“Sacred Stories, Spiritual Lives” – A talk given by Margo McLoughlin, M. Div. at the Unitarian Fellowship in Comox on November 19 th , 2006
What place do stories have in determining our choices, our ways of seeing, our ways of being?
How do stories work in our lives?
Stories act as a catalyst. They are lens-shaping. At times a mirror, or a guide.
In this short talk today I want to explore with you the role of narrative in determining who we are and how we see the world.
The first aspect of story I want to talk about is inspiration.
The irresistible pull of narrative lies in the simple fact that all human life has the same shape as story – a beginning, a middle, and an end. There is a more or less causal relationship between events, moral decisions to be made, and somewhere, somehow, pattern and meaning emerge. When we listen to stories (read them, or watch them as film, theater or dance) we can't help but see our own struggles reflected there. However foreign the culture or setting of the tale, there is still that basic structure, that basic urge to be happy, to connect, to find meaning. Stories offer clues; they awaken possibility. They inspire.
Inspiration, from the Latin “to breathe in” refers to the way in which action follows from thought, and thought arises from contact with a new idea, or an old idea presented or experienced in a new way. To be inspired is to have a feeling of awe accompanied by recognition of our own potential. It is as nourishing and essential and life-sustaining as taking in oxygen.
Every sacred narrative has as its purpose to inspire, to breathe life and meaning into the daily round of existence.
What do I mean by a sacred narrative? A text, or oral account, that occupies a place of importance in a culture. Its telling or retelling may be an annual ritual, designed to achieve certain effects, principally to re-inspire.
Consider creation accounts.
All stories of beginnings beckon us to listen and dream. That time before time, what was it like? In the vastness, in the void, how did life begin? Creation accounts are the most sacred stories in every culture. We tell them to re-experience the wonder and the mystery of life's origins. We tell them to express reverence and gratitude for the world we inhabit and the gift of life. Creation accounts also remind us of the proper order of our relationships, both to the Creator, and to the plants and animals. They remind us to consider the role of humankind in caring for this planet we call Earth.
In my work gathering tales of generosity of spirit I read many creation tales. One of these was “People of Corn”, a beautiful retelling of The Popul Vuh: The Sacred Book of the Quiche Maya, who are the indigenous people of the Guatemala highlands. The Popul Vuh, which literally means “House of the Community,” is more than a creation tale. It encompasses mythology, cosmogony, and history, and gives in its scope, an extraordinary window onto pre-conquest Mayan culture.
Two themes emerge from this story: the relationship between the creator and the created, and the role of gratitude in our lives . Creation stories help us to see our lives as precious and meaningful.
In “People of Corn,” there are two creator gods. When they finish their work of making the land and the animals, they discover they share the same desire—to be thanked:
…the gods saw that their creatures could not pronounce their names and could not talk about them in story and song, [and] they were unhappy. Who would remember the beginning of the earth? Who would celebrate the gift of life?
The gods start again, and make people—first out of wood, then out of corn. The wooden people can speak and build bridges. They work without rest because they have no hearts. They never stop to breathe, to marvel in awe at creation, or to praise the gods. The gods realize they have made a mistake with their wooden puppets and bring down a flood to wash them away. The corn people, on the other hand, are filled with wonder, and they do know how to thank their creators. They tell the story over and over, so that the children will remember and tell their children, passing along the mystery and celebrating the gift.
A sacred text is a story that inspires through imagery and metaphor. What about the “text” of a human life?
Think for a moment of someone who has inspired you, that is, a person whose story, whose way of living, has motivated you in your own life.
A historical figure perhaps, like Mahatma Gandhi who embodied simplicity, truthfulness, and non-violence. Or Martin Luther King, with his passion for justice and his commitment to non-violence. Or Mother Theresa, the embodiment of compassion and selflessness.
The scale does not have to be heroic, however. It could be as simple as observing how a friend follows through on her promises, both to herself and to others. Her example inspires you to develop that quality of trustworthiness in yourself.
When you think of inspiration, who has inspired you? (Silence.) Many people may come to mind, or perhaps just one or two. Bring one person to mind and consider a quality in that person that stands out for you. Courage. Perseverance. Kindness. Whatever the quality is, let yourself feel it, as if this person were standing in front of you and you could feel the reflected warmth of their courage, generosity, compassion, love. (Silence.) Where do you feel it? In the heart? In the limbs? Now consider the presence of this quality in yourself—moments when you were courageous, when you persevered, when you acted with genuine kindness and generosity of spirit. Notice how courage calls up courage, generosity inspires generosity, kindness mirrors kindness.
(If inspiration is as essential to human well-being as breathing, and if every human life is in some sense a narrative, then we are capable of inspiring each other all the time.)
Inspiration. Sacred stories (sacred texts, life narratives, in the act of composition all the time.)
The second aspect of story I want to explore is perspective.
Stories offer us perspective, that is, a lens through which to see, both our own experience and the experience of others.
In July when I was in Mississippi I met a woman named Gloria Dickerson. She arrived late at the two-day retreat I was co-facilitating with my colleagues from the Fetzer Institute. The retreat was called Spirit of Justice. Those attending included lawyers, teachers, community leaders, and staff from the Mississippi Center for Justice, a non-profit in Jackson, dedicated to making Mississippi the Social Justice State. These people were there to be part of writing a new story for their state. About half of them were African-American, some with a long history of activism in the state.
When Gloria arrived it was late in the evening. The entire group (about twenty-five people) was sitting in a circle. Each person was invited, in turn, to bring into the circle someone in his or her life who had mentored or guided them, someone who was in some measure the reason for their commitment to social change. The names of grandparents and parents were spoken, and brief accounts given of their courage and generosity. As we went round the circle it became more and more clear that the work we do in the present is handed on to us by others, and that we are never alone. When Gloria joined us she was invited to share her own story. Gloria spoke about her mother—civil rights activist Mae Beth Carter. In 1965 at the time of integration in the south Mae Beth Carter sent her eight “Negro” children to an all-white school. She was determined that they get the best education available. But it wasn't easy for Gloria and her brothers and sisters. When they came home from school each day their mother would ask them how it was. They would tell her how the white kids had taunted and abused them. Mae Beth would listen, really listen and nod her head. Then she would gather her children in a circle and together they would sing freedom songs. Gloria's favorite was “I woke up this morning with my mind (pronounced mine) stayed on freedom…Hallelu, Hallelu, Halleluia…”
Where is the story here? Mae Beth Carter believed in equal access to education for all children, regardless of race. She chose to send her children into a challenging situation, where she knew they would be harassed and mocked and made to feel ashamed of the colour of their skin. She encouraged them to go, and supported them by hearing their stories of abuse. But then she gave them another experience to remember, one that they could carry with them through the lives—the experience of solidarity, of community, of music and song. It does not surprise me that seven out of eight of her children attended university and have gone on to lives of service.
Gloria's story gave me a glimpse of what it was like to grow up African-American in the southern United States. It also made me reflect on my own childhood, and the opportunities that have been available to me as a Canadian of European descent. I could not have been more fortunate. Respect, interest, gratitude
Stories offer perspective. They also awaken the moral imagination. Lynne Tirrell explores the role of imagination in her article “Storytelling and Moral Agency”: “Through telling and listening to stories, we learn to make subtle and not so subtle shifts in point of view, and these shifts are crucial to developing the sense of self and others so necessary to moral agency.” Stories take us out of ourselves and our limited point of view and offer us a glimpse of the world from the perspective of other beings. This experience is fundamental to awakening sympathy. In his Defence of Poetry , written in 1821, Percy Bysshe Shelley proposes that imagination itself is the teaching agent of moral doctrines. While reason (analysis) has its place, imagination (synthesis) is what allows us to perceive the order and harmony of the universe. Imagination recognizes similitudes; it recognizes relationships. By imagining what another feels, hopes and longs for we begin to act with the knowledge that we are both different and the same as others.
Sacred stories (the teaching stories and parables of Jesus, the birth stories of the Buddha and the account of his awakening, the great Indian epics, the Greek myths, and the origin stories of every culture) work in the same way—offering a perspective that is both a window looking outward and a mirror reflecting inward.
Simultaneously, through sacred story, we acknowledge the personal, particular details of human life and we get a taste of cyclical nature of existence, the round of birth and death. It is like standing underneath a starry sky, awed by the magnificence and the vastness of the universe, aware briefly of one's own insignificance. Then, a voice calls, a memory stirs of something that needs to be done, and we are back again in the familiar, the mundane, the practical details of a life. It might seem like we have forgotten the night sky, but actually we know it's there and that knowledge helps us bring a little more awe and wonder to the daily routine.
Inspiration. Perspective.
The last aspect of story I want to explore is story as mirror and guide.
I won't say a lot about this because time is running out and I would like to hear your thoughts.
In the opening chapter of David Copperfield the first-person narrator reflects on the role of literature in his early life. Isolated from other children he sought friendship, comfort and instruction in the books he found on his dead father's bookshelf. The books he read taught him many things, but principally they showed him his own place as a moral agent in his life. “Whether or not,” our narrator writes, “I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that role shall be played by someone else, these pages must show.” When I reflect on the stories I read as a child – books such as The Narnia Chronicles by C.S. Lewis, The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexander Dumas, and Anne of Green Gables by L. M. Montgomery – I realize that in the solitude of my reading experience, the characters, plots and world of these stories influenced my moral development as much, if not more, than my school life or home life. As I followed the adventures of the characters in these books I understood that they were making choices that led to specific results, affecting both an individual character and those around him. At a certain point, I also realized that through our actions we construct ourselves. Just as characters in novels learn from their mistakes and develop themselves as moral agents, so also did I have the potential to develop myself.
Stories reveal to us our own potential. By engaging our imagination, by awakening our sympathy, by demonstrating the choices that lie before us, stories inspire us to see ourselves as the heroes of our own lives.
Lynne Tirrell, “Storytelling and Moral Agency,” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 48: 119.
Charles Kaplan, editor, Criticism: The Major Statements , (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1986), 309-310.