A lesson · Pick Your Dragon
Age 21+Pick Your Dragon
AI, war, politics, the environment, the argument that never ends. Seven heads, ten horns, and a surprisingly small thing underneath. You don’t have to slay it, but you do have to show up.
Assumptions & Caveats
Before you begin
What you should know
Adults arrive with dragons that have real weight and real vantage points, and many are also modeling dragon-posture for the young people around them. The dragons that split a room (political, geopolitical, workplace) appear here and only here on the site. The whole lesson depends on one discipline: the dragon is never a person, a party, a nation, a faith, or a side of an issue. It’s the fear, the lie, and the hate that can wrap around any of them. You are never adjudicating the issue. If you catch anyone (yourself included) arguing for or against a position, you’ve stepped onto the dragon’s field.
The honest tension lives in Beat 5. Don’t rush to resolve it. As with the site’s other lessons, you’re not there to settle the paradox neatly by the end of the hour.
Nothing you don’t already have: index cards and a board.
What we're assuming
- The room holds every political, cultural, and faith vantage, and each person’s concern is real to them. Nobody is asked to justify a worry, and nobody’s dragon is ranked against anyone else’s.
- Some people here carry direct experience of the dragons named: war or displacement, a lost job, a strained family, grief about the planet. Nobody is asked to disclose, and the pile of anonymous cards keeps that safe.
- Faith backgrounds vary. “Truth” and “Love” are offered as two names for God, as an idea to test, not a belief anyone has to claim.
- This is not a place to decide anything about AI, a conflict, the climate, or an election. It’s a place to look at how we hold fear about them.
Learning goals
What they walk away with
- Can name their default response to a dragon (fight or flee) and describe what “refusing the terms” would look like in one specific situation.
- Has experienced, not just heard, what happens to a fear when it meets a steady question instead of an argument.
- Leaves with one Reach to complete within 72 hours, and can hold the honest tensions (wrestling versus no contest, conviction without contempt) without needing them resolved.
How to hold the room
Before you start talking
- Go first with a real confession of your own arsenal, with no polish. A learning, not-yet-arrived posture is the whole permission slip for the room.
- Enforce the one rule lightly and warmly. If a debate about an issue starts, name it kindly: “That’s the dragon’s field. Let’s go back to what we’re afraid of losing.”
- Never offer “why should we stand aghast at nothingness?” (Science and Health 563:7) to someone in real pain. It’s a lens for the one holding it, not a correction for anyone else’s fear. The costume can be false while the loss underneath is completely real.
- Silence is participation. Nobody has to speak for the lesson to work on them.
- For people who mentor or parent: the young people in their care catch dragon-posture faster than explanations. Offer that as an optional question in Beat 5, never a requirement.
- Interview safety: medium-weight dragons only, either person can stop at any time, and writing instead of speaking is fine.
The lesson flow
Step by step
Each beat alternates a little input, a little doing, and a little reflecting. Skip, slow down, or stretch any of these to fit your group.
Throw it in the pile
Start with your confession. Hand out index cards: “One line, no name: a dragon you’re sizing up right now.” Collect, shuffle, and read a good handful aloud without comment. Then name what’s happening: “In this pile there are things that could never sit peacefully in one argument at one table. Here, they’re sitting next to each other.” Read Revelation 12:3–4, then:
“The great red dragon symbolizes a lie... This dragon stands for the sum total of human error.”
Science and Health, Mary Baker Eddy, p. 563:8–10
Add: “It doesn’t say your concern is a lie. It says what’s wrapped around the real thing is a costume.”
Fight, flee, refuse
Write FIGHT, FLEE, REFUSE on the board. Fight is outrage, expertise used as a weapon, dunking, winning the argument, and it accepts the dragon’s field. Flee is the doomscroll, the numbing, the “I’ve stopped watching,” and it leaves the dragon exactly as big as before. Then state the reversal plainly: the fastest way to become the dragon’s ally is to decide a person is the dragon. Read:
”...we have no might against this great company that cometh against us; neither know we what to do: but our eyes are upon thee.”
2 Chronicles 20:12, KJV
(Context for you: a king facing an army, admitting he has no weapon and no plan. The story goes on in ways we’re not teaching here. We’re borrowing one thing, the honest posture.) Then read:
“Truth and Love prevail against the dragon because the dragon cannot war with them.”
Science and Health, Mary Baker Eddy, p. 567:10–12
Ask: “What would refusing look like, concretely, for one dragon in the pile?” Take two or three answers. Then say clearly: “Refusing isn’t not caring. Nothing here tells anyone to look away from hunger, war, or a hurting planet. It’s the opposite: acting from steadiness and love rather than dread.”
The Dragon Interview
Pair up (or, one-on-one, the facilitator interviews). Demo it first for 60 seconds. Rules on the board: The interviewer may only say “What specifically are you afraid of losing?” and “What else?” No fixing, no debating, no correcting the facts, no matching stories, and no evaluating anyone’s issue. Four minutes each way. Then the dragon-holder says or writes, in one sentence, what’s left once the costume is off. Debrief for two minutes: “Did your dragon change size? What was underneath?” Note how often what’s under the headline is a person, a value, or a next step (a child’s future, dignity, being heard, security, belonging). And say honestly: the point isn’t to shrink real loss to nothing. It’s to size it correctly so love can act on it.
Love is the operating system
“Truth was the question. Love is the move.” Read:
“Love is impartial and universal in its adaptation and bestowals.”
Science and Health, Mary Baker Eddy, p. 13:2–3
“Impartial means Love doesn’t pick a side.” Then offer adult-scale examples of a Reach: text the person you’re mid-fight with something true and kind instead of something technically correct; call the person across a family-dinner disagreement and ask one real question, then listen; swap one doomscroll for one act of service; show up locally where the dragon’s costume is biggest and build a bridge or extend a hand. Read:
“Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good.”
Romans 12:21, KJV
Each person writes one Reach to complete in the next 72 hours. Say the boundary out loud: a Reach never means staying close to someone who harms you. Sometimes the loving move is a boundary, or a call for help. See When Someone Feels Like the Enemy.
The honest questions
Open the floor with two or three of these, and don’t push for a neat ending:
- “It can feel like wrestling.” Read:
“Truth and Love come nearer in the hour of woe, when strong faith or spiritual strength wrestles and prevails through the understanding of God. The Gabriel of His presence has no contests.”
Science and Health, Mary Baker Eddy, p. 567:3–7
Ask: “Strength and stillness are both on this page. Can both be true?” - “Is ‘refuse the terms’ a luxury of people whose dragons are small?” (Ask it honestly. Someone in the room may live with a very real one. Don’t answer it for them.) - “Where’s the line between refusing to hate and refusing to take a stand? Can you hold a conviction without contempt?” - For mentors and parents: “What did a young person in my life learn about dragons from watching me this week?”
Close with one line: “Which dragon are you sizing up this week?” and one more: “You are not alone.”
What you'll need
The materials
- Index cards and a board or shared document
- The printable “Inside the Costume” handout — holding the costume, what’s inside, and the two tools — and “The World’s Worst Dragon Slayer” wallet card, which carries the three questions
If it's not going well
When this one gets heavy
Silence from someone directly affected by the dragons named here is a normal, appropriate response. Don’t press for participation. Pushback or disagreement (including “this is spiritual bypassing”) is worth holding open honestly rather than correcting, because it’s a real question the lesson is built to hold. If the room slides into debating an issue, redirect kindly to the fear, not the facts. A strong emotional reaction, like grief about a loss that’s happening right now, calls for a pause, a private check-in, and permission to step out. A disclosure of real crisis or harm should not be handled as group discussion. Respond as a caring adult, point to the site’s mentor safety guidelines, and observe whatever your own setting’s professional or reporting obligations require.
For the fuller tiered guidance — including what to do if someone discloses something serious — see For Mentors.
Help this get better
Teaching this to a group we haven't planned for?
Tell us — this only gets better with your eyes on it. We read every one of these.