Did You Hear The One About…
Apr 9th, 2008 by Brian Robertson
Tibetan Storyteller
Joseph Campbell, that marvelous expert on mythologies of the world, was once discussing his new computer, and he spoke back at a time when personal computers were often populated with names like Osborne, Commodore and others. He was asked if his computer suggested any kind of a mythological meaning to him. He replied, “An Old Testament God — lots of rules and no mercy.”
I would suggest that Jesus seems to have had little regard for the idea of an Old Testament God with lots of rules and no mercy - the rules seem far clearer, simpler, and less tribal-oriented; at the same time an almost unthinkable Mercy seems to be at the very heart of God’s Love. Further, it strikes me that the most authentic of Jesus’ intentions and sayings inevitably come in the form of his stories. These are tales of widows who lose coins, a man who stumbles upon a treasure in a field, bridegrooms who are either foolish or wise, a woman who needles a judge until, exasperated, he decides in her favor to shut her up. It is not a question of “God says you’d better do this …” as opposed to what you do get — “Once upon a time.”
A good story points beyond itself, of course, to something much greater, something that can’t be spelled out and captured anymore than you can trap wind in a bottle, to paraphrase my old friend Alan Watts. Jesus did no less in his life, constantly pointing beyond himself, leaving it to later spiritual communities and writers to make him the center. He brushed aside much of the esteem and worship that the crowds tried to foist on him, protesting, “Why call me good? There is none good but God.” He obviously refused to give interpretation to his stories, and if you’ve ever been in a position of having to explain a joke to the point that it dissolves like wet tissue paper, you can sympathize with him. Still, to make sure that people didn’t miss the point, usually one espoused by the spiritual community of the specific writer, an “afterwards” was often injected in which the desired explanation is dumbed-down and explained, usually to puzzled disciples in a literary device that we can make the mistake of focusing on instead of the story.
Let us state the obvious, which means it is often overlooked. A story tells a story. It is that simple. From my days in college studying Communications, I remember the most basic model — one must have a Sender and a Receiver. Both are essential to complete the process known as communication, but while the Sender is active in giving the message, the Receiver must be active as well, must participate in the same way that one’ s mind and being participates in reading a powerful novel or hearing a radio play as opposed to the decidedly less participatory experience of being on the couch and watching a television program.
Jesus, as one gospel writer noted in an aside, only spoke to people in these stories, known as parables. I take that to be largely the truth and that when one stubs one’s toe on a clunky interpretation you’re very likely reading the writer’s words, not Jesus’. Add to that the so many of the stories have been drilled into our heads in Sunday School lessons, obligatory sermons, and more until they have become pale, often altered versions of their original intent and power.
All this serves to bring Jesus as a person more squarely into focus, to call from the heart a wish that we could hear that voice as it surprised and delighted, confounded and confronted, pointing all the time to something just beyond our daily life to our daily life as a road to something utterly profound and mysterious. Storytelling is the language of the Poet, and at the heart of it is the belief that each person will hear the story and, at some level, understand it or find that it speaks to them, often in ways hidden and mysterious such that it haunts you again and again, perhaps springing into surprising clarity at a moment when one’s mind is sometimes elsewhere, a kind of time bomb planted that may burst forth if not the following week, perhaps the following year.
It is also impossible to be dogmatic about a story, to insist one take it as the same as a creed or a law. It is, in some ways, the opposite of a law and, I suspect, a person can only trust in storytelling if, underneath it all, he or she is aware, however dimly, of a great and flourishing Mercy beyond rules, beyond our own limitations, beyond our own dreams.
Blessing,
Brian
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