Draft…not for release…

 

Lovers: Light/Dark, Open/Closed & Daily reminders of life cycles

Those who might say they know me are unlikely to call me “impetuous,” but surprisingly (especially to me) on several occasions I have jumped in (or out of, over, around, somehow following the invitation: “take-a your chance”). So when my blog-composer-tool puts up “Publish now?…Are you sure?” or whatever it says, I’ll tap it “ok” half-knowing this is a draft that expects revision, maybe deletion. 

     But haven’t we learned to use the term “deleted” paradoxically? oxymoronically? It’s a bit inhibiting to think that every word said (to say nothing of actions done) has been stored somewhere, and possibly in some dim corner of the subconscious already where the fear of such return haunts us. [Note: foreshadowing here. Watch for subsequent “descent/return motif.]  Am I not even warned in the Bible that each fleeting thought might persist to Judgment Day. Perhaps it’s best just not to go there—as if there’s choice. Anyway, this post is published “Draft”… 

And with all that disclaimer, I still see the ghostly figure Kierkegaard approaching with the cartoon bubble overhead: “Despair.” 

Now then, like comfort for a child let’s do story time.

A Tale Told By…   A friend invited me to put my spin in re-telling a love story that in one version begins:  

He came into her life first, and she fell hard. They’d meet on rooftops, where he kissed her like time had stopped and held her like she was everything. She felt safe, even though deep down, he never promised anything. She had been with many before, always the one to leave tired of love that never lasted. But with him, it felt different. Her soul craved the closeness, even if her heart already knew the truth.

So here goes: Once upon a time…   Oops. Hold on. 

     First, a note on my process of composing story. We’ll have to go way back, about 35 years, to when I first experienced narrative discourse enacted by Gioia Timpanelli, who had just been introduced at the Great Mother Conference by Robert Bly as “the greatest storyteller in the country.” Through the next decade or so I’m listening to Gioia, transcribing audiotapes of her tellings, and beginning to try it myself. I was most taken by what I call “asides” in which a different voice or persona comes in, interrupting the narrative flow. I found the asides functioned like a brief commentary that was revealed to the storyteller in the moment of performance as something that was needed for me (and, of course, at times for someone else) in order to get to the Story. The aside somehow mediated the archetypal/personal (similar to the transcendent/immanent, the Self/self), and this allowed access for individual assimilations which might happen or not and could vary according to the readiness of a person for self-development, consciousness, and/or individuation. 

     Whew! That’s a condensation of too much, but it’s been elaborated in previous blogs (especially between Jan 2011 and 2016). In short, this model was the inspiration for my design and implementation of the Good Stories course that culminated my academic career and that often found expression in this blog. Storytelling done in this manner ventures toward an adaptation of Scheherazade’s healing the King through the Thousand and One Nights.

     So, if I’m to re-tell the story noted above, I approach it like a fairy tale 

using guidance from Goia’s model and from theorists such as Marie-Louise von Franz (e.g. The Interpretation of Fairy Tales. Boston: Shambhala, 1970).  I might consider the woman in the story as She-Who-Loves. Perhaps this “name” derives from looking for an equal half to the Guiding mantra: “he who knows himself knows his Lord.” The best-case for the would-be lover to liaise with She-Who-Loves looks to be the Archetypal Beloved. Possibly in this rendition, the character progression of Mr. Right might first adapt from the Genesis paradise account in which Adam and the serpent are entwined. 

     This brings the Beauty and Beast stories to mind, especially Psyche and Eros which is drawn from Lucius Apuleius (cf Erich Neumann’s Amor and Psyche), and further developed through C.S. Lewis (Till We Have Faces) as well as other wonderful variations. In addition to these (although I haven’t developed my own blend of it) I’d at least want to source the Majnun/Layla tale for enrichment. Especially of interest in that material are the “madness” of Majnun and the lovers’ capacity to live with longing rather than demanding gratification.

     She-Who-Loves enters with Mr. Right. Depending on the age and development of the audience, he appears as the high-school hunk (or naughty boy); but for a more advanced audience, he may be sophisticated and materialistic. Still more “advanced,” the apparent “beloved” could well be a spiritual teacher, a caring mentor, a best-friend’s spouse… The options are abundant. 

     Their meetings on roof tops suggest a heavenly setting for their romance. Yes? We might draw on personal experience and have love strike at a conference where personal/social ideals are the focus. Wouldn’t an adventure involving natural horsemanship be lovely! Another attractive setting would feature the gathering of friends who search for the spiritual pathway, the better environment, the healing of political, religious, or whatever divides us. 

     I don’t mean to be cynical. That’s just the way love goes as far as I can tell. Making/telling the story offers a wonderful opportunity to turn off the Blame/Shame game because those censors kill life. Let the story go through the theatre curtain and play for a time. 

     For advancing plot, I’m drawn into the descent/return motif where character develops through dark forces more than rosy light. Perhaps we’ll even begin with the Wedding itself! What about opening with a lush lovely wedding and then She Who Loves wakes from her dream. 

    The telling might include a recitation of lines from “The marriage of true minds” or from some contemporary song or ancient psalm. It’s a love-story and surely a most significant Face of God is Love with the Creation, one two three: one, creation of human; two, separation of man/woman; and three, the pairing held in Mystery. Yes, when the young woman takes a lover, the deep self overflows—or as the myths tell it: Cupid’s arrow quickens the pulse and the cautionary brain falls into trance…

     What then?  Yes, soon enough the inevitable broken heart falls from the mountain top—from heaven? Ecstasy seldom strays far from its other side—despair. Kierkegaard says despair IS. It’s unavoidable, especially if a person is to gain consciousness. And yet, not total tragedy. For (according to SK) only despair allows the advent of Grace. Perhaps Kierkegaard doesn’t say it that way (I’m only midway through a first reading of the combined Fear and Trembling/Sickness unto Death), so I recommend checking it out.

     Obviously, I’m caught in this Orpheus theme (Persephone, if you wish) which plots 

1) an opening (Kenosis or self-emptying), 

2) then descent (e.g., through the vent to the Underworld that took Psyche), 

3) x, 

4) return.  

1 The beginning, AKA Genesis 1, (anticipate the serpent). Once there were two lovers. The wedding was grand. Just fill in your fantasy. Options: a) Elopement if you prefer. b) Second or third marriage with previous children attending. c) What else comes to mind…

It seems to me marriage (of true minds and with capacity to LOVE) takes several rehearsals or attempts. So I’m tempted to begin this story with characters capable of engaging more substantial dragons (like the death of God or living with simplicity and truth-telling…and death…hmm, did I already say that?).

2 The middle of the story features plot and related character development and thus involves internal/external monsters, I’d draw on my favorite myths. For example, The Weddynge of Sir Gawen and Dame Ragnell. 

     For another direction within the descent/return motif, as already noted, I love the variants of Psyche and Eros. 

      In the Weddynge option, Ragnell offers a chance to play into magical transformation, trying to bridge the once-upon-a-time with the contemporary as we reach toward relationships that enact fealty, chivalry, beauty, sacrifice, and sovereignty. Yet, while Weddyng attracts, perhaps the story is too susceptible to perpetuating the worship of superficial beauty and of power-over. 

     Although not immediately evident, the significant character development in the Ragnell story has to take place in the male/masculine, portrayed by Gawaine. While often perceived as “pure” due to the Grail connections and as a most accomplished knight as developed in the Arthurian corpus, Gawaine still needs transformation into the radical performance of loyalty and love that includes (gasp) woman! As revealed 2000 years ago, we must remove the pain-giving impurity from our own eyes. Abundant material to build this part of the story is available in Robert Bly’s writings (e.g., Iron John, Maiden King co-authored with Marion Woodman) and many others, including especially those giving attention to how the man needs to develop the feminine. 

     As well as developing the “heroic,” maturity and spiritual progression in men and women depends on suffering, dealing with despair, and building capacity for co-participation in the revelation of continuous mystery. What are possibilities for sustaining community in space/time beyond but known in “now.” [I think this is the theme of my next blog.} How do we find and maintain the “realm of God” that’s already happening and not just in the hope for an after-life. We have vocabulary for this that would benefit from story, for example “re-deem” as imagine anew by recovering an inheritance and “atonement” which can be storied through the telling of marriage and community reaching into “at-one-ment.”

3 x

     X stands for the Unknown (and likely feels like hell or at least a dark dungeon).  X also signifies multiple possibilities, and this is necessary to fit the Individual whose essential attribute is the Unique. But our Life Design, best I can tell, forces a dialectic in which the absolutely personal gets played by the transcendent (as close to the capital T as we can get). So we each have to compose that part individually which means “live it” (for suggestions, read Kierkegaard, my current choice; Iris Murdoch—an old favorite; death-of-God theologians, eg Altizer); and the one/s that provide that telling resonance for your journey. So I recommend you make your own sense of “why X.” It’s life, as I find it and suppose I wouldn’t have it otherwise. 

4 return

The ending? The story draft I’m working from left off with this line: “He moved on but she still didn't , remained with her trauma” [no period]. 

     While not exactly “happily ever after,” neither is life and often not narrative either. I’m expecting any day now to receive a book order: Detecting Texts: The Metaphysical Detective Story from Poe to Postmodernism. Tantalizing title, yes? The blurb advertises:

Although readers of detective fiction ordinarily expect to learn the mystery's solution at the end, there is another kind of detective story—the history of which encompasses writers as diverse as Poe, Borges, Robbe-Grillet, Auster, and Stephen King—that ends with a question rather than an answer. The detective not only fails to solve the crime, but also confronts insoluble mysteries of interpretation and identity. As the contributors to Detecting Texts contend, such stories belong to a distinct genre, the "metaphysical detective story," in which the detective hero's inability to interpret the mystery inevitably casts doubt on the reader's similar attempt to make sense of the text and the world.

Can hardly wait. Because, yes, life remains a mystery. What is love anyway? To say nothing of God—which may be the same question after all. 

So we might want a closing other than the word “trauma,” and I’m leaning toward “…” the open-ended ellipsis. My middle/muddle-of-last-night’s “meditation” went thus:

Perhaps the story resolution resides in no resolution, in surrender of illusion. The image of paradise imprisons. Ecstasy kills reality. Idols of materialism, power, superiority…separate us from God and from each other, now as then. All the great qualities—truth, justice, peace, love…— have demons stuck to them. God won’t be bought or sold to, neither owned nor lost. And here be Stopping Place. 

   My wandering mind brings up SK where he hesitated to publish material that he felt was getting preachy (“edifying discourse” vs “dialectical lyric”}. See Walter Lowrie’s Introduction in the combined volume mentioned above. 

This meditation closed with the suggestion for following the ellipsis with a phrase and another ellipsis: … our work/play never-done… 

   

Quality of light. Near dusk…dawn…

 

Revelation

Sunrise today

    Have you ever felt the infidelity of “I know exactly how you feel”? The attempted comfort uttered by yourself to a dear friend or by someone to you, almost always spoken with good intention, nevertheless betrays the unique essence of profound, inarticulable experience. The holy inhabits silence. “No two sufferings are the same” emphasizes Stanley Hauerwas, in Naming the Silences: God, Medicine, and the Problem of Suffering (p. 3). Truth approximates instead in “the concrete particular”, 

and “knowledge, in the case of God, requires a lifelong transformation of the self” (p.10 & p.113 in Hauerwas' Theologian’s Memoir, Hannah’s Child).

Often the dawn revelation attempts to unveil the truth: Never the same place. The second hand ticks: a new creation alongside dying. Even side by side in the same instant, no two people share complete identity. Any photo taken, any image of reality cannot replicate another. In the silence, inarticulate, a person may approach the Divine. 

And yet, endowed with speech, especially in story, the transforming self may be shared. And through image/imagination.

Sunrise one week ago

Perfect Fairy Tale

Social Media, Spinning Lies, & Whirling Dervishes

droplets of light

“Stories move like whirling dervishes,” Elif Shafak concludes her magnificent TED Global 2010 talk*, “drawing circles beyond circles. They connect all humanity.” Shafak credits her grandmother (clearly the model for her powerful character, Auntie Banu, in The Bastard of Istanbul) for impressing on her the power of circles: “If you want to destroy something in this life, be it an acne, a blemish, or the human soul, all you have to do is surround it with thick walls. It will dry up inside.”  In the novel, Shafak compellingly moves us into compassion for persons who are caught in the walls of lies with their layers of distortions and destructions. 

The stories we tell, to others as well as to ourselves, believing them or not, must be clean if we are to avail ourselves of their healing properties instead of abandoning them to act as destructive forces. Our best stories tell the truth; their circles draw our imagination toward advancing consciousness and civilization.  But, of course, stories can also spread lies; and then, as Shafak warns, we risk damage to the soul. Lying separates oneself from the inner essence and, since they are so interconnected, also from one’s life-affirming work outside in the world. Participating in lies takes so many forms: fake news, denials, avoidances, screens, cover-ups, escapes, absorption in past or future, addictions, on and on.

Participating in social media presents perhaps the latest battleground involving this manipulation of reality. According to recent reports, in the 2016 presidential campaign, a third of the U.S. population likely received Russian-backed fake news through Facebook.

“Underscoring how widely content on the social media platform can spread, Facebook says in the testimony that while some 29 million Americans directly received material from 80,000 posts by 120 fake Russian-backed pages in their own news feeds, those posts were “shared, liked and followed by people on Facebook, and, as a result, three times more people may have been exposed to a story that originated from the Russian operation.”

Although more guarded in use, I continue actively viewing and posting on Facebook and to a lesser extent in Twitter. As anything that is powerful, social media can be used negatively as well as positively.  Rather than increasing isolation, I want to work toward global citizenship and to sustain world-wide friendships. My status updates on FB usually feature photos that witness beauty in the natural world; my camera’s on alert for views that glimpse, that invite wondering about other worlds, possibly that even guide us in composing our lives with more harmony and balance. Milan Kundera writes in The Unbearable Lightness of Being:

“Guided by his sense of beauty, an individual transforms a fortuitous occurrence into a motif, which then assumes a permanent place in the composition of the individual’s life. . . Without realizing it, the individual composes his life according to the laws of beauty even in times of greatest distress.” (p. 52)

With or without social media, we are individually at high risk for closeting ourselves in mindsets vulnerable to diseased thinking and feeling. As with physical health, early detection of infection is crucial. I believe that a vital step comes in sharpening the sense of the inauthentic. The most precious early-warning system lives in the soul, not in any news media, not even in friendship nor family nor religion. All those are very important; but because each individual has unique wiring to/from the Source, the ultimate test for truth comes within. To know oneself is to know one’s Lord.  And to do that we have to polish the mirror of the heart. Rumi teaches this over and over. I’m now reading in Book 4 of the Mathnawi, around lines 2881-2914. Here are some selections from Nicholson’s translation:

Does any painter paint [the beauty of the picture] for the sake of the picture itself, without hope of conferring benefits… from his picture (arises) the joy of children and the remembering of departed friends of their friends///the external form is for the sake of the unseen form; and that took shape for the sake of another unseen (form)./// even so (proceed), having perceived reasons within reasons, one after the other, in order thaty you may arrive… step by step…///those insights that are not frozen (dense and dull) are nothing if not piercing and veil-rending. He (such a one) sees with his own eye at the present moment that which will come to pass in ten years. /// Every one, according to the measure of his spiritual enlightenment, sees the things unseen in proportion to the polishing (of the heart’s mirror).///God alone is the giver of aspiration…God’s assignment of a particular lot to any one does not hinder (him from exercising) consent and will and choice. 

I believe we find much value in making our own versions of such texts. Here’s my work/play with the above:

When enthused by the beauty of the source, does any true artist intentionally compose primarily for the sake of the superficial layer while discarding the everflowing transcendent rays of light? The higher aim sights toward the joy of children and remembrance of love’s departures. Vision and memory track and trail the Unseen, reason unto Reason, living with abandon step by step. Each movement in trust rends another veil, dependent on dedicated polishing of the heart’s mirror.

*Note: Shafak is also featured in TED Global 2017.

Truth-Telling

Maybe fifteen years ago, the Thoroughbred that was teaching me to ride better was called the Truth-Teller. He kept leaning in; and while I fussed that my cues were saying to stay out on that imaginary perfect circle, the coach insisted the horse was doing exactly what I was telling him to do. Many times later, around and over again through a decade of riding, my inner horsepower now makes a clearer, more accurate reading on our balance, more aware of degrees of pressure, stillness, softness, and tilt, as well as clearing our mental and emotional states. All this makes for telling the truth.

Sometimes with just a glimpse of a person in a position of leadership, an extremely unbalanced, hypocritical condition jumps out, glaringly obvious. I wonder how others fail to notice it. How can so many persons support someone who repeatedly imperils the future of their children? Recognizing the vital role played by compassion, I’m trying to remember my experience when I just didn’t get what the Truth-Teller was making abundantly clear. 

The gift of discerning truth and the continued development of moral sense depend on dedicated commitment to peace, justice, and love. Also, the path includes some difficult aspects. Suffering, tolerance of uncertainty, and trust in a higher power must play a crucial role in becoming truth-tellers. Our world shows so much failure to face the truth: denial of addiction, cheating, false labeling, staying on the surface of skin color instead of moving deeper to know love, listening to praise instead of heeding the inner divine, on and on. What will it take to make a commitment to truth?

Sometimes, “white” lies are called “telling stories,” meaning the person is fibbing or making something up for deceptive purposes or for fun. Yes, it’s wise to recognize that all stories are not good stories. And we should know that not just any person can tell a good story, in both senses: 1) discerning truth from lies and 2) composing an embodied truth-narrative, telling a moral tale. 

But we are “wired” for story. As Alasdair MacIntyre puts it in After Virtue, “man is in his actions and practice, as well as in his fictions, essentially a story-telling animal. He is not essentially, but becomes through his history, a teller of stories that aspire to truth” (p. 216). The moral dimension of the history we compose can be best understood, many of us believe, as a Narrative Covenant (e.g., David Damrosch; also see the volumes on hermeneutic phenomenology as well as archetypal psychology).

Genesis 1 says we are made in God’s own image. I believe in the divine gift; some call it genius. A gift needs to be nurtured. Moral sense can be tended by good stories.

To Tell the Truth

To telI the truth: that’s the essence of Good Stories. The phrase marvelously carries a double meaning [see Note 1 below] that swirls into one—but only by sincere seeking, by grace, and in the fleeting moment of translation. In addition to the obvious expressive act, telling can mean discernment; for example, “I can tell how a story is true.” And most magnificently, truth is told and discerned in the embodied life. Increasingly, when I really want to know whether to believe something or someone, the key comes through integrity. It’s the old acid test of walking the talk.

In addition to the goal of Good Stories, to-tell-the-truth focuses the mission of schooling, of religion, of home and office. And as writ across the face of America, we have a long path ahead because we’re finding ourselves far too much mired in “fake news,” intentional distortions, and downright lying. 

Of course, to tell the truth pushes us to the edge of capacity. It’s a wonder that a single word is spoken in court. If one is seriously attentive to the injunction to “tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth,” who can presume to such knowledge? Especially if the book of Job has been taken to heart, we must admit our inability to know at a deep level that plumbs into human suffering and into the nature of justice.

And yet there resides at the heart of human nature, sometimes in hiding, the need to know. The pathway toward truth is perilous, especially in the shadows from the tower of ego-inflated presumption; but equally, if not more, in the chasms of despair, fearful of reaching enough light to live by. Regarding the former, most anyone who has spent much time near the temples of religion or in the ivy halls of academia can testify to the arrogant and oppressive crusades by persons who act and proselytize as if they possess THE truth. Margaret Atwood and many others have long tried to caution us: "The true story is vicious / and multiple and untrue…”

How easy, then, to collapse into despair after colliding with persons unworthily holding positions of authority who manipulate, lie, and corrupt. The illusion of making and accepting fake-news must be dispelled in order to know that becoming great (again?) cannot be approached until persons live out the contrite confession that goodness comes before greatness and that goodness depends upon sacrificing the oppressive ego, the intolerant ambition, and the arrogance of imposing THE truth.  

It’s in good stories that the capacity to tell the truth is forged. As noted in recent posts, Martin Buber and Karen Armstrong urge us to re-see the stories of the Bible in order to gain discernment, to receive continuing revelation, as well as life-affirming insight. Even the beginning of Genesis can be re-seen and understood in a liberating way. Perhaps the two contradictory creation stories invite humans to search for continuing revelation in addition to prescriptions to live by.

Given all the troubles, why do we strive for the truth? For many of us, a driving force is expressed in the line: “you will know the truth and the truth will set you free!” Sometimes a familiar phrase opens up through a newer translation as when Jesus was telling those who “had claimed to believe in him. ‘If you stick with this, living out what I tell you, you are my disciples for sure. Then you will experience for yourselves the truth, and the truth will free you’ ” (Jn 8:31-32, The Message, 1993, NavPres).

Should we then conclude that if we do not know the truth, we remain in captivity? The answer appears to be “Yes, but...” If we do not strive toward the light, we remain in darkness; and although freedom might look like the obvious choice, there’s a big reason why persons might not choose to move toward knowing. Remember the saying: Ignorance is bliss? Knowledge carries with it the responsibility to act. As phrased in James:

As it is, you are full of your grandiose selves. All such vaunting self-importance is evil. In fact, if you know the right thing to do and don’t do it, that, for you, is evil. (The Message, 1993, NavPress). 

The consequences of failing to live into the light saturate the stories from the Bible, the message of the Qur’an, and perhaps define any sacred text.  For example, Muhammad Asad’s translation and commentary, The Message of the Qur’an, features a phrase “give the lie.” This wording and the referenced activity connects with “deny the truth.” Asad elaborates on this in his notes to Surah 74 (see especially Note 4 on p. 1229).

After elaborating the tragic consequences of the patriarchs in Genesis, Karen Armstrong concludes with the poignant truth about knowing:

But the inescapable message of Genesis is that blessing and enlightenment are not achieved by acquiring facts and believing doctrines. Genesis gives us, as we have seen, no coherent theology but seems to frustrate our desire for clarity at every turn. Instead, knowledge means self-knowledge and an understanding of the mystery of our own being. We also have to recognize the sacred mystery of our fellow men and women. . .Other human beings remain as opaque and mysterious as God—indeed, they can reveal to us the essential mystery and otherness of the sacred (pp. 118-119, In the Beginning).

To tell the truth depends on knowing truth [duh], especially in the engagement with its mysterious sacred side. Our susceptibility to fake-news comes, I believe, in the limited range of knowing. How much of love can be known by only reading romances? As the varied tales of beauty and beast invite us to see, it’s so easy to skim along on a surface level as if that’s all there is. The treasure of knowing, the revelation of and transformation into real beauty, comes through the crucible of personal experience. Book learning, like news reports, has much value but the refined gold gets tempered in the risky spaces of life, especially where passion leads.

Every seeker of truth needs a practice of truth-telling. My path, very surprisingly, opened up into natural horsemanship, into story telling, and in the strange interconnection of these two. Those of us who attempt “True Unity” [see Note 2 below] in horsemanship embody approximation. Only in fleeting immediacy is the gift of balance experienced with the thrill and grace of presence. Truth continually realigns from being ahead or behind, tilting left or right, lifting too much up or down, as well as holding between the arrogance of presumption and the diminishment of selfhood joined in relationship. To tell the truth brings exhilaration linked inextricably with humility.

        It is humanly impossible to sustain perfect alignment with the dynamic acrobatics of a spirited horse in dressage; but by grace and by devoted discipline, the presence of true unity is tasted, giving a breath-stopping glimpse. For me, this encounter links to the magic of good stories, the “once-upon-a-time” dimension, where “the two worlds touch.” As Mircea Eliade articulated the gift of myth [see Note 3 below], this experience redeems the profane world through contact with the eternal, the sacred. And that’s how we tell the truth.

==================================

Note 1. Merriam-Webster gives a baker’s dozen, including:

1 :  to let a person know something :  to give information to * I’ll tell them when they get here.

3 :  to find out by observing * My little brother has learned to tell time.

11 :  to see or understand the differences between two people or things * Can you tell right from wrong?

12 :  to see or know (something) with certainty * It’s hard to tell if he's serious.

Note 2. “True unity” is one of the key terms associated with “natural horsemanship” and other approaches to the human-horse connection that aim at increasing a respectful relationship. Ray Hunt is often referenced (Think Harmony with Horses: An In-Depth Study of Horse/Man Relationship. Bruneau, ID: Give-It-A-Go Books, 1978), and the term is used in Tom Dorrance’s title (True Unity: Willing Communication between Horse and Man.  Bruneau, ID: Give-It-A-Go Books, 1987). More extensive background on “natural horsemanship” can be found in: Miller, Robert and Rick Lamb. The Revolution in Horsemanship and What it Means to Mankind. Guilford,CN: Lyons, 2005; and Miller, Robert.  Natural Horsemanship Explained: From Heart to Hands. Guilford,CN: Lyons, 2007. An example of my application of natural horsemanship to teaching-story can be seen in:

http://dochorsetales.blogspot.com/2016/03/good-stories-move-us-from-literal.html. 

Note 3. From http://www.bytrentsacred.co.uk/index.php/eliade-sacred-and-profane/2-sacred-time :

“Eliade introduces his phrase illud tempus, to refer to the time of origins, the sacred time when the world was first created.

Religious man accessed illud tempus whenever he ritually recited his cosmogonic myth, thereby reactuating the creation of his world. In various cultures, this gave an approach to the healing of the sick, for by being taken ritually to the time of origins, the sick could be reborn without their sickness.

More generally, religious man needed to enter sacred time periodically because sacred time was what made ordinary, historical time possible.”

Riding from Passion to Compassion

Taken this morning, about 6:30AM, Sunday, March 6, 2016  

“In winter, when the green earth lies resting beneath a blanket of snow, 

this is the time for storytelling.” 

first line of Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kemmerer

         A story opens, “Long ago on the Yellow River, the people loved racing on swift horses . . .” Not surprisingly, DocHorseTales gets captured by these lines. In the way of true stories, it is my own, our own story. Yet to realize how this tale translates into our lives takes some diligent imagination. This past week when telling Kuan Yin, I wanted to bridge the long-ago with the contemporary.

         Our world, the one along the Potomac River, not far from our classroom, and the world of our campus culture, like most of our country, risks falling off the fast horse in our compulsive chase to claim “We’re #1.” This craze is obvious in sports, but it’s also the insidious power-drive radiating from Capitol Hill. It’s the power-drive that endangers the potential goodness of politics, business, and academia. The craziness gets mirrored in the barely conscious, racecar madness, experienced everyday, especially when driving on the Beltway.

         That’s how I see the Yellow River’s obsession with swift horses reflected in our Potomac River culture as well as in this wider land we call our country. I still love us, and for the most part I’m impressed by our athletes who serve as ambassadors for our university. But too often I hear of Heisman winners who are charged with domestic violence and “heroes” who model dependence on performance-enhancing drugs or alcoholism instead of authentic heroism. Then my hopes turn to the Yellow-River Kuan-Yin story for a cure.

         The positive side of this dangerous racing probably adheres in the value given to passion, strange as it may seem. As developed in the Kuan Yin story, even though this compulsive activity exposes the culture’s “darkness of the heart,” it also invokes the god/dess of compassion. Might compassion only be reached through the fires of passion? Remember the scripture says, “Be hot or cold—not lukewarm!” Yet, keeping with the nature of redemption, we should expect that the visitation demands evolutionary change. To develop a compassionate heart looks likely to require a life-changing experience.

         Why should we expect guidance into the deeper levels of love to come from a story? Both ibn `Arabī and Rumi assert that the discourse of definition doesn’t know love; instead, look to the tales for the phenomenal. William Chittick (Sufism, p. 77) translates the guides this way:

Those who define love have not known it, those who have not tasted it by drinking it down have not known it, and those who say they have been quenched by it have not known it, for love is drinking without quenching. (ibn `Arabī)

          Someone asked, “What is loverhood?”

            I replied, “Don’t ask me about these meanings—

         When you become like me, you’ll know;

            When it calls you, you’ll tell its tale.” (Rumi)

                                    

         The gift of story suspends around listening, not semi-present attention, but full-fledged engagement with receptors tuned to resonance. Reception of the gift, of the present that is brought in that immediacy, depends on the teller’s attunement as much as on that of the other participants during the story experience.

         While I was telling the Kuan Yin story this past Tuesday, my receptors picked up a disturbance near the opening. It happened when I was trying to bridge the long-ago with the now. I offered an aside suggesting a connection between Yellow River racing on swift horses and our chasing after balls with clubs and sticks. When saying this, my glance focused on student athletes from our golf and lacrosse teams.

         In the next days, I returned to consider the disturbance that I’d felt and began worrying that my brief comment might have been taken as an unintended devaluation of our student athletes. So in the moments before the next class, I checked with persons I thought might have been offended and found that my reference to their sports had not been taken negatively.

         I wondered, instead then, if the vibration I picked up was a direction telling me to return to the dangers attending collegiate sports. I followed this lead and developed a sample plan for a digital media production as a model for an upcoming assignment. The next major project for our class organizes around a “big question” that consolidates points of resonance each person has felt in the stories. The digital media production then amplifies and translates the big question into personal and social applications. The big question I shaped was:

How do we make a positive balance in our culture so that the lavish attention on sports enriches the world?

         I don’t know if any of these college students might go somewhere with that question. It will be interesting to see if any of them pursue it in their individual digital media productions. As I’m about fifty years older than them, my perspective on the question perhaps involves looking backwards more than they will and should. But I still value this question, and I feel very strongly that the advance most needed in my life and in that of our culture, the advance for our individual and our collective consciousness, centers on the movement from passion to compassion.

         Looking back, I sense that my mid-life crisis, at least one of them, had a passionate experience that was attenuated by riding fast on swift horses and ducking under low-hanging branches over the woodland trail. Fortunately, before serious injury, this craze was translated into safer riding through the discipline of dressage.  Embodied knowing, or perhaps it’s knowing through the body, recalibrated passion into compassion. I realized that I really cared about the health of the horse, not just about getting a rider’s high.

         With the help of patient horses and coaches, I accepted that those mad dashes were really bad riding and poor horsemanship, and yet I acknowledge that they did serve to hook me on horses. Perhaps in a rough analogy to the Bodhisattva Kuan Yin’s visit, Rhiannon worked through horses turning wild passion into natural horsemanship, balanced riding, and care.

         As just suggested, in addition to experiences with horses, my work/play with teaching-stories also guides the translation of passion into compassion. In amplifying the swift-horse riding of the Kuan Yin story, I took in Rhiannon from the Maginobion as well as Luis in “Buried Treasure” and the “Water of Life” stories. In the Grimms version, the arrogance and presumption of control shown by the two older brothers is sharply contrasted with the humility of the youngest who listens to the small voice.  By the end of the story, he is able to ride the gold road because he’s not distracted by self-centered desires but rides with clear focus on the beloved.

Another amplification comes in the Arabian Nights variation on the Water of Life showing the youngest sister’s ability to propose a strategy to deal with the “voices” that overpower anyone not connected with the authentic ruler.

         When I translate my question into the local level looking for applications in history, I’m drawn to one of the earliest sports involving horses. Rumi says “Kings play polo” to show the people their military prowess. It's “like an astrolabe for the serious business of fighting” (Chittick, Sufi Path of Love, p. 326). The astrolabe represents the connection with “inmost consciousness” and reminds me of the youngest brother’s “small voice.” The “inmost consciousness” guides the path of love, the way of compassion.

         The local-level example of playing polo informs my big question by suggesting that in order to rebalance our contemporary passions (such as the sports culture) we need a dedicated attention to developing the inmost consciousness. How do our sports direct us to our “serious” business? Once again, I believe that the vital need for our culture and consciousness points to the development of compassion.

         And to develop that, yes, we need Kuan Yin, Rhiannon—we need increased devotion to our higher powers, like the stories teach. In our telling of Good Stories, we’re asking for their help as we braid together the strands of our passions with the traditional tales, weaving with and toward our inmost consciousness.