Story and Art as Houses of Faith and Discovery, II
Stories don't dwell in us...we dwell in stories.
I want to flesh out the metaphor of story and art as houses of faith and discovery, seeing as how I never quite got there on Wednesday.
What I was addressing in my last post was the contrast between the narrative language of story and the propositional language of statement and command. We hear and engage story and statement/command differently. When Jesus was asked which is the greatest commandment, he replied propositionally, quoting the commands to love God and to love "your neighbor as yourself." In the continuing discussion, a teacher of the law asked what must be considered a reasonable follow-up question: "Who is my neighbor?"
There are, of course, propositional ways to answer this question. Jesus might have said, "Whoever crosses your path, regardless of social, racial, religious, or economic status." Or he could have simply said, "Everyone." Such statements express the propositional truth that stands behind what Jesus actually ended up saying, yet fall far short of expressing the affective truth of the matter.
So Jesus told a story, the familiar story we now call "The Good Samaritan."
Why?
We enter into stories. They create a "space" into which we are invited, as if they are great houses wherein lie all sorts of treasures. The story unfolds, we go deeper into the house, meeting the various inhabitants, experiencing their rooms, the art on their walls, the furniture they've chosen. And all along the way, we are reminded that we are something like them, that we've known people just like this, walked through dwellings just like this, though so different. And being reminded of our own lives, so diverse and unique, we attach ourselves to various elements of the story, seeing the action develop through the eyes of this character or that, depending on our alignments and loyalties. And if the stories are true, a dwelling built with integrity and honor, here and there, we stumble across mirrors where we pause and look, amazed to find both the world and ourselves revealed. Illuminated.
Somewhere along the way, I discover that the story have become my own, my house, my dwelling, and I am free to remain and explore. The story becomes a home, a place wherein my own story begins to be told. And then--wonder of wonders--I discover God living there as well. As I brood over my place in this home of story and God, a wonderful thing is revealed over time...me. The stories I dwell in, if they are His stories, slowly help me drop the old illusions, the old constructs, the false houses built by society, well meaning family members, and the demons that constantly tease me with beautiful lies.
Of course, at the end of the tour of some great house of story, we meet up again with propositions, and the impatient wonder why we bothered to take such a long way round to a truth that might have been said so simply.
The Holy Spirit and the Christ know human beings. They understand our psyches, our hearts, our minds, and the complex interplay between our various modes of being. Jesus understood the need for metaphor. How is anything to be understood except we lay it down next to our own felt experience for comparison? How could Jesus hope to help people understand this new notion of "the Kingdom of God" he came to announce? By metaphor, by story, and in the end, by action that would stand over time as both story and metaphor for those of us trying to grasp the "the Kingdom of God" some two thousand years removed from those Jesus days.
Tell me a story, and you invite me into your life with God.
...come on in...
9:24:34 AM
