One Story

I talk a lot with people about their stories. Personal narratives are crucial to the work I do in helping people find healing and redemption in their lives.

But we also have bigger, societal stories that we connect to, that we use to think about our lives, our world, our choices, our actions.

F.S. Michaels, in her brilliant book "Monoculture", describes how societies often have a story that dominates, and that this story changes over broad historical periods. She makes an awfully good case for the idea that the dominant story of our time and place is the economic story. It's a story about the world that filters how we think and relate to everything, through the role of consumers.

We relate to everything and everyone, primarily through a relationship of consumption.

Whereas education used to be about broadening minds, developing knowledge, creating beauty and ideas, it has now been reduced to an economic good or product to be consumed. We actively promote it as an investment for people to use on their path of career building (which of course, is also now purposed as accumulating things of value to be consumed, whether it be wealth or personal fulfillment)

Michaels compellingly points out how this is also true in areas of our life such as religious life - we treat church as an experience to be consumed, and even God as a product to be used and manipulated to our own ends.

Clothing, time, food, families, friendships, leisure, sport, volunteering, art... all of it... is being subtly transformed into products and services that we relate to as consumers, as part of this dominant economic story. Listen to the pundits who advise about "building your personal brand", and you'll see the most obvious expression of this. Look at Facebook and see how people are defining themselves in terms of a set of consumptive practices - assets, experiences, brand preferences, etc. and establishing status by associating with certain consumptive lifestyles.

Of great concern to me is that way we (I) have begun to treat each other from a consumption point of view. None of us would want to admit that we are shaped by this mindset in our friendships and relationships, but I'm afraid that few of us are likely exempt. It takes unusual honesty to admit that at times we view our spouses in terms of what they can do for us: make us happy, take care of us, compensate for other relationship disappointments in life, build our egos, meet our physical needs, meet our wants, upgrade our status, take away certain negative feelings, etc.  All of these, subtly become characteristics of a product we want to consume rather than a living, breathing, broken person who is with us in life.

And while it is probably fine for us to wish and hope that our partners will do some of these things at times, it is deeply flawed when we construe our partners primarily in terms of their success or failure to perform as products, and perform in the way we expect.

So even our personal stories become shaped by this economic story. It's as if the larger dominant societal story of consumerism, becomes the template in which all other stories are told. When it comes to each other as people, we're rarely so crass as to admit our commodification of other humans. We dress it up with words like "love"...which seems like a sacred term, but often what we mean by "love" is a personal experience of gratification, rather than persistent dedication to caring for the other. (Watch an episode of The Voice and notice how people use the word "love" - it almost always refers to the individuals own sense of enjoyment or how they are made to feel by the other)

But as Michaels points out, the issue is not about relinquishing consumption entirely, but becoming aware of how our minds are immersed in this story, and engaging in practices that reflect other stories, non-economic ones. She doesn't say it, but I think the logical extension is that the story of love, of sacrifice for another, is a story we must practice on a daily basis to escape the economic story becoming dominant in our lives.

Mom.

At the risk of paying myself a backhanded compliment....

It occurs to me that a significant amount of what is good in me comes from my mother.

We both will cry at a stranger's funeral because we feel the pain of others in deep and personal way.

We both make food into art for our children because...well...it's an odd sort of way we express love by making food into faces and other amusing shapes.

We both can take a bit to warm up to people, but if you're looking for a loyal friend, we're pretty good at it.

We both are pretty good at taking care of people, of listening, and making them feel valued.

We both find ourselves leaning heavily on the lyrics of old hymns and songs when times are tough...even if we can only remember half of the words, and are making up the rest.

We both are an endless source of made-up songs for our kids, recognizing that music communicates and relates to people on a different level. (Yesterday I heard my daughters singing a song about a broken puzzle box that I made up and thought they were mostly ignoring)

As I look at my own children growing up I see them taking on my own good and bad qualities. I notice my flaws and brokenness turning up in them, and I experience the terrifying reality of being responsible for the physical, emotional, and spiritual formation of two humans, not to mention two humans I love.

And I realize that my mom must have had her own moments of wishing I wouldn't be so much like her...but on mother's day we celebrate the good, the beautiful ways in which we have become like our moms. So for all the blessings - the things I learned from you mom about faith, love, compassion, persistence, sacrifice, empathy, and trusting God - thanks.

Thanks is not enough, but it's a start. But beyond gratitude I can tell you mom that the good things you have taught and lived in your life, they live on - in me - and hopefully my girls.

Despair is a Choice

Despair is a choice.

It doesn't feel like it in the moment. When you feel like you've be stepped on, crushed, beaten down, or that "last straw" has been snapped, it's the most easy and natural thing to give in to despair.

It presents itself so logically, "why bother trying if all life ends up bringing you is pain and disappointment".

It feels so real and absolute. The emotion is often accompanied by a profound heaviness, sometimes in the form of body sensations that mimic the real experience of being crushed.

But like all of our feelings we have have a choice. We may not choose our initial reactions, but we can learn to choose how we react to our reactions - that is, how we continue to think, and feel, and behave in response to those initial reactions.

To despair is to take on a myopic view of the world. It's as if an electromagnet has been switched on and attracted all the past and present disappointments and failures and darkness in the world. And with all the reminders of those disappointments and failures comes a clear message "don't fight anymore...don't try anymore....it's not worth it... things never turn out right".

To be hopeful in the midst of despair seems unnatural. It is an act of faith. Faith in the sense of believing an unseen reality - of believing that our despair is not how things really are in the world. In a sense it requires us to think and behave as if there were still reason to be hopeful....and letting the feeling change later on.

It's come to me today that hope is something we must practice, more than it is a passing sense of optimism, or something that transpires after a moment of insight. To be hopeful requires a regular work-out of emotional and spiritual muscles that refuse to get stuck in the limited perspective that despair traps us in. It requires us to keep our minds dwelling in the broadest, truest realities of the universe. The realities that affirm that all things are being recreated, redeemed, made new, and restored. That God will not be thwarted in his love and reconciliation. We can see evidence of these realities if we are persistent in choosing to focus our attention on them, and not choose to allow despair to take up residence in our minds.

For me, today is a hard day to practice this. I must make regular, conscious decisions to fight despair and choose hope instead.