Hi all,
I wonder if any of you have ever considered what it means to have a guiding story by which one lives ones life. It isn’t even so uncommon if you consider the fact that our thoughts are continually telling us a story, unravelling the associations we make in situations, dreaming up romantic affiliations to total strangers, imagining ourselves in a role in a movie. We dress, talk, eat, drink, walk, stand, sit and do many other things because they are conformed to the story we have in our head at a particular time.
Why should it be so unusual for people to have their guiding mythology or a wisdom figure who talks them through the stages of their lives? Why shouldn’t an organized religion be a relic of such behaviour in earlier cultures, albeit with a positive intention and a substantial ethical code? I think that the religions of the world all have this kind of beginning, starting off with something that probably happened but which gained anecdotal popularity, was adopted by some group to transport an idea and grew out of proportion. The figures became legends, larger than life, and their words were composed by poets. The story takes on the classical form of a tragedy or drama, historical aspects are drawn into it and all the time, it is transporting an idea. The longer it holds, the truer the idea is to life – perhaps it is even considered to be wisdom.
Or take the Jesus story of a Jewish guru, spreading a dangerously new take on the Jewish Torah and the meaning of the Messiah prophecy of a new covenant. Purposely provoking the authorities and consequent to death, the ideas he proposed became popular (although mostly among people who were no longer die-hard Jews) and he was killed. When the disciples came together and started telling the stories about what he had said and done, when they sang the songs they had sung with him, they became curiously alive – enlightened even. The gatherings grew and spread into Greece and Italy and gradually throughout the whole world. Unfortunately after a few hundred years, the stories had a different nature and it all became very serious and academic. However, the academics also gave the whole tradition a new lease of life and after 2 thousand years, the movement has changed its form numerous times and split into various sects.
The most important thing is that these stories to live by are not meant to be believed, but lived. They are the guidelines for a different life-style and outlook, and have reformed many cultures. For some time now there has been more emphasis of believing than living by the stories, which is why the tradition is faltering and dropping into fundamentalist extremism. The same is of course true of Islam, that beautifully eloquent poetry about the struggle towards spiritual surrender of a society to the ineffable mystery of life. It too has suffered in the hands of people who have little faith and who are scared stiff of reality, so that they have to try and force it to stop progressing.
What do you think?
Take Care