We live into the stories that we tell

Matt Scrimgeour
Aug 23, 2017 · 4 min read

A few days ago I read a quote from David Stevens, where he said “Love — divine, human — de-centres us, transfigures our reality, it does not dissolve disagreeable facts, but puts the facts in their proper place.” Twenty years ago my circumstances changed irreversibly. I welcomed the change with some relief. Living with a context, I had been unable to change was at times painful and perpetually frustrating.

When the change flowered and everything was re-configured I realised that I was struggling to live in the new reality. Time spent enduring in a contested space had created in me a habit of being that I was unfree to move on from.

As I became aware of this dynamic in myself, I was given a glimpse into the shared human experience of finding the way of freedom. Thomas Keating provocatively describes this process of liberation from the stories we tell ourselves: “A peace lover clings to his or her myths and vigorously resists anything or anyone who challenges them. A peacemaker is one who is willing to give up all myths of peace in order to receive the ‘peace that the world cannot give.’”

Attachment to my suffering found me at a lumpy crossroads where I was free to choose either to remain in a narrative that had been, despite the fact that it was no longer reality in my present. Or I could re-locate myself, in step with the now, letting go of my pain; free to learn from my own faults which had contributed to the discord I had known as a kind of suffering.

Richard Rohr defines suffering as not being in control or not getting what we perceive we want. Wisdom teaches that our approach to suffering, regardless of its cause, will define our future selves and our present experience of peace. The mystics are clear that suffering is a landmark along the pathway to human growth and transformation. John O’Donohue suggests that if we wish to change our human experience we simply need to “change the way you think”. For me this idea resonates with what Ben Okri observes when he describes that “we are the stories we tell ourselves”. What stories do we re-tell, nurture, ponder or enshrine explicitly or implicitly?

“We have to make and to fake histories,” Roel Kaptein reminds us. “We have all had the experience of telling stories about our lives while people who know us well smile knowingly. They know that the story is not true and that it is only our story, the story we need to stay ourselves as we think we are, and to have self-respect. But every now and then, while telling our stories, we become aware that we are living lies, both our own and those of other people.”

So how do we know the veracity of our stories? The desert fathers tell a story of a young monk who went to an older monk asking “teach me about wisdom and about god” and the older monk exhorts the young brother “return to your cell and it will teach you everything you need to know.” This journey of solitude and stillness to the heart of our very selves takes a lifetime and few have the perseverance to complete the journey. As with so many of the adventures life offers they can be undertaken alone but a journey shared in community is a deeply transfiguring experience.

We live in a culture where the dominant patterns are about separation not reconciliation. There is a story about a man who, motivated by transcendent communion, endured great suffering on behalf of his enemies. Why? So that we might all know re-configured relationships with ourselves and all things simply by surrendering to being in mimesis with this Jesus. The story insists on the open invitation “Follow me…” into scary freedom.

In contrast to the cultural foundations of western civilisation which assert “I think therefore I am”. Participation in the contemplative consciousness of our mystical traditions unlock us from our heads and posits “we love therefore we be”. This re-frame is a universal invitation into the exercise of being faith, hope and charity for the good of self, other, sister & brother. Patterns of thought, the stories we tell and re-tell to ourselves and others will determine our shared choices, charitable actions and ultimately whether we are agents of separation or reconciliation.

Today it would be radical if I could re-experience deep transformation and a reconciliation of myself by that ancient immanent power; love. Why not choose today to surrender to the divine, human love which transfigures and de-centres the stories we live into and resonate to others.

You might also want to make time to be still and know more deeply the stories you tell, and ask whether they are worth recycling?

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Matt Scrimgeour

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presently failed creator of fictional narratives coded with girardian veracity - however the silly bulls gather and I will write another 500 words this day

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