Telling a Story

"Experts believe that stories go beyond our capacity for keeping us entertained. We think in narrative structures. We connect events and emotions and instinctively transform them into a sequence that can be easily understood. It's a uniquely human achievement. We all want to share our stories, whether it is the trick we saw at the party, the bad day at the office or the beautiful sunset we saw on vacation... We turn facts into similes and metaphors, and even fantasies. We polish the rough edges of our lives so that they feel whole. Our stories make us the people we are and, sometimes, the people we want to be. They give us our identity and a sense of community. And if the story is a good one, it might even make us smile."
--Excerpt from Marco Tempest: A magical tale (with augmented reality) from TED.com

We all want to share our stories... can there be a more human achievement?  Our entire lives are the narrative steps of a wider story in which we live.  We're all constantly trying to share that story with one another...   The point of blogs such as these are to create the "digital campfires.

Stories are here to be shared and given meaning within the wider story.  Indeed, a single step merely described is a mechanical action, but a step in a direction is a life with purpose.  We are all constantly trying to create narratives, though they're often imperfect, because if we figure out what those actions mean in the wider sense, we can begin to discern our identity and community.

It's an odd paradox... we must simultaneously be the character within our stories and its narrator.  Maybe we aren't THE NARRATOR (after all there's only one of those) but maybe we desire to enact some element, some divine share of that personhood that we share in common.

One of the odd things that has always struck me is how much people like to talk about themselves... we all do it and yet we're almost all offended by it at the same time.  Meanwhile, it also serves to put things in order for the one telling the story.  There's a fine line between the braggart and the teller of tales, but both tap into that uniquely human need.  Both embellish their stories and try and give them meaning.  But we condemn the one and listen to the other.   Maybe because the first embellishes for his own sake whereas the second for the hearer's...

In the end, I find myself realizing two things: (1) we must share our stories, it's essential to we are and (2) we must listen to others' stories as well.  We all need to listen and be heard.

Wizard's First Rule

"People are stupid; given proper motivation, almost anyone will believe almost anything. Because people are stupid, they will believe a lie because they want to believe it's true, or because they are afraid it might be true. People's heads are full of knowledge, facts, and beliefs, and most of it is false, yet they think it all true. People are stupid; they can only rarely tell the difference between a lie and the truth, and yet they are confident they can, and so are all the easier to fool. ...
People need an enemy to feel a sense of purpose. It's easy to lead people when they have a sense of purpose. Sense of purpose is more important by far than the truth. In fact, truth has no bearing in this...
People are stupid; they want to believe, so they do."
—Wizard's First Rule Chapter 36, p.560, U.S. paperback edition, Available on Amazon or BN.com

The first rule as told in the first of Terry Goodkind's supreme series, "The Sword of Truth".  Like most fantasy or science fiction books, the book is more than just magic or weird creatures, it has a point.  Each of the books is centered around one of these great philosophical observations regarding the nature of reason or truth.  Over the duration of this blog, I'll undoubtedly focus on the other rules, a set of which I have posted next to my computer screen as a general set of rules for life.   As I sit contemplating recent events, this text in particular rose to my mind and I'll attempt to break it down segment by segment.

I believe people ultimately do care about the truth, but as this passage points out, people don't want to admit that the truth they have might not be the only truth.  I say this fully aware that I am in fact a Catholic Conservative type that might not be automatically thought to acknowledge such philosophy, but this is perhaps the first and most terrible conceit - believing that we, personally, know something when reason might tell us otherwise.  If we are to concede that God is Truth, then the converse must also be true - no truth can exist outside of Him.  But as part of that, we must concede something else, and perhaps something far worse in our fallen state - we are not God and accordingly, we might not have all truth such as it is. Now, none of this is to present an agnostic point of view in any way shape or form - the universe seems to want to constantly acknowledge bits of itself and bits other than itself at all levels and this acknowledgement indicates knowledge and therefore truth such as it is.

Let us now cast our minds to the aspect regarding the creation of an enemy and thereby the creation of a sense of purpose.  We all do it - we create enemies all around us and in so doing often miss the truest enemy of all (who incidentally uses a rather appropriate title "Father of Lies").  The creation of enemies is convenient, it helps us distinguish ourselves from others and is perhaps derivative of that early mental state achieved by older babies and young toddlers.  More importantly, it does contribute that sense of purpose to what we do.  But this creates a problem in and of itself as it contributes to that earliest curse of alienation from each other.  And yet, we must overcome it.  One of the most interesting things about the Life of the Christ was how profoundly he looked around and sought out the true enemies.  The enemies were not those that necessarily inconvenienced us the most (such as tax collectors or the unclean) but rather those that made us believe we were in some way better than everyone else or we could judge others without due process.

The world in which we live is rife we all of these things.  In my own patron city, Washington, I can tell you that people exploit this inclination of people to believe a particular lie or half truth because people are often afraid of a truth that is often more complicated than any simple lie.  Both sides do it and both sides acknowledge it occurs (albeit never on their side).

In my own personal situation, I find that certain members of my circles have some mistaken beliefs based upon limited information.  I fully acknowledge that they believe what they say, but this presents a wider warning - we must be careful not to ignore evidence to the contrary of what we believe.  In fact I feel for these people, after all it must be difficult to be doing what they're doing to put relationships on the line in pursuit of a belief.  But I hope and pray that we might seek out the truth, being willing to acknowledge it wherever it is to be found.

In the end, I believe we must do what a Jesuit taught me early in my HS days, "Question everything.  Never be afraid to question, but when you do follow it through don't stop at the question go through to the conclusion.  Truth will always withstand aggressive questioning, provided the research is done."

Choosing to be Controlled by Good People

“Nobody controls his own life, Ender. The best you can do is choose to be controlled by good people, by people who love you.” -Valentine Wiggin in Ender's Game

I'll expand out that quotation a bit from my perspective - good is an empirical fact that we often don't know, but must be judged in light of what we know, don't know, past experiences etc.  I've included it here as a way of providing  background to how I arrived at the decision described in a previous post.

We are all being constantly controlled - hopefully in God's direction - by others.  We must constantly reevaluate what role our various relationships play in our lives and whether or not those people are controlling us in directions that we need to go.

Are some relationships beyond reproach?  Do blood ties exist no matter what else goes on?  Is a mental or emotional connection stronger than the genetic lottery?  Do some have an inevitable claim on you simply because?   These are open questions that we must answer and I'm not convinced I have the right answers (incidentally mine are: yes, sort of, yes, no).

The Sculpting of the Father's Great Design: A Splitting Road

"Here is where the road divides / Here is where we realize / The sculpting of the Father's great design...

But I know the road He chose for me / Is not the road he chose for you / So as we chase the dreams we're after... And I know that thru' it all / The hardest part of love is letting go / But there's a greater love that holds us... Pray for me" 

-- adapted from Pray for Me as recorded by Michael W. Smith

I've rewritten this post a dozen times already, but I figure I may as well go for it at this point...  As with many of my posts, a quote seems the best way to begin.  Life is often filled with such points the Divine Weaver's tapestry often involves threads joining together and coming apart in ways that only He understands.  Such occurrences are inevitable and to be accepted if we are to live in Divine Indifference.

Threads that have occupied the same space earlier in the weave might be drawn towards a different place in the weave as the Universal Cloth is woven and the threads of our lives are Called towards to other patterns.  If we are to be good parts of the weave, we must come to accept this and support these decisions or we risk moving off from them entirely.

I write this post as a way of explanation for a decision that my fiance and I have come to regarding some people & situations in our lives.  Quite simply, I do not believe these people to be malicious in anything they do.  I believe them to be seeking the Divine and trying to do good just as we are.  However, when these two sets of goals conflict and when they cause inordinate heartache on either side for an extended period of time, one has to consider whether or not we are being called to move in a different direction from each other.

I suspect this post will be rewritten time and time again, but for now I believe this will suffice.  In any case, I'll end as I began, with a quote from the same song...

"Pray for me and I'll pray for you / Pray that we will keep the common ground / 

Won't you pray for me and I'll pray for you / And one day love will bring us back around again"

On the Society

Many readers may know that my family and I are followers of the Society of Jesus, colloquially known as the Jesuits.  My fiance and I attend a Jesuit Church and often seek them out wherever we go.  Throughout the blog, I'll undoubtedly reference them, but I wanted to introduce them in light of a recent event that is unfortunately all too common among Catholics of late - a general disparagement of the Society.

The modern Jesuits are often criticized as being too liberal whether it is America magazine to the Social Justice that often finds its way into their homilies.  To some extent, I understand where this is coming from and to those that know me, a political Conservative, the irony is thick enough.  But I think that it is in that that I find the reason why I am attracted to them.  Church should always challenge you.  A preacher that gives the same homily once every three years does his congregation no favors (though I would not pretend to understand the pressures that they are under in the modern era).

Further, importantly is the way they challenge me mentally.  The Society (and those that follow them) are some of the most educated people I have ever met.  They see connections that most miss, their homilies tend to be 10 minutes of religious gold, and most importantly, when I talk to them, I feel like they know more about Catholicism and Philosophy than I do.

The Society I know is the one started by my patron, St. Ignatius de Loyola.  It's an Organization that Chris Lowney in Heroic Leadership points out is run around the principles of heroic leadership, always aiming for the Magis; ingenuity, thinking outside the box; self awareness, knowing what can and cannot be traded; and finally, love, the ability to see people in the best possible light.  This is the idea that Ignatius had - the insight to reject the practices around him and tell his people to get out there.

For St. Ignatius God was not an impersonal being infinitely removed from us that we have to worship in Church.  Rather, He was a friend, a close companion, someone you talked to not in a ritualized prayer, but like someone you knew, someone you had highs with, someone you got angry at.  It is this aspect, the God-man that meets us everyday in every moment where we are that dictates what we in turn must do (if we are to imitate Him). We must turn and meet others where they are calling them as CS Lewis states in The Last Battle to come higher up and further in.

To the West of the Eastern Mountains

Today I begin something that has long been in the back of my mind - a place to try and write the various thoughts and explanations that often fill my mind.

Objectives of this Work
The objective of this work is to more or less explore the world and offer my humble explanations for what I can see in my mortal coil and how it relates to the rest of the world such as it is.   This blog I hope to also form the basis of discussions and thought provoking ideas for it is only by beginning to prod the loutish mind that we are able to exercise the chap and move on down the road inexorably to the Eastern Mountain.

The Title of this Blog
The title of this blog is a reference to CS Lewis' work The Pilgrim's Regress (available from Google Play or Amazon).  The book itself is a riff / variation off of Paul Bunyan's earlier work The Pilgrim's Progress.  By the name I hope to convey a few things:

1. This is a journey, much as life is.  
2. Oftentimes the very thing we seek happens to be the thing we're the most afraid of (as was the case for the Eastern Mountains in the book). 
3. Place myself at the feet of the wiser men to whom I owe a great deal, of whom CS Lewis is the prime. 

A Disclaimer

I should mention here that I do not pretend to be a theologian, philosopher, or scholar.  My thoughts are my own and they might be partially or entirely wrong.  If you need the services of a priest or a lawyer (ironically the two subjects that I'm most likely to touch upon) they should seek them out for their expertise in their respective areas.  Indeed, in many cases, I may argue the contrarian view if only to provoke a discussion.

At best, I hope to serve as a fellow traveler, comparing notes on an otherwise convoluted and deteriorating map.  At worst, I might serve to mislead the reader down the wrong path. 

A Beginning 

With that, we must find ourselves somewhere to the side of the Eastern Mountains beyond the metaphorical brook, beginning to explore what might or might not be.