I’m a believer in Stories. I know that Stories convey important ideas that hold powerful meaning in our lives.
The Storyteller in the Arabian Knights says:
People need stories more than bread itself, they tell us how to live, and why.
Can anyone doubt the power of stories? The diverse and rich religious traditions to which we, as people, are heirs are all stories. Powerful stories of: good and evil, virtue and vice, vengeance, justice, mercy, compassion, and grace.
These are the great stories. Powerful God stories, larger than life, that have shaped our world.
But there are lesser stories and they too are important: Folk Stories that bare our societies mores and norms. They may seem innocent, frivolous, even humorous, but they too have power – their moral lessons are received by us, even though we may be unaware of it.
There are also the small stories. The stories that we read to our children. They can be very important in shaping our children’s lives.
Stories present a parade of images and ideas. The ideas, which underlie the stories, which inform them, can become personally meaningful and real. Stories that carry meaning are capable of transcending the limits of mere words. They remove us from ourselves, particularly when they are spoken out loud. Listening to the story, watching the storyteller, held by their words, hearing words form… ideas enter our thoughts… they ring, and ring… and gradually, sometimes, they ring true.
When internalized, ideas from stories are incorporated into our worldviews, the models of reality by which we interpret our experience. Our sense of truth is filled with ideas to which we are heir. They lurk within our concepts of our selves.
But does this have any relevance today? Are stories dead? Have they been replaced by the vacuous drivel of television and movies? Are the messages of today’s stories: To consume more? To acquire the latest stuff? To be impossibly thin and attractive? To only care about our selves?
I believe that we have a choice. We can choose to limit our exposure to the vacuous drivel and to critically examine our cultural messages and our values. We can create our own centers of power and value, our communities of shared meaning.
Stories can help us do this.
In the Arabian Knights, Sheherazade tells stories all night long to her husband, the king, to distract him from executing her at dawn. After sunrise each morning, she ends at a point of suspense so that the storytelling will resume again the next evening. Her stories save her life while the power contained in the messages of her stories gradually restores the king’s sanity. At the end of Arabian Knights, Sheherazade recounts what the storyteller in the bazaar told her. She says:
The storyteller always said, “Stories can save us.” I guess what he meant was, “They can save us… if we use our imagination.”
Much of the conflict in the world may be viewed as being caused by people with different stories.
People with different backgrounds and perspectives interpret history and events to form powerful cultural concepts that unite groups internally. These same stories can create great divides between groups causing conflict and strife.
I was drawn to a particularly beautiful story after the September 11th terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The vision of America as a beacon of Freedom and Democracy.
It was brought to mind by our un-elected President George Bush when he explained the terrorist attacks as a reaction against America’s Freedom and Democracy… he said, “They just can’t stand our Freedom and Democracy.”
I fear that others have a different story. One in which America is not seen as the promoter of Freedom and Democracy, often with good reason.
The irony of President Bush talking about Democracy hasn’t escaped me, yet for me, the story, the myth, the vision of America as a beacon of Freedom and Democracy is compelling.
This vision is powerful. Since its inception America has continually struggled to recreate itself to conform to this image of Freedom and Democracy. This struggle is ongoing. It has moved forward with mistakes and revisions, digressions and tragic errors, yet from my perspective, it has retained its purpose and its beauty.
To preserve this vision I am drawn to participate in this process of recreation. My particular concern is that America change to see others in the world as equally deserving, equally able to struggle for Freedom and Democracy in their lives. Too often America has used others as a means to support our experience of Freedom and Democracy.
I am afraid of an America that looses its vision of Freedom and Democracy. I am afraid of an America that is willing to go to war for cheap gas, corporate interests and continued world domination.
Our story of Freedom and Democracy cannot be maintained at the expense of others. We cannot continue lives of excess and waste while others go without.
For me this is the challenge of the 21st Century. To live our story of Freedom and Democracy and to help others help themselves.
Posted by Randy Best on September 17, 2003