The story of Good versus Evil
Sept 29 2025
The day started with Filly sitting in the kitchen at the table with Tater. Pyp was potty training, and Mister was getting over a cold so Church was going to be “at home”.
While they sat and ate leftovers from dinner for breakfast, Spaghetti, corn and rolls (Tater not very happy about this), Filly started telling a story about these fictitious kids who wanted to run away from home because they thought their parents were not fair.
Filly gave great details about what the kids packed and how they left and then she gave great details how they were not prepared and how they were cold and tired and had no where to sleep. Tater was in rapt attention. The point of the story was to get Tater to identify with kids her age and understand or at least question their motivation for certain behaviors, while learning the consequences for bad decisions.
Filly told three such stories. Then she told Tater and Mister, that they were Sunday school teachers too, and asked them to tell their own story. So they did. Filly learned from the story Tater told, that if people just gave other people the benefit of the doubt, then less arguing would happen and more happiness would result and happiness would happen more quickly. Getting angry according to her perspective, only delayed personal happiness. Mister told a story about how his sister helped him get to the side of the pool when he was learning to swim…he had older sister admiration.
Because of all the stories, Filly thought about the clay, hand made “storyteller dolls” she had in her laundry room. They represented a culture of storytelling that had been handed down over generations.
The first story teller dolls she and her husband had, were bought years ago, when they went to Albuquerque NM. while visiting for a company Christmas party weekend. They could barely afford one at the time. The dolls were almost a hundred dollars each and with five kids they were on a tight budget.
But they had splurged and bought one the first year and one the second year. They had continued the collection over the years.
The significance of the storyteller dolls was that the mom, the one holding the children close to her, was the source of the stories. Because she was the mom, she was a trusted and valued resource for the children. And because she was the mom, she was also the one with easy and proper access to the children. Her unique role in their lives was celebrated with these dolls.
None of the storyteller dolls were men holding babies and telling stories…other than the mom. The more “babies” the mom was holding, the more valuable she was, literally and figuratively.
Filly tried to find the storyteller dolls that had five babies to match her own family. She liked the symbolism of how because the children trusted the mom, and the stories she told, they learned valuable lessons.
Filly thought about the current “stories” or “conspiracy theories” surrounding assassination attempts or school shootings. The reason these stories proliferated was because the media, which dispensed these stories, was not vetted, therefore society heard the story, doubted it, did not trust it, and tried to make rational sense out of events that seemed unreal.
Filly drank her one cup of coffee she allowed herself each week, for her treat. It had sugar and cream but it was decaf. She had wanted to go to La Madeline but there had been a wreck on the road that was tying up traffic to a crawl, so she had turned around.
Then she had thought about going to McDonald’s, but that location had closed its sunshine room due to repairs…so that was out of the question as well. As she turned around and drove back home, Filly thought about the randomly chosen bible verse for the day.
5 The devil led him up to a high place and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world. 6 And he said to him, “I will give you all their authority and splendor; it has been given to me, and I can give it to anyone I want to. 7 If you worship me, it will all be yours.”
What a story teller that old devil was she thought. And the devil seemed pretty confident that kids and adults would believe. Filly wanted to make sure the ones she knew would ask questions and not be conned into sin.
That is why Filly told the stories in Sunday school, to get the kids to recognize the way Evil works…even through friends who made false promises, in order to sway good people into doing bad things.
Filly thought about the new cinnamon roll place called Cinnaholic. She thought the name implied that something that promises to be “good” can be taken in excess and can be the source of gluttony…and then the word would be sin-a-holic, like Alcoholic. The creator of those cinnamon rolls knew that what it promised to deliver was SO TEMPTING, that people would not be able to resist ..a great “on ramp” for the devil trying to “drive” good people into over indulgence.
The media was an “on ramp” as well, distorting or twisting truth in order to confuse or change people’s way of thinking.
She thought about how difficult it was for some people to recognize who was truthful and who was manipulating the truth because they did not listen to their mom, their own storyteller. Those evil doers, who made empty promises seemed to date back to well before Jesus, all the way through fairy tales like Hansel and Gretel and the wicked witch, and including current day media, still making empty promises and telling fictitious stories to lure listeners.
Filly had just recently bought some cloth story teller dolls as well, where red riding hood was on one side of the doll, and turn her upside down under her skirt was the wolf…or vise versa. Or a doll with beauty on one side and the beast on the under side. The “illusion” was that evil and good can coexists within good. Which Filly disputed and rejected. Darkness cannot coexist within light.
In the movie The sword in the stone, Evil known as Maleficent starts off as a small dragon and ends up as a huge monster before getting destroyed. Filly believed that like Maleficent, Evil makes itself puffed up like a puffed up frog, trying to get itself to look good…making people believe that they should “kiss the frog” because MAYBE behind that wart face, was a handsome prince. If Filly was telling that story, no one would have to kiss any beasts in order to appreciate what their true nature was, because Good does not hide behind evil, evil hides behind Good.
Bye bye Maleficent. Bye bye frogs that supposedly turn into a handsome prince. Not buying it.