Sunday July 16, 2017
What Stories Do to Us
Katty now knows the day and the place where part of her ceased to live. It was fifteen years ago when she was five years old. She was in her bedroom when, in the living room outside, her parents were berating her older sister Marivic because she got only a passing grade in three subjects. Why was Marivic not like Tonette, her older sister, who was their pride always getting the first honor in her class? They shouted, "Maybe you are not our child at all!" her father had said. And her mother added, "That's right, maybe you got switched with someone else's baby in the hospital after you were born!" Katty could not understand why her parents rejected the loving and warm Marivic in favor of the studious cold hearted Tonette. In fact, she felt closer to Marivic, who loved her and hugged her, than she did to either of her parents who seemed to be always at work or out of town on business trips. The little five year old Katty became convinced that if Marivic was a mistake she was the same mistake. If Marivic was rejected, no good, she too was rejected - no good.
There is a common assumption that human beings make or create stories. Actually, the opposite is true; it is stories that create us. It is the story of the imagined hospital switching of babies and the rejection it implied that created Katty. More accurately in this case, it desecrated or dis-created her into a fearful twenty year old who was only half living because of her inner emptiness.
Stories can CREATE, DESECRATE OR RE-CREATE us. They do this in the secular and in the religious world. A leader about whom there is a great story can inspire a nation. A story that glorifies graft and corruption can stymie all efforts at reform. In the religious world we are faced with mystery. Mystery is by definition inexpressible but through story we can get glimpses of it. Religious myth stories create a world view which enable people to give meaning to their lives.
Stories also create silence. The quality of our silence will depend on the story or myth or tradition out of which we enter the silence. This is why the late Dom Bede Griffith used to say that it is very dangerous to meditate without a tradition. When the other Benedictine, Dom John Main, invites us into the silence of meditation he is doing so out of the story that says "he who created the universe lives in our hearts and in silence is loving to all." It is the story that says each of us are temples wherein the Holy Spirit is ever praying "Abba, Father." John Main always kept in touch with that story by being immersed in the scriptures himself and reading, especially from the writings of St Paul, at the end of each of his talks.
When the ordinary Filipino goes into silence he or she may find something that has been made by other stories. They may be religious stories in which devils and angels predominate. They could also be stories of capricious spirits, the "not like us," who need to be courted and placated because they seek vengeance for every petty fault.
To be a Christian is to be created by the story the Bible tells us. Its myths, the Genesis creation story for example, create in us a way of seeing the world. In this world everything comes from God, is made good. It affirms that human beings are the pinnacle of all and that other things are for their responsible use. In this simple story we find the basis of ecumenism, human rights, racial and sexual equality to name but a few of the implied affirmations of human dignity.
But there are other creating stories. Obviously, the parents of Katty were made by a story that said that hard work and money were the top priority. It was a story in which they saw their children, not to be loved for their own sakes, but as extensions of themselves who were to be loved only if they brought reflected glory to their parents.
In today's Gospel we have the allegorical story of the sower who went out to sow the seed. The seed is the Word, the story of God. Let us look at this story in terms of the possibilities of what it could do for Katty's parents.
"Some seeds fell on the edge of the path, and the birds came and ate them up." In this scenario the God Story is for the birds! The couple are so hardened into their other story that the Word cannot penetrate it. Religion is pie in the sky.
"Others fell on patches of rock where they found little soil and sprang up straight away, because there was no depth of earth; but as soon as the sun came up they were scorched and, not having any roots, they withered away." In this case the couple heard the Word and saw that it had a value but as they were rooted in their former story no change was able to take place.
"Others fell among thorns and the thorns grew up and choked them." In this scenario, the couple appreciate their Christian faith. At first they fulfill the practices of their Church. They may even join Marriage Encounter or some other religious activities. But these do not last as they are crowded out of their schedules by their material concerns which are the priority story.
"Others fell on rich soil and produced their crops, some a hundred-fold, some sixty, some thirty." In this case the couple were able to hear the recreating stories. They were able to hear especially the parables which subvert our ordinary worldly values and ways of looking at things. They were able to hear of Jesus rejecting the temptations to possessions, prestige and power. They were able to read of the father of the prodigal son whose attitude was always 100% loving no matter how the child performed. These stories were brought into prayerful reflection. Better still, they were brought into silence which according to Pastores Dabo Vobis is "the atmosphere vital for perceiving God's presence and for allowing one's self to be won over by it." As they become people re-created by another story they will also become parents of a different kind.
