So the obvious question is where do those stories we are telling ourselves come from? Or maybe an even better question, if our lives are storied creations then where and from whom did we learn how to story tell?
Pondering, reflecting and answer these questions is a million dollar insight. And lots of learnings happen along the way. What we all come to find out is we have been scripted. In fact therapists call our enacted stories scripts and schemas. Early in our lives we start living into the accepted scripts of those closest to us. Parents, caregivers, and soon after that school teachers, music and art teachers and coaches.
We could stop right here and start identifying where stories I am telling myself today about my lack of ability, or insecurities, or feelings of inferiority, or arrogant ego, or narcissism all start with some storied script I inherited or picked up along the way. The sources are various, insidious and cryptic. But they are the narratives that literally bring form to our lives.
This is why the last post posed the question how much of our life is fact or fiction. We would like to think we are the authors of our lives but the truth is self authorship is a very high level of human development and takes significant self awareness leading to self reflection.
What are some of the the fictions you are telling yourself these days? How long has that story been playing? Transformation, real metamorphosis comes when we change the running commentary in our heads. Contrary to popular evangelical nonsense that Paul wanted people to memorize scripture, this is the meaning of Romans 12:1-2. Transformation comes by renewing the story in your mind, by changing the way your mind makes meaning of yourself and your world.
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“Is your life fact or fiction,” seems like something of stupid question doesn’t it? Fiction comes from the Latin fictum meaning “created.” Fiction when it comes to narrative is a story that has at least parts if not all of it that are “created” by the author and do not represent anything in the real factual world.
Hmmmm….
For the last couple months I have alternated blog posts between my personal story of awakening through a bone fishing experience and about reading the text of scripture with new metaphors and eyes. One seemed more academic, the other more personal. One seemed more engaging the other a bit dry. The next series of posts though will bring the two together in a not so obvious connection. And hopefully both posts sets will live in new ways
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A script, as in drama script, is the last metaphor possibility I suggest in The Bible as Improv.
Each metaphor has it’s own unique contribution and limitations. But a drama script is a particularly helpful one. This is not one I came up with. NT Wright first used this in an article that if you haven’t seen is worth the read sometime. He further develops it in his massive opening volume on Christian origins entitled, The New Testament and the People of God. Again most of you reading this blog will be familiar with his work, if you haven’t read the first 3 volumes of what will be his life’s work you need to (volume 2, volume 3. two more are forthcoming) He suggests that maybe the bible as we have it is the first four acts of a five act play or a drama. The fifth act however is lost and that situation needs to be remedied. So we have a couple options.
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Awareness, awakeness and day dreaming.
So bone fishing was my entry’ into awareness and waking up. How about you? You might be
a follower of Jesus, bible reading maniac, bible quoting, memorizing machine. You might be a sermon, book and seminar junkie. But none of those imply awakeness. My life is an example. And the whole mystic and spirituality tradition of the church proves it.
My life in the last 6 years of this journey has had some of the most incredible spiritual depth and growth I have ever experienced. Much of it due to waking up, some of it due to great pain, some of it due to engaging new patterns and practices that have helped me come to grips with how our lives are storied.
All of us live in a constructed reality; personally and socially constructed. This has been and remains the most profound and powerful insight that waking up has brought. What do I mean?
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The classic is one new metaphor we can consider as we are looking for a way forward from the owner’s manual for life (OMFL) approach which seems to be boil the narrative down to stories encasing propositions we have to figure out how to mine.
David Tracy was one theologian who realized the problem we were having in our reading the biblical text. His proposal in 1981 in his winsome though dense volume, The Analogical Imagination, was that we might want to consider reading the text as a classic.
Now for those of you reading this from a more conservative perspective don’t panic. Classic doesn’t imply “not real” or even ‘not inspired’ for that matter. In fact let’s call it an inspired classic (some actually find that a redundant couplet…all classics are inspired some would say). We have to consider new paradigms with an open mind or we never really “hear” their power.
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So we have the bucket theory, which really sits as the backbone to the owner’s manual for life approach to scripture; something we already said we have to get rid of. The bucket theory has been asking this question for decades “what is in the eternal and relevant bucket and what is the in the cultural and irrelevant bucket?” While most people and/or pastors would never articulate this as their approach, a bit of probing reveals that for most this is hoe they figure out how to live, what to obey and what the rules of engagement are. This is how we end up using the text as “an owner’s manual for life. Two big problems, intractable, impossible-to-get-around problems arise with this question.
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In our modern world we have used a metaphor for approaching our sacred text that may be responsible for a growing set of problems. We have said the Bible is our Owner’s Manual for Life, and we start using this idea early. Metaphors are lenses we use to give us insight. But we have to remember the limits of metaphors. They are illustrative. Metaphors work because there is a an element of truth that rings clear. But metaphors breakdown. Metaphors are culture specific. Metaphors that work today may not work tomorrow. We have been referring to the Bible as an “Owners Manual for Life,” and that metaphor has outlasted it’s welcome. Life can’t be negotiated with an owners manual. Life is too dynamic and too situational to yield to simple looked up entries in an index that refers us to a page for “the answer.”
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So the obvious question is where do those stories we are telling ourselves come from? Or maybe an even better question, if our lives are storied creations then where and from whom did we learn how to story tell?
