The Red Shoes

Rev. Meg Barnhouse
March 1, 2015

First in a new fairy tale sermon series, this Sunday we’ll talk about the things that take over our lives and compel us to do things we would rather not do, go places we meant not to go. How do we retrieve our spirits?

Starting a fairy tale series, once a month or so, we’ll use a fairy tale as the text of a sermon. Fairy tales are like the dreams of a culture. In a dream, every part of the plot is part of the dreamer. Fairy tales tell a truth about the human journey.

I’m often invited to do workshops for my colleagues on humor and truth-telling. We use commonly told folk tales in the workshop as sermon texts, and I wish you could hear some of the masterful riffs on Goldilocks and the Three Bears, Little Red Riding Hood, and The Three Little Pigs. We have kinder, gentler versions of these tales than the Grimm ones. Lots of people since those two lawyers took down the stories from Huguenot maids have scurried to take the sex and gore out of them. The Greek myths, too, evolved over the centuries. Once in a while in these workshops, though, I’m surprised when, at the end of a sermon, the three little pigs sit down with the wolf to a delicious vegetable stew. What is up with that? Again, a lie, or just editing? The story has never presented itself as history, yet it still shocks me when the “real” story is altered.

The Red Shoes is a strange little story with a terrible ending. It may be only a fragment of a story, or it may be part of a series. These tales were told to the brothers Grimm, two lawyers, by Hugenot maids. There are many versions of this one, as of all of them, and this is the one told by Hans Christian Andersen.

The story.

A peasant girl named Karen is adopted by a rich old lady after her mother’s death and grows up vain and spoiled. Before her adoption, Karen had a rough pair of red shoes; now she has her adoptive mother buy her a pair of red shoes fit for a princess. After Karen repeatedly wears them to church, they begin to move by themselves, but she is able to get them off. One day, when her adoptive mother becomes ill, Karen goes to attend a party in her red shoes. A mysterious soldier appears and makes strange remarks about what beautiful dancing shoes Karen has. Soon after, Karen’s shoes begin to move by themselves again, but this time they can’t come off. The shoes continue to dance, night and day, rain or shine, through fields and meadows, and through brambles and briers that tear at Karen’s limbs. She can’t even attend her adoptive mother’s funeral. An angel appears to her, bearing a sword, and condemns her to dance even after she dies, as a warning to vain children everywhere. Karen begs for mercy but the red shoes take her away before she hears the angel’s reply. Karen finds an executioner and asks him to chop off her feet. He does so but the shoes continue to dance, even with Karen’s amputated feet inside them. The executioner gives her a pair of wooden feet and she works as a servant.

Hans Christian Andersen interpretation:

The girl is vain. Vanity keeps you from spirituality, it is never satisfied, and so must be cut out.

Jungian interpretation:

We have our hand made life. It fits us, it feels rich and colorful. We get tempted by something snazzy that comes along, and offers us shinier, more accessible pleasures.

The old lady is this offer of a better life, but she takes away the girl’s way of being in the world. Her value system, where she stands. They were thrown in the fire, and the girl’s nature was restricted.

She fed her hunger with a too-shiny version of her own nature, her own dance. It took off with her, because its connection to her was not reciprocal. They danced her. She could not take them off and then put them on again.

We fill the hunger with work, a relationship, substances. They run away with us. We find ourselves going right when we wanted to go left.

You have to go to your inner executioner when the dance gets too horrible. You can try to kill off just the addiction, but many times you have to change everything. All new friends. Sometimes a new place. New patterns. Ninety meetings in ninety days. Lose the old values, the old places you stood, lose your old dance entirely. Suffer. Work as a servant.

Other interpretations:

Your interpretation of the story has to do with your culture, your values. Is this a parable against vanity? Is she really punished with the loss of part of her body for that?

Is it about addictions? Things that take you where you didn’t want to go, trying to get to the place you remember?

Is it about your gifts. People like us might think red shoes are good, and if you want to wear red shoes, even to church, you are more than welcome to. We’ll celebrate them with you. Could it be your individuality? Your gifts? Your gifts will keep you dancing until you die. It will be a good dance sometimes, but every artists knows it can be a terrible dance too. Many artists cut out their art, many people sever themselves from their dreams and then live miserably, broken, like the soldier who activated the curse of the girl’s shoes.

What does it mean? People can feel their take on a story is the correct one, and everyone else is an idiot. Is the dress white and gold or black and blue? Fundamentalist militants allow their interpretation of religion to wipe away all of the principles they may once have had. The people who don’t agree with you are against you, and they must be rubbed out.

Someone else’s shoes indicate someone else’s dance, and if you find yourself doing someone else’s dance and that you’ve lost your smile and path and heart, then you are leading an inauthentic life. There’s no “sin” here for which Kate is being punished, nor for you when you find you’ve adopted someone else’s notion of how to think, how to worship, what’s a practical major in school, what’s the right kind of job.

Help comes from mentors, who may even be gone now. But whatever remains of them, perhaps only the spiritual presence or the vestiges inside you, they are there for a reason when you need them. Call on memories of “moments of pleasure” — these are meditations but with healing personal content. Lose yourself, or shed your old self in a dionysian ecstasy which in one sense is being torn apart by Maenads but in another is a dismantling in order for rejuvenation or rebirth. (as Marianne Williamson wrote: a nervous breakdown is a highly underrated path to enlightenment)

Your soul is whole. It is a constant pulse, a tidal force that pulls you to do what you need to do to be authentic.

Podcasts of this and other sermons are also available for free on iTunes. You can find them here.

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