What is your "story"? What story are you living?
The Power of Story
Suffering, death, life and hope.
People die or survive because of the stories they believe--their values and belief system. In every age. Still today. In many places. Suicide bombers.
Crusaders, Muslims, Protestants, Catholics, heretics and the orthodox who persecuted them all suffered and died because they were fighting for their One True God, whom they believe they owned. Their personal stories gave them the right to judge others as further from God than themselves with such certainty that others had to be insincere.
I know seven persons, including several bright and compassionate professionals who committed suicide. We can say their story did not include hope or ways to survive their set-backs, addictions and despair.
Victor Frankel survived the Nazi concentration camps because of this vision of his wife’s love. Eli Wiesel survived many such torture camps because of his care for his father and his stubborn refusal to surrender hope.
Most people are about as happy as they choose to be because they choose the stories they live by, and because time is a healer. Yet most of us do not have ways to cope with setbacks of diverse types, health, fortune, family, and career.
The Israelites, after being overrun by one empire after another survied by the magnificent stories their writers, prophets and poets created in the 7th century B.C. Their stories gave meaning to their identity and guidance for survival.
Many good people and many Christians and Jews and Muslims spent their energies helping others because their personal story or belief system summons that service.
I once asked many years ago, in the midst of my own Christian conversion to my Crucified Lord, of a Jew sitting next to me on a bus of Navy Reserve Chaplains, "How does a Jew deal with suffering?" His answer was remarkably simple: "Ahh. We suffer because we are Jews. To be a Jew is to suffer." And he smiled. That was 1961 and I have never forgotten that event.
Every story in the Bible we can say is about a vision of faith and hope, a way to be, to become, to live. On the other hand, for the Buddhist, simply to live, to be human, means to suffer. Suffering is an inevitable part of being human.
What is your "story"? What gives you hope and meaning in the midst of setbacks that every life will encounter?
To be Continued.
Paschal, Jan 6, 2007
Suffering, death, life and hope.
People die or survive because of the stories they believe--their values and belief system. In every age. Still today. In many places. Suicide bombers.
Crusaders, Muslims, Protestants, Catholics, heretics and the orthodox who persecuted them all suffered and died because they were fighting for their One True God, whom they believe they owned. Their personal stories gave them the right to judge others as further from God than themselves with such certainty that others had to be insincere.
I know seven persons, including several bright and compassionate professionals who committed suicide. We can say their story did not include hope or ways to survive their set-backs, addictions and despair.
Victor Frankel survived the Nazi concentration camps because of this vision of his wife’s love. Eli Wiesel survived many such torture camps because of his care for his father and his stubborn refusal to surrender hope.
Most people are about as happy as they choose to be because they choose the stories they live by, and because time is a healer. Yet most of us do not have ways to cope with setbacks of diverse types, health, fortune, family, and career.
The Israelites, after being overrun by one empire after another survied by the magnificent stories their writers, prophets and poets created in the 7th century B.C. Their stories gave meaning to their identity and guidance for survival.
Many good people and many Christians and Jews and Muslims spent their energies helping others because their personal story or belief system summons that service.
I once asked many years ago, in the midst of my own Christian conversion to my Crucified Lord, of a Jew sitting next to me on a bus of Navy Reserve Chaplains, "How does a Jew deal with suffering?" His answer was remarkably simple: "Ahh. We suffer because we are Jews. To be a Jew is to suffer." And he smiled. That was 1961 and I have never forgotten that event.
Every story in the Bible we can say is about a vision of faith and hope, a way to be, to become, to live. On the other hand, for the Buddhist, simply to live, to be human, means to suffer. Suffering is an inevitable part of being human.
What is your "story"? What gives you hope and meaning in the midst of setbacks that every life will encounter?
To be Continued.
Paschal, Jan 6, 2007
posted by Paschal Baute at 3:37 AM
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