Finding the Thread of the Story

Long before there was the first written word, people looked up at the night sky and sensed that their life on Earth was part of a larger world, a larger story.  Once the rhythmic, circular movements of the sun and stars were charted, the mathematical harmony of that larger story came over time to be called "the music of the spheres" --  circular movements seeming to repeat themselves to eternity. However, in the 20th century, a different but also awesome story emerged from modern astronomers.  It is the story of how our universe began with a Big Bang, leading to the formation of galaxies, to our Sun, then to our planet Earth, and finally to life upon it.

Because that often-repeated narrative has come out of the discoveries of modern science, it seems so scientific, so objective.  Unlike ancient cultures' imaginative creation stories with their own messages to tell, the modern scientifically-based narrative gives the appearance of being just facts, not prejudiced by human desires.  Often overlooked, however, is one critical way in which that modern scientific narrative is unconsciously shaped by a human bias.

Think about it:  Why is that story of our universe, which begins with the Big Bang, always told with life on planet Earth as the outcome of its narrative?  Why is it told as a chain of events leading to the development of planet Earth?  A narrative could be constructed just as scientifically that would lead to planet X in galaxy Y, or to planet Z circling around one of many other suns in a different solar system.  The actual history of the universe is that of countless causes-and-effects scattering throughout the cosmos in innumerable directions.  Multiple chronologies, not just the one that leads to our home planet.

Thus analyzed, that often-repeated narrative about the universe that modern science has made possible reveals itself to be not totally objective.  But that is just as well.  After all, what meaning could it bring to us if we did not follow the thread of the story that leads to life on Earth and even to us?  The scientists who tell our modern story of the universe have thus revealed themselves to be not just scientists but also narrative-makers -- storytellers!  They have thus engaged in an ancient art.

Narratives are not simply an imaginative form of art. They can also be sources of knowledge. We humans can comprehend the world when we isolate threads that form a narrative.  The modern theologian John Haught speaks to this point when he writes:

"For human subjects the world is not experienced, at least in a rich or interesting way, apart from stories....  There is a narrative quality to all of our experience, and it is from stories, whether mythic or historical, that we acquire any sense or reality at all."

Looked at in still another way, one message of modern science's story of the universe is that out of the universe have emerged, of all things, storytellers!

~~~

Has your life been a story?  How?

(The Haught quotation is from Is Nature Enough?

  Meaning and Truth in the Age of Science, by John F. Haught.  © 2006. p. 46.)

Loving Rain

The last half of the 20th century and first part of the 21st saw many spiritual writers who were widely read:  Thomas Merton, Henri Nouwen, Thich Nhat Hanh, Kathleen Norris, and others. Although Thomas Merton is not my favorite (just a personal taste), there is part of one essay of his I like so much that I can return to it every few years.  It is that part in which he describes his experience of rain while he is alone in his cabin in the woods.

Merton's description of the rain is as good as about any nature writer's, but he puts a slight twist on his experience by interpreting the sound of the rain as being like speech:  "It fills the woods with an immense and confused sound.  It covers the flat roof of the cabin and its porch with insistent and controlled rhythms."  The heart of the significance of rain, as Merton understands it, is that rain is a gift, in contrast to a human society that has become increasingly commercialized.  Merton makes that point in the opening words of his essay:  "Let me say this before rain becomes a utility that they can plan and distribute for money.  By 'they' I mean the people who cannot understand that rain is a festival, who do not appreciate its gratuity, who think that what has no price has no value...."

A "gratuity."  A gift.  To use a theological word, grace.

Many years ago, I noticed how in the U.S., weathermen on TV almost invariably described predicted sunny weather as "good" and predicted rainy weather as "bad."  What a narrow, city-centered viewpoint, I realized -- one that thought of rain mostly in terms of the inconvenience of driving on wet city streets.  Or temporarily avoiding them until the rain subsides.  (Only when droughts have been occurring in some areas do we have weathermen looking forward hopefully for rain.)  But any farmer knows that what is really needed are alternations of sun and rain.  And all our human lives depend on the farmer's success.

Thomas Merton depicted the rain he experienced as "a festival."  His use of that word made me remember a photograph I saw in Life magazine when I was a boy.  It was of children and youth in a city in India, dancing about outdoors, completely drenched by the first monsoon. They had been parched for so long that they knew rain was a gift, and knew how to celebrate it as a festival, even to the point of bathing themselves in it.

More than that, as I've come to celebrate rain, I can also celebrate it as being ecumenical. That fact was expressed well by one second-century Jewish Midrash (commentary) on a Biblical psalm.  To appreciate this statement about rain, we need to realize that in the Jewish faith-tradition, the central written teaching -- the Torah -- is celebrated as a great gift because it enabled people to create a community together.  Nevertheless, there is, as this Midrash, explains, an even greater divine gift:

"The sending of rain is an event greater than the giving of the Torah.

 The Torah was a joy for Israel only,

 but rain gives joy to the entire world, including animals and birds."

~~~

Do you have a memory of an occasion in which you experienced rain as a gratuity?

(The Merton quotes are from "Rain and the Rhinoceros"

 in Raids on the Unspeakable by Thomas Merton, © 1966.  pp. 9-10.)

(The Midrash is Midrash Psalms 117 and is taken from The Green Bible, © 2008.  p. I-99.)