The implications of a metaphor depicting
life as a story supplements the biblical theme which depicts life as a
perpetual journey into the unknown.
Here, the difference between conjunctive
and continuous narratives is worth noting.
[Note:
By “conjunctive narrative,” JJ means a story that proceeds from one moment to
the next without any kind of plot.] Since life has a flow, narratives
introduce artificial demarcations between events in order to probe them in
depth and detail. In this context, the
myths which transmitted culture prior to the invention of writing were stories
which traced the prevailing social norms and the practices conducive to
survival to acts of deities in a timeless past.
Since these deities acted arbitrarily and capriciously, the stories were
conjunctive narratives consisting of discreet events. As a result, the languages they promoted
lacked an inner logic which invited language-users to formulate a comprehensive
and coherent view of the course of human history or the lives of individuals.
The detachment inherent in writing and
reading ruptured the illusory sense of immediate presence, fullness and
totality fostered by orality. And when
texts displaced memory as the repository of the past, emerging distinctions
among past, present and future generated a sense of history. In this context, storytellers derived
conventions from alphabetical writing which enabled them to compose continuous
narratives designed to enabled authors
to compose continuous narratives designed formulate an understanding of history
as the unfolding of a flow of events.
Through its incorporations of the logic of
continuous prose, a metaphor depicting
life as story allows arbitrary demarcations among events, but insists that the
meaning of past events depends on how they are woven into our responses to
future events in our personal histories.
The point at issue can be situated between
two extremes. On one extreme, I have
known Friars who allowed resentment over a transfer to define their lives for
years. However, since that reaction had
a history, the tragedy lies in their inability or unwillingness to undertake an
inner journey which healed wounds in the past which made it impossible for them
to let go of the pain evoked by the decision of a person in authority over
them. As a result, they remained trapped
by their histories and stuck in what could otherwise be a step in the grieving
process.
At the other extreme, I have been involved
with individuals when the buried memory of being sexually abused as a child
surfaced years later. As they entered
the grieving process, they shared with me their present experience of
excruciating pain, devastating shame, eruptive outrage and struggles with the
suicide option. This willingness not
only to identify and feel these previously buried feelings, but to share them
with me enabled them to let go and give free rein to care, compassion,
playfulness, and joy in living. And as
the free play of all their deepest feelings enriched their involvements with
loved ones, their willingness to go through the grieving process endowed events
which had wounded them deeply with new meanings in a wide range of situations.
Examples which lie between those extremes
abound. For my present purpose, the most
revealing examples can be found in marriages in which two unique individuals
commit themselves to a shared journey to deepening intimacy. The commitment, if genuine, plunges them into
a process. On the journey, they will
blow events, but the vulnerable self-revelations evoked by these wounding
interactions yield new and deeper understandings. And, as they experience the new life made
possible by the grieving process, they become comfortable with the fact that
there is no way through it but through it.
More importantly, they abandon the
assumption that we can author our own stories.
Or, more precisely, they discover that they become more fully human and
more uniquely themselves when they co-author the unfolding story informed by
their commitment to a journey to deepening intimacy with another person.
I suggest, therefore, that entering
involvements which call us to co-author a story we share with others evokes the
longing for a more fully human and uniquely personal existence and transforms
the longing into a realizable quest. As
a distinctive form of life, it has generated a language capable of teaching us
how to be passionately, vulnerably, respectfully and faithfully involved with
others. Once we understand the point at
issue, we can use the language to probe the internal turmoil triggered by
events which tap feelings we had buried alive in a naive belief that we were
controlling them.
Bluntly, until we are to embrace a
deepening person-to-person involvement, nothing could tap those buried
feelings. As such involvements deepen,
events in which we find ourselves at cross-purposes with a loved one complicate
our efforts to be honest about what we feel and think, real or imagined. For many of us, until we abandon the
assumption that we speak from a detached, god-like perspective which guarantees
the objectivity of our judgments, we continue to express our inner turmoil
through silent struggles or dramatic confrontations. In effect, we continue to assume that our
account of the event is the authorized version, i.e., the version which told
the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. In my own case, creative responses or angry
reactions from people I loved exposed flaws in my "authorized
versions" of events. Gradually, in
ways that I cannot reconstruct, I came to see that I had to master a literary
construction, a fictive narrative voice, if I was to discover why my good
resolutions did not prevent me from lapsing into reactions that were clearly
counterproductive.
This
narrative voice enabled me to voice vulnerable self-revelations which invited
vulnerable self-revelations in return.
I remember my first awareness that a
vulnerable self-revelation on the part of a loved one revealed more about me
than about her. My reaction to an event
had wounded her deeply. As usual, I
pleaded good intentions. After framing
her response with an admission that she was making a mountain out of a
molehill, she relived with me some painful memories of events in her childhood
that were tapped by my thoughtless reaction.
Somehow, she sensed that her sharing evoked a burden of guilt in me, and
she hastened to assure me that she was not accusing me of being
insensitive. As a result, though
insights it evoked, this exchange became a transforming moment in my life. And in small and simple ways, it was woven
into the ways we co-authored the story of our friendship.
In sum, though I must take responsibility
for my story, I cannot author it alone.
If I fail to engage in intensely personal interactions, deeply buried
tangles will not be tapped. And if I
will not allow these tangles to be tapped, I will never be able to discern the
insidious ways they control my involvements with others, to embrace life fully,
and to speak in my own voice.
(Addendum: This thesis also. In this context, the postmodernist
hermeneutics of suspicion generated the slogan, "the death of the
author". The supporting argument
was quite straightforward. Even the most original of authors wait until they
have completed a composition before writing a Preface designed to govern
readings of the text. Regarding the
writing of the text, the creation was in the doing, and even the most original
texts were not created out of nothing.
Rather, as heirs of a literary tradition, authors were subject to the
workings of languages which have taken on lives of their own. In writing, however, they are not subject to
the events encountered by individuals who seek to author their own existence. So how could individuals take total credit
for a unique identity when they are obviously shaped and formed by a particular
language, a pervasive process of socialization, and a continuous flow of events
in their personal histories? (The same
answer follows from the unanswerable question, "Whose voice is language?".)
Sadly, the hermeneutics of
suspicion which generated the proclamation of "the death of the
author" is designed to deflect attention from the prophetic call to
address moral issues through vulnerable self-revelations and a sympathetic
imagination. To achieve this goal, it
targets "reason" as a rope-like word which codifies a critical
apparatus indebted to repeated eruptions of an interiorized interrogatory
stance. Through learned archaeologies of
knowledge, they expose the literary origin of a critical apparatus which
promises that a detached perspective on the workings of language, experience
and reality transforms the endless questioning legitimated by this
interrogatory into focused inquiries governed by the rule of the One. In marked contrast, the narrative voice
appears in hidden ways in the early stories in the Hebrew tradition which gave
voice to the eruption of self-consciousness indebted to literacy's rupture of
orality's illusory sense of immediate presence, fullness and totality. In the Hebrew narrative tradition, it
situated later storytellers who pretended to offer the authoritative definition
of Israel's positive and distinctive identity in the midst of the interplay
among the workings of all three. Through
a contention among storytellers who vied for authority of the narrative
tradition, it fostered inquiries designed to probe the historicity of human
experience in ways that provided fruitful glimpses into previously inarticulate
human depths. Despite its introduction
of the issue of authority, however, it filled the hollow center of a narrative
voice with a structure which subverts the rule of the One.
In short, respectful analyses of the
personal dimensions of experience must be able to probe the mystery of human
freedom without mystification. (By
definition, psychological theories enshrine theories of motivation designed to
provide analyses of experience which will render human behavior predictable
and, therefore, controllable.) To do so,
they replace obedience to the dictates of a logical principle of identity with
obedience to the dictates of a narrative structure. This structure can be easily delineated. Minimally, the storyteller must set a scene,
populate the scene with human agents, demarcate an event involving these
agents, assign the agents roles in the interaction, and indicate short-term
consequences of the event in question.
Quite obviously, each of these requirements guarantees that any story
can be retold in ways that endow the event with radically different
meanings. E.g. one can trace the scene
to events in the past, add details to the setting of the scene, introduce other
agents, offer distinctive accounts of the motivations of the agents by
redefining the roles they played in the original version, or emphasize
different short- or long-term consequences.
As a result, pretending that one tells the authorized version is
blatantly arrogant. (I wish that those
who pretend to tell the authorized version of the meaning of the story of Jesus
would become aware of their arrogance.)
In conclusion, individuals who are willing
to co-author the unfolding story of a shared journey to deepening intimacy
discover that vulnerable self-revelations which satisfy the dictates of the
narrative structure are both revelatory and liberating. And I dare to suggest that vulnerable
self-revelations which invite a response in kind are the only way to come to
the self-knowledge promised by the Socratic method.
(Addendum: In my analyses of intimacy as a form of life
capable of realizing a distinctive purpose, I discuss the dynamics of
disillusionment and mounting pressure in depth and detail. To pass through this crisis, those committed
to the quest for ever-deepening person-to-person involvements must abandon
judgments and agendas in favor of vulnerable self-revelations. In so doing, they learn how to co-author a
story which satisfies the dictates of a continuous narrative.)
No comments:
Post a Comment