Over at Making Chutney readers are asked what they think of the Christian story. It caught my imagination. I even threw in about two cents worth of observation, if not actually on point.
It’s a worthy question, no doubt. It seems to me there’s a lot of thought going into “story” as a spiritual expression.
I think looking at stories can be valuable. I suspect we in fact live and breathe and have our being within stories. I’m a believer in the assertion the human is the metaphor bearing animal and stories are the currency of metaphor. For that reason I’m sure any questions of how we engage one story and reject another can have significance.
But I also feel that the real deal, what we’re really about in our quest for meaning and direction in our lives has only a limited connection to these stories, whether they’re about dying/rising gods or great quests in mysterious lands or whatever strikes the imagination and inspires the spirit. Such stories at their best, I believe, can help us on our way. They are, again, at their best, pointers for us.
But that’s all they are. Frankly, the many stories of spirit of any and all traditions from Christianity to Buddhism aren’t even the fabled metaphorical raft on which we can cross that metaphorical deep ocean to that other metaphor the wondrous farther shore. They only get us to the near shore and if we’re lucky point to some of the materials out of which we can weave our raft.
Ultimately our deepest experience, the opening of our hearts and our eyes is something that happens when we let go of every comfort, every story. And I’m pretty sure it’s every story from how mean or generous my parents were to how unworthy or worthy I am, to the loving god or the pernicious fates. At some point we need to let go if we hope to achieve our liberation.
My old Zen teacher once observed how there’s nothing so dangerous as a good idea. Read a good story. There’s nothing so dangerous as a good story. At least if we mistake it for the goal.
Two more cents.
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