Recently a friend told me that sometimes when she’s alone she narrates her life to her cat, ala film noir. I do the same thing, although perhaps less film noir than “This is the story of Laura’s Life.” I sometimes imagine my life as one of those chick lit novels with strong, slightly neurotic female lead characters.
I’ve always loved stories. I blame my father who never turned down the opportunity to buy me a book. It still happens today. Recently they came to visit and we went to the book fair. I found an author I like and a book I haven’t read yet and I was carrying it around. I fully intended to buy it myself. I mean really, it was $6, I could have handled that. But for nostalgia or just because that’s who he is, dad insisted on buying it for me, and I got the impression that if I had found 12 books, or if it was $20 instead of $6, he still would have bought it for me.
I think in this post-modern world we spend more and more time trying to organize our lives into coherent or semi-coherent stories. We are surrounded by narrative. Who we are and what we do organized by one or more likely a number of meta-narratives, stories that define large concepts like “love,” or “liberty” or “patriotism” or “freedom.” A very good example of this is the current presidential election. Both major party candidates are trying to prove that they are “America” and “American.” However, for these candidates those words mean very different things, and probably they are both right. For McCain “American” means having served in the military for many years, being a returned prisoner of war, being a politician who has participated in the political process. He has recently taken up the word “maverick” which harkens back to the days of the old west (speaking of a truly American narrative). McCain’s version of America is people fighting for what is right and good and just. (Although personally I think the McCain definition of those words is a bit thin) For Obama “American” means “pick yourself up by your bootstraps.” Raised by a single mother and then grandparents who worked hard, Obama worked his way into Ivy League schools and then “gave back” by being a community organizer in Chicago. Obama’s version of American is young, multi-ethnic, and charismatic.
As a Christian I have some narratives I use to define my life. They happen to be written down in a book, which is a bit of a luxury in terms of narratives, I’ll admit. And I’ll also admit that I don’t like or want to live by everything that’s written in that book. I have some other set of narratives that defines the stories I like and the ones I don’t, but maybe I’ll leave that for now, instead of taking another tangent.
As a seminary-trained young person I’m intrigued by the notion of dialog. For those of you out of the seminary loop “dialog” is the new term for how we talk to those of different religious backgrounds. Dialog is essentially bringing our stories into contact with another persons stories. One key element of dialog is being willing to listen to and understand another person’s stories and even allow them to shape yours. Of course, then we have to know our own shaping stories well enough to notice the similarities and differences in others’ stories.
I have recently been thinking that we rarely approach our own culture with the same amount of interest that we approach other cultures and religions. If we really listened to the overarching stories of the mass media, for example, I think we would learn some very interesting things about the stories people are using to shape their lives. I admit that I am unabashed media consumer. I try to be a bit savvy too, but I’ll admit that I love movies and television. I am fascinated by the stories that are told in these media, in particular the “super-popular” media, the shows and movies everyone is watching. I think they tell interesting stories that resonate with our culture. For example, there has been a rapid increase in crime drama shows that center around scientists. These shows say something interesting about the beliefs in our culture. First, they say our culture has a fascination with things that are mysterious. Things we don’t understand, and things that seem to be unexplainable. However, we desperately want the unexplainable (like murder) to be explained. And the people who can explain it are scientists and cops. Briefly these shows also show us that we are intrigued by the human body (and its various excretions and parts), and human psychology and what makes people do what they do.
It’s tempting to go on and on here. And maybe I’ll add more later, but I needed to get some thoughts down for a chapel service/colloquium and for my own processing.
