, lazy
or not, be fearful of a lion in the street?

The biblical lion proverb contains social and cultural values
very different to our own, focusing more on challenges to
community cohesion than individual wellbeing. It frames a
social taboo, nothing more. (The ten commandments
prohibit various human failings, but not fear – for it is no sin.)
Fear commonly leads people to falter, fall or fail. But it need
not if we understand its purpose is to keep us safe – and if we
heed it, and identify (and release) its counterpart. Safety at
all costs is often crippling. But there is another (riskier) way to
respond to fear.

In the Old Testament, Samson and Daniel are two archetypes of faith. One a Nazarene, was consecrated
from the womb, possessed of super-human strength when the spirit of the Lord descended upon him.
The other, facing execution in the lions’ den, stepped inside with his fears under control: Jehovah would
stop the mouths of the lions. Both stand out as heroes in the sea of faith, most of the faithful being
minnows in comparison, yet kin.

It has never been, is not, nor ever will be easy to act in accord with the best of human nature (as Samson
learned in later life). Like falling off a log, it has always been easier to fall short of the best of our
humanity, especially when fear inveigles itself into our inner life, then misshapes our conduct. But even
falling short repeatedly doesn’t have to mean we can never recover ourselves, cannot permit others to
assist us. [4.] Quotidian acts of ‘fessing up’ and facing up to our weaknesses can transform them into
unexpected strengths. This has been intuited and understood in all religions and faith traditions worth
anything. But still not easy. Still no panacea.

My favourite Henning Mankell novel, Italian Shoes [2.] is about another fear: facing past mistakes. A
reclusive retired surgeon has been living alone on an isolated Swedish island for many years. He’s in
hiding from past errors of judgement. In his youth, he bolted from his first meaningful commitment,
cruelly disappearing without explanation. Decades later, he resigned rather than accept a reprimand,
after amputating a swimmer’s good arm. She had been an Olympic hopeful. Worse, if he had operated
on the correct arm, he would have learned no amputation was necessary.

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