The Stories We Tell

Once, a long time ago, I was talking to a complete stranger.  She stopped me and said, “You’re a writer, aren’t you.”  Taken aback, I asked how she knew.  “You tell stories.” she said.

The stories we tell are important.  They give us our history, our sense of where we belong in the world, a way of understanding what’s happening to us (a friend and I have a game of fitting whatever relationship drama we’re going through into the plot of a Jane Austen novel).  Paul Ricoeur, however, would say that there’s more to it than that.  The stories we tell determine who we are.  We are not completely transparent to ourselves.  As we grow and change we are always discovering new things about ourselves.  The human person is a mystery, a terra incognita that will always remain incompletely unexplored, even by the person herself.  We discover who we are, not only through the stories we tell about ourselves and our world, but by listening to the stories that others tell as well.  Our identity is defined by our community.  Although language can conceal as much as it reveals (Ricoeur calls this the “hermeneutics of suspicion”), it is only through the use of language that we ever come to know ourselves as “the worthy subject of a good life.”

The more I think about this, the more profoundly true it seems to me.  The story we fit ourselves into makes a deep difference in how we view ourselves and our world.  For example, the Christian believer sees Good Friday (today) as the climax of Salvation History, a profoundly meaningful day, full of hope in the midst of the deepest suffering.  For a person who does not buy that particular story, Good Friday is at best a curious societal anachronism, perhaps the occasion for an extra day off work, otherwise meaningless.  It’s all in which story you tell, which story you believe.

This is an especially interesting idea when I think of the blogging community.  Here are untold numbers of people, mostly unknown to one another in their everyday lives, who nonetheless choose to divulge details of their personal life, their deepest thoughts, or whatever other offerings they think someone might be interested in.  They tell stories, day in and day out.  The stories they choose to tell determine who they are in the online community.  And then others in the community comment, or leave trackbacks, or respond in some way.  The comments feature is almost more a part of the blogging experience than the blog itself!  And so we have not only the stories that one particular person tells, but the stories that others tell in response, or the stories that others tell about them.  From all these, we create a particular identity.

The interesting thing, theologically, for me is that all this communication is going on in a disembodied way.  At no point are all these communicators physically connected, or even witnesses to the other’s physical presence.  You can build a close friendship with someone you’ve never actually laid eyes on.  This can lead to a degree of unreality.  The stories you tell are entirely determined by what part(s) of yourself you are willing to reveal.  There is often no cross-referencing with a community that actually knows you and is part of your daily life.  Online reality can often become very unreal, dependent upon images and profiles that may have little or nothing to do with the actual person.  If it is our bodies that ultimately reveal the whole truth about who we are, what does this mean for a community that is entirely incorporeal?

Everyday Torture

Every two weeks my roommate goes to get tortured.  They take her to a back room, sit her in a chair, and start pumping poison into her veins.  The chemicals are so strong they burn her skin around the injection site.  She returns home to us, weak and inarticulate, unable to eat or breathe normally, and most cruel of all, unable to sleep normally.  She identifies with her torturers.  After all, they’re part of the medical profession, a profession she shares (we do not dare to use the past tense).  She asked them to do this.  This was her choice, the dreadful choice for life at any cost over death.  She wants to see her daughter graduate from college (four long years from now).  She wants a chance at seeing her grandchildren.  She has liver cancer, and she will do whatever she has to in order to survive.

My roommate is not alone.  There are many people who have gone through this, although most have not chosen it.  In Latin America repressive regimes snatch innocent men and women from the streets and subject them to torture.  They beat and rape them, inject them with poisonous chemicals, burn them and subject them to electric shocks.  They manipulate their emotions and weak psychological state, convincing them that this agony is their own choice or their fault, that the torturers have no choice but to do these things.  The torturers are not trying to save lives or cure cancer, but to shore up totalitarian political regimes.  Their victims do whatever they have to in order to survive.  They choose life at any cost over death.  Then they return to their families, weak and inarticulate, sometimes unable to eat or breathe normally, almost never able to sleep normally.  Their experience of pain has cut them off from normal human interaction, and the suspicion and fear of those around them increases their isolation.  While their bodily wounds may heal, their minds and souls possibly never will.

William Cavenaugh, in his book Torture and Eucharist (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 199 says that pain is the ultimate isolater.  We have words to describe degrees of pain (fierce, agonizing, excruciating) and words to describe kinds of pain (piercing, throbbing) but all of those words do not really capture what it is to feel that pain.  When pain becomes intense, the sufferer starts using metaphors (the headache was like an ice pick), then loses words entirely in inarticulate moans, groans, and sometimes howls.  The reality of pain is that it is eternally your own.  No matter how much sympathy or empathy another person might have, they can never really “feel your pain.”

So what are we to do in the face of so much anguish?  Is there any hope for us?  Can our world heal from so many mortal wounds?  Cavenaugh seems to say that it can.  The answer is found in the title of his book: Torture and Eucharist.  When we go to take part in the Lord’s supper, we are not just celebrating a liturgy.  We are making ourselves again, still, part of the Body of Christ.  We are no longer fragmented, but one with those around us and with all those who partake in this sacrament throughout the world and throughout time.  My roommate is not alone in her pain, but joined with us and with her fellow sufferers here and around the world.  Through the grace of the Eucharist, she receives the courage to go on, to return to the hospital one more time, to climb out of bed one more morning.  Through the Eucharist I receive the grace to continue to love her.  Through His stripes, we are healed.  This is our hope, both for ourselves, and for our world: that though His stripes, we all will be healed.

Confessions of a Drama Queen

I tend to have a rather dramatic life.  I do interesting and unusual things.  I have interesting friends.  I have adventures on a regular basis.  In the last year I went dancing at least twice a week every week, made a feature length film (which I co-wrote and was featured in) and a short film, saw my poetry published in a real book for sale in real bookstores, got my butt licked by an overeager calf, had my car catch on fire (while driving it!), made some lifelong friends and said good-bye to others, discovered my vocation, and found out that my roommate has liver cancer.  That’s just the highlights (and not even all of them).

The adventurous nature of my life also tends to lean towards Drama.  I have always been rather conflicted about this.  Having a dramatic life seemed something like a moral failing or a character defect.  If I were only holier, healthier, saner, more organized, then my life would calm down. It would be more boring, but I thought that it would be worth it.  To my surprise (rather like when I stopped flirting and discovered that I got more attention from guys, not less), as I learned to refuse to generate Drama, to allow life to be what it is without trying to make it any more or less than reality, the drama did not abate.  Instead, the character changed, from interior angst over real or perceived situations (oh, the unrequited crush!) to the need to respond to exterior situations (my roommate has liver cancer, this guy keeps paying attention to me, he won’t go away, I’m not sure that I want him to, and meanwhile he keeps doing these things that impact me).  I ran into a dilema.  How do I live a dramatic life if Drama is a kind of character defect?

Recently I came to a realization that no matter how much I might try to stifle the drama, it’s not going to go away.  This is who I am, my reality.  The dramatic character of my life is part of being fully the person that God created me to be.  As long as I am not creating the drama, I can embrace it as part of God’s will for my everyday life.  There is nothing inherently virtuous about living a boring life.

Soon after reaching this conclusion, I was introduced to Hans Urs von Balthasar’s concept of Theo-drama, his answer to the age old question of predestination versus free will (which I will not go into here).  He offers the metaphor of the stage to model how God’s omnipotence intersects with grace and our personal choices.  He says that it is as if we are all actors performing a play which is written, directed, and produced (Divine Providence) by God.  In this play we are given lines to speak and specific actions to perform, whispered to us moment by moment by the Holy Spirit, the Divine Prompter.  The audience we are performing for is God Himself, and He acts along with us in the person of Jesus Christ.  Each of us has the choice of how we are going to perform our roles.  We must choose whether or not we will speak the lines and perform the actions given us, and how we will perform them.  Will it be grudgingly, or with our whole hearts?  What interpretation will we give our role?  How much will we become the role given us?  The saints, he says, “are the authentic interpreter of theo-drama.  Their knowledge, lived out in dramatic existence, must be regarded as setting a standard of interpretation…” (Theo-Drama Book 2, p.14, quoted in Pattern of Redemption by Edward T. Oakes, p. 225).

In reflecting on this, I began to see a new way of looking at my dramatic life.  As I live the life that God has given me, responding to the situations He has placed me in and the relationships He has called me to, I am performing my part to the best of my ability.  By embracing this reality I am really embracing God’s will for me, the role He has given me to act out for His glory.  If I am constantly responding to the Holy Spirit as He prompts me in my part, my life can be, not Drama, but Theo-Drama.  May He enjoy the performance.