Stories that Shape Us

We have all told a story or two at some point, and so why not share a few jots on an opinion about telling stories.

Writing a story does not begin with a concept or belief or ideology. It begins with a person or two, a place with some dirt, and an event that is just real enough to believe and just fantastic enough to be worthy of telling. Flannery O’Connor claimed that if a writer begins with a person, there is no telling what will happen next.

When he was writing novels, especially The Idiot, Fyodor Dostoevsky was constantly conflicted about who was related and what they would end up doing. His novels are famously ideologically driven, and that is one of the reasons I enjoy his novels so much. But the ideologies are there only so long as people with all their psychological and moral complexity and ambiguity are there.

Where does a person begin? It could begin with a phrase, “Call me Ishmael.” It could begin with a suggestive circumstance. Hazel Motes sat on the train leaning one way and looking another; similarly, Raskolnikov walked down the stairs slowly as if indecisively. A person begins with movement, be it speech or gesture. Oceans and rivers and trains move and define people. Family reunions with all their potential explosiveness can move and define people as much as oceans.

But in any case, why would I be particularly interested in holding an opinion about writing fiction other than wishing to write fiction that is not quite terrible? Telling the stories of the Bible, following the movements of people with all their baggage and strangeness, crafting sermons that follow the contours of the biblical narratives themselves. That’s why. At least part of it.    

Walter Brueggemann has developed the rather interesting description of the preacher as poet, and he explains, “The preacher is called to weave an artistic connection between the text in its elusive, liberated truth, and the congregation in its propensity to hear the text in forms of reductionism” (Finally Comes the Poet). He does not encourage this description of preacher as poet because telling stories is neat. Rather, through narrative the preacher calls the congregation into an alternative reality, a reality that is different than the controlled ideological reality that so often gives shape to our experience. The poet preacher calls the congregation into an alternative reality of God’s promises. God’s promises of restoration involve people and movement, and this movement defines the people.    

Don Quixote and the Gospel of Christ

What can possibly be said about that knight errant extraordinaire Don Quixote that has not already been said? He is that great knight who took his bidding from the brilliant books of chivalry. After having cleaned his long-forgotten lance, shield, and metal cap he mounted his steed to seek adventure. Don Quixote is that knight who with great determination sought to right wrongs, correct injustices, and rectify abuses. He also just so happens to have been that mad knight who mistook an inn for a castle and who was subsequently humored by a disgruntled innkeeper. Our magnificent Don Quixote read too many adventure books, which consequently so consumed his mind that it left him totally mad, and thus he rode into the sunset of absurdum charging at windmills with his lance mistaking the windmills for monstrous giants. And I suppose every lunatic needs a follower or two, and hence Sancho, a completely inane donkey-rider, followed Don Quixote into every contrivable misadventure imaginable.

Proclaiming and embodying the gospel of Christ in our culture of pop psychology, preemptive-war, and self-obsession may seem as absurd as charging at windmills with a lance, though we might say that the person who charges at windmills is an intriguing case study.

Jesus looks like Don Quixote to our eyes. We, like the innkeeper, seek merely to appease Jesus. We go along with his fanciful babbling until it proves unprofitable and disruptive. We, like the innkeeper, wish for Jesus to leave us alone as soon as possible, and when he finally leaves, we are relieved to see him leave our peaceful town without further ado.

We seek to ensure safety and stability. Jesus did not make those things a priority for himself nor did he for his followers. It is easy to say the gospel is counter-cultural. However, I am beginning to feel the gospel’s foreignness. I am beginning to feel it in my bones. It seems so foreign to us that we don’t know what to do with it, so we make it into something else that we may continue augmenting our own priorities in our own way and according to our own rationality. We continue talking about “carrying our crosses,” but we make it compatible with our wish for safety, which is far more absurd than charging at windmills with a dilapidated lance.   

I imagine if Jesus were to walk down Wall Street or for that matter “Main Street,” he would appear to us to be a ludicrous dreamer, an absent-minded vagabond who has read Isaiah too many times and who knows nothing of honest pragmatism, for he is an alleged king who thinks victory comes through crucifixion. We wouldn’t vote for him; his health plan is too costly.  We do not want to carry a cross and walk a road that leads to bloody crucifixion. We, like Jesus’ disciples, duck for cover.

After spending several weeks eating, sleeping, and breathing the Gospel of Matthew, it struck me as foreign, foreign from the world we have constructed for ourselves. This feeling was accentuated when I watched the latest Batman movie. We simply do not want a king who is killed by his antagonists; we want a hero who protects us and who survives in the process. We want heroes who will keep us safe. None of us want a murdered king as our king. None of us believe that a war can be won without weapons, for believing that a war can be won without weapons would be like mistaking dangerous giants for harmless windmills.

We say it is “just” to kill rather than be killed. And so we kill our enemies and even celebrate their deaths. We murder for “liberty” and call it “justice.” If a person is a domestic murderer, then that person deserves the death penalty. However, this rationality knows nothing of the gospel of Christ, but we prefer doling out death because it is more conducive to our self-obsessed schedule and budget than the dangerous business of peace and restoration. At the foot of the cross, we divide and conquer instead of seeking forgiveness.

The absurdity of the gospel of Christ remains absurd without the vindication of Christ and those who follow him. It remains absurd without resurrection. We wish to make the cross and safety compatible because we have forgotten the last sentence of the Nicene Creed, the Apostle’s Creed, and the last act of the gospels. We have forgotten (or perhaps disbelieved) resurrection. And so the gospel of Christ remains absurd to our eyes. We then content ourselves with mythologizing Jesus, which is conducive to our attempts to live as long as possible at the expense of others. 

Les Miserables: “the immense”

Like War and Peace, Les Miserables is a book that many people reference but few people read. Both books each seem longer than Webster’s dictionary, which is reason enough for people to avoid them. To compare them would perhaps be a temptation, but they are as different as they are long.

In recent weeks, I have trekked through the fields and allies of Les Miserables, and I am beginning to think that even if people begin to read it they will not finish it simply because Hugo spends so many pages providing “back stories” for the characters. This, however, does not detract from the narrative; in my opinion, it adds layers to the story.

It would seem that the twentieth century would have us believe that there is one way to go about writing a novel: showing the story that the reader might eavesdrop. Hugo, however, has reminded me that there is a real art and beauty in telling a story. Layer after layer, Les Miserables unfolds divulging events from various persons’ lives that converge into conflict, terror, and redemption. It’s a five-act play with all the drama and irony Shakespeare could imagine.  

It’s no secret that I enjoy reading novels and that Dostoevsky is my favorite novelist. It would likely make sense then that I make a smattering of comments contrasting Hugo’s Les Miserables with bits of Dostoevsky’s corpus. First, however, a few notes of similarity are in order. Both seem to focus on the underbelly of society, and this focus sets a variety of trajectories that color the complexions of their respective narratives. In this bleak context of criminality and moral ambiguity, both paint poignant pictures of abuse, neglect, and deliverance of women – consider for a moment the tragic stories of Fantine in Les Miserables and Sonya in Crime and Punishment. This is especially appropriate considering it is most often women’s abuse that is ignored. There are numerous other similarities, but that will suffice for the moment.

Their respective anthropologies are no doubt a point of departure. For Hugo, it would seem that people are basically good and that it is society that grinds people into the sort of corrupt people that would commit abominable crimes. This would almost seem to be the case in Crime and Punishment, but Dostoevsky does not quite give us the luxury. Because the protagonist of Crime and Punishment, Raskolnikov, is a destitute student at the end of his rope who then commits murder, we might be inclined to deduce that like Hugo Dostoevsky shows Raskolnikov to be a product of a system that failed him. However, as the story builds, Dostoevsky shows Raskolnikov’s motives for crime to be sundry and inscrutable (in a letter to a friend, Dostoevsky admits that even he does not know why Raskolnikov committed the murder). Unlike Hugo, for Dostoevsky humans are not basically good. For Dostoevsky, rich and poor alike are prone to crime and/or immorality. Dostoevsky’s anthropology of rather cynical ambiguity and depravity seems to be at a different point of the spectrum from Hugo’s. It may prove illuminating for future considerations if Hugo’s focus on systemic complicity and Dostoevsky’s focus on personal complicity are held together.

This then sets the stage for another point of difference: the path to redemption. Because Hugo is in the business of disparaging the corrupt justice system, it is precisely the corrupt system that must break down before Jean Valjean can be free. For Jean Valjean good deeds, escape, and the cessation of the system’s pursuit shall pave the road to redemption. However, Jean Valjean still battles with his conscience even when he evades the justice system. In contrast, it is the justice system that paves the road to redemption for Raskolnikov; for Raskolnikov confession and prison shall be the road to redemption. In my judgment, it seems that the breakdown of corrupt systems and confession could beneficially be held together. For both Hugo and Dostoevsky, conscience is a major player in the lives of their protagonists, albeit the justice system is portrayed variously.

Intertwined with their respective anthropologies and their notions of redemption are their exemplar humans or Christ figures. Setup as the exemplar in Les Miserables is the Christ-like bishop who rides on a donkey and who quite literally cares for the poor and disenfranchised. This seems to focus on Jesus’ acts towards the poor – e.g. see the gospel of Luke: the gospel is for the poor. And by the end of Les Miserables, Jean Valjean the convict has evolved into an angel and Christ-figure from the seed that the bishop planted at the beginning of the novel. In The Idiot the Christ figure is a protagonist who basically lacks common sense not because the protagonist is stupid but because the protagonist has not been corrupted by the “common sense” of the world; for example, the protagonist is completely naïve in regards to relations with women. This seems to focus on Jesus’ sinlessness. It seems that their Christ figures bespeak their differing anthropologies: while Hugo focuses on acts of justice, Dostoevsky focuses on innocence.

There are numerous other comparisons that could be mentioned, but these are merely a few considerations that kept cropping up in my mind as I meandered through the shadowy cobblestone streets, dank sewers, and battlefields of Les Miserables.

Les Miserables is a touching story of abuse and healing, and it is no surprise that quite a few movies have been “based” on this story. It’s a story about the evolution of a galley slave becoming an angel, a convict becoming a christ. It’s one of the most memorable stories in world literature. I would like to recommend this novel. However, considering that we live in an age of sound bytes, I suspect almost nobody would be too keen on having such an immense adventure.

Death and Love

I have not felt the urge to write a blog for quite some time, so I have decided simply to mention a few of the books I have been reading recently each accompanied with a brief quotation.

The Aeneid by Virgil. "Ah, merciless Love, is there any length to which you cannot force the human heart to go?” (110, Penguin Classics).

The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann. "Love stands opposed to death – it alone, and not reason, is stronger than death” (487, Vintage).

The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats.

"Who dreamed that beauty passes like a dream?

For these red lips, with all their mournful pride,

Mournful that no new wonder may betide

Troy passed away in one high funeral gleam

And Usna’s children died”

(“The Rose of the World”, Scribner)

The Complete Poems and Plays, T.S. Eliot.

"Unreal City,

Under the brown fog of winter dawn,

A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many.

I had not thought death had undone so many.”

(“The Waste Land,” I. The Burial of the Dead; faber and faber)

The Sacred and the Profane by Mircea Eliade. "Religious man can live only in a sacred world, because it is only in such a world that he participates in being, that he has a real existence. This religious need expresses an unquenchable ontological thirst. Religious man thirsts for being. His terror of the chaos that surrounds his inhabited world corresponds to his terror of nothingness” (64, Harcourt).

The Rise of Christianity by W.H.C. Frend. "Christianity arose from the life, preaching, and death of Jesus of Nazareth” (12, Fortress). This opening statement of the first chapter illustrates this book’s rather peculiar underplaying of the importance of Jesus’ resurrection. Accordingly, I suggest this book be read in conjunction with The Resurrection of the Son of God, which expounds upon the significance that Jesus’ resurrection had for the early Christians.

I did not realize until after I compiled these brief quotations that they all involve death. I had not planned that; I did not plan to be so gloomy. However, I think it is important not to ignore death. I think it is important to realize that death is the fate of us all and that with Christ death loses its sting.

isolated and without the gods

I am currently reading The Aeneid. It is a beautiful and tragic story, but good stories are tragic. Reading The Aeneid has reminded me of the narratological difference between classical stories and modern stories. For example, there is a bit of a difference between The Aeneid and Nausea. A litany of differences and similarities could probably be compiled, though I am not interested in compiling such a list. However, I am interested in the fact that The Aeneid is far less focused on providing the audience with every jot of Dido’s phenomenology. Instead, the motions of her heart are intimately entwined with wishes of the gods and fate; there is a microcosm and a macrocosm, and the microcosm must conform to the macrocosm. And in Nausea Roquentin is not concerned about the gods. He wishes only to divulge his personal nightmare. In Nausea there is only an inconsequential individual; there is only a microcosm. With these thoughts in mind, I wonder how the Odyssey and Ulysses would match up. I suspect it would epitomize what I’m talking about.

I used to think that modern novels were sophisticated for their keen psychological insight, and in some cases I still think that. However, reading The Aeneid reminds me that the vast majority of modern stories are but footnotes. That said I do not wish to set modern stories over and against classical stories or vice versa, though I do have affinities for modern stories. I am mostly interested in the fact that story telling has changed. Also, I am interested in how we got from point A to point B, and I really don’t think that it was a straight line.

In Shakespeare there appears to be both a microcosm and a macrocosm. The heavens reflect Hamlet’s heart, as do his poignant soliloquies. There is a macrocosm and a microcosm, but the macrocosm serves as a mere reflection of the microcosm – for example, the heavens function merely as an indicator of Hamlet’s turmoil; the macrocosm is not to be reflected by the microcosm. There appears to be a reversal in roles.

It might then be asked, did the Enlightenment strip us of the gods and fate? Did the Enlightenment strip us of the macrocosm? I don’t know precisely, but I do think it is interesting that by the nineteenth century the macrocosm seems to have been put aside as inconsequential. What truly matters then is the autonomous “I,” a move that had been fermenting for hundreds of years and finally came to fruition.

In some of my favorite novels, the macrocosm is peeking through, but their stories are not of cosmic proportions. If Alyosha doesn’t find Dmitri, then Dmitri may be in trouble but the kingdom won’t be lost and the world won’t end. The Brothers Karamazov is not an epic, but rather ironically a large element of the story is a sort of debate about there being a macrocosm of which the microcosm is to be a reflection.

And then as if to throw a wrench into things, we have stories that have remained such as The Lord of the Rings. There is Frodo, and there is the struggle between good and evil that is sweeping middle earth. There is a microcosm and a macrocosm, and they are reflective of each other. However, even this is more similar to Hamlet, for Frodo is not seeking to reflect a personified macrocosm.

In light of these crumbs, it might also be noted that we often tell the truth with stories. And as our way of telling stories has changed, it appears that the way we tell the truth has changed. It would be rather nice to say that truth is truth, but alas we think and speak truth; truth does not reside in an unchanging vacuum; it passes along various and ever-changing contours of human experience, from generation to generation. We once spoke of the gods and our wills being reflective of their wishes, and now we speak of individuals as if they are gods.

A Place for Fiction in Faith

I remember a particular day in college when a fellow student told me I should spend less time reading novels and more time reading the bible. I responded with a smile and a few lines of admiration for his fervor, but what I said to him was miles apart from what I was thinking. There were many things I wanted to say to him, but probably most of all I wanted to know why many Christians find no room for fiction in faith.

For many folks in Christian circles, fiction is something of entertainment and is thereby of lesser value than a Christian devotional book or the latest spiritual book by so and so (take your pick who the author is). That fiction is often put to some lower level of importance is sad and ridiculous. Look at the best stories ever told. They are all fiction (see the parables of Jesus for example).

Before considering fiction and the bible, I shall consider novels and devotional books because it seems that Christians nowadays read devotional/spiritual books about as much as anything, maybe even more than the bible itself.

I need only to survey briefly a few personal favorites to point out that the latest devotional/spiritual books do not stand a chance. The Brothers Karamazov shows more vividly the ramifications of depravity, doubt, forgiveness, and love than any contemporary devotional book. A Tale of Two Cities does more to indicate the harsh disparity between rich and poor than the myriads of contemporary Christian books on generosity. War and Peace possesses more than any spiritual book pertaining to the existential predicament and journey of humans. The Lord of the Rings does more to show the realization of hope and despair than any devotional book ever conceived. I am laughing at myself for even comparing these novels to some of the devotional/spiritual books I have come across.

Many Christian folks are quick to pick up a devotional/spiritual book instead of the bible. To these folks I want to say, “Pick up A Tale of Two Cities or Crime and Punishment or Anna Karenina instead.” In response some may say, “But a devotional gives me what I need right now and it’s easier to read and it’s more accessible.” To that I might say, “First, how do you know what you need right now? Second, the struggle of reading a thick book is part of what makes the process fulfilling and edifying; it’s an opportunity to build qualities such as patience, something we Christians in America need to acquire.”

I am treading on dangerous ground here. I am not saying the reading of a novel should replace daily devotions, i.e. prayer and bible reading. However, I am suggesting that a good novel may be a much-needed substitute for a devotional/spiritual book.

It might be pointed out that devotional books are functioning differently than these novels that I have mentioned. I will not mount an entire argument here, but I will remark briefly. Devotionals may seem initially different than some of these novels, but in the final analysis these novels will likely serve to shape a person in similar though in even more profound ways than an average devotional book. That brings me to my next point.

But why read these novels of mere “entertainment” when I could be reading the bible?

Permit me a tangent. I remember when in college a few of us were debating about the importance or unimportance of philosophy, which involves a dash of irony. Our opponents contended that philosophy is not practical. To that I decided to turn their rationale on its head; I responded that philosophy is the most practical of all disciplines, for we use philosophy more than any other discipline, be it implicitly or explicitly. Of course, I was being a bit facetious but not entirely, for even they were making use of philosophical argumentation (though shabbily) as they argued against us.

When it comes to reading fiction, I think it is similar to what I argued in college about the practicality of philosophy. By reading fiction, our imagination and our sense for literary drama, beauty, and narrative structure are formed. This is crucial for reading the bible. We can use the fruits of reading fiction in our reading of the bible.

To this some might say, “Perhaps, but reading the bible makes me a better reader of the bible.” I might respond, “Perhaps, but wait just a minute. Reading the bible with all the verse markings, annotations, and personal baggage from Sunday school and years worth of sermons makes many of us susceptible to reading the bible on rigid railroad tracks, incapable of seeing the many unexplored dimensions of a given biblical text.” Developing as a reader and more specifically developing as a reader of the bible seems to require that our reading involve stories from outside that may form us as readers.

I’m finding that even now I am learning to read. I said this to my older sister in Albania, and she laughed because it is rather funny that I am still learning to read at the age of twenty-four. I suppose I am a slow learner. However, I am learning that by reading fiction I am developing as a reader.

So my first point pertains to content. There are many good novels out there that are simply more worthwhile than the vast majority of devotional/spiritual books out there. My second point pertains to we the readers. Reading a healthy diet of fiction exercises our imagination, perception, mental agility, and ability to read a story well. The fruits of reading good fiction may then be put to use when reading and discussing the bible. But keep in mind that fiction is to be enjoyed not just used as a tool.

A few novel suggestions:

The Movie Goer by Percy

A Tale of Two Cities by Dickens

Crime and Punishment by Dostoevsky

Moby Dick by Melville

The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoevsky

Anna Karenina by Tolstoy

The Lord of the Rings by Tolkien

Do not be daunted by the length of these novels. Think of the length of a novel as the size of a treasure chest. The longer the novel, the more room there is for gold.

Crumbs: Hamlet and Consciousness

The title to this blog involves two of my perennial interests, especially so when I was in college. Hamlet the Shakespearian play and Hamlet the character are each among my favorites in literature. Consciousness lists near the top of my curiosities in whatever field I happen to be reading at the moment, usually philosophy or theology or literature (I admit ignorance regarding psychology, which makes me an unequivocal layperson on the topic). Needless to say, Hamlet and consciousness overlap to a large degree.

Harold Bloom, a noted literary critic, regards Shakespeare as the inventor of the human (in literature) due to Shakespeare’s creation of Hamlet. Many people “see” consciousness in Hamlet, and this seems to be due to Hamlet’s soliloquies. Hamlet seems to demonstrate a keen self-awareness and disillusionment. It is little surprise then that many writers (Kierkegaard, Dostoevsky, Joyce, Sartre, etc.) of varying classes have been drawn to Hamlet, for Hamlet displays all the qualities of a self-aware individual. He is an excellent case study for phenomenology.

Consciousness is often proclaimed to be a mystery – Hamlet himself says so, and indeed it seems to be the case. It is elusive, and sometimes strikes me as a mere philosophical muddle that we are guilty of describing poorly and consequently consider it inscrutable.

There is a twist with Hamlet’s self-awareness. Walker Percy remarks on consciousness in general saying, “The paradox of consciousness is that the stranger we meet on the street and glance at for a second or two we see more clearly than we shall ever see ourselves” (“Is a Theory of Man Possible?”). Percy seems to be a bit facetious here, but there may also be some truth to his analysis. If Percy isn’t too far off the mark, then it is we the readers/hearers who see Hamlet more clearly than he could ever have seen himself; and yet we see him only with processes and patterns of thought that seem largely out of our control.

Hamlet is considered to be a self-aware individual, and yet he is mostly unaware. We see Hamlet, but we see him according to patterns of which we are unconscious. Are he and we interacting in an ambiguous Bermuda Triangle of the unconscious? But what am I saying?

When we “see” Hamlet’s consciousness and when we speak of consciousness in general, we should likely speak briefly of anthropology more generally, for what we are doing – when we are seeing Hamlet and speaking of our own consciousness – involves anthropological constitution. If it is accepted that humans are constituted by materials, then it might also be said that these materials working together create a synergy that produces what we often call “consciousness.” These materials are basically “unconscious.” This means that we humans, though you could say we are “conscious” beings, are largely “unconscious.” It is this immense “unconscious” side of us that paves the roads for consciousness and consequently has much to do with determining our patterns of thought, albeit not entirely because our contexts also seem to contribute to paving the roads for our patterns of thought but to this we indeed are also largely unconscious.

It may be the case in literature or philosophy that we consider the degree of a person’s self-awareness according the perspicacity of their phenomenology. And yet a portrait of a person’s phenomenology is only a single window into their dynamic being. And this single window only sees a product, and this product is seen only by a product. What is called “raw realism of subjectivity” is not raw (though “raw” may denote “less polished”); it is a polished product, polished by the seemingly unconscious materials that contribute to our constitution and by our context.

It is in part because we are largely unconscious beings that we need to practice habits, for it is with physical habits that have the potential to condition those “unconscious” aspects of who we are and consequently those conscious aspects of who we are that we contribute consciously to forming our unconsciousness. It is habits then that have the capacity to train us comprehensively. With habits we can train those tangible “unconscious” aspects of who we are, which contribute to that synergy that contributes to the rise of consciousness. It is difficult and elusive for “me” to discern the line between what is conscious and unconscious, for I find myself stumbling into habits of thought all the time, which seem random and largely unconsciously engendered. This would, I suppose, be an example of “slipping” into habits. However, I would contend that we need to learn to practice “intentional” habits of thought and behavior, lest we “slip” into detrimental habits, which have comprehensive ramifications.

This blog may seem as if I am going down a dead end road of materialism, which of course I am not. I have not said a word about God and God’s relation to humanity, which entails involvement of consciousness but does not require consciousness to be “immaterial.” Consequently, I have also not commented on the nature of spirituality, though spirituality also entails involvement with consciousness. Needless to say, speaking of consciousness as inadequately as I have done here does not insinuate nor necessitate a completely materialistic anthropology.

In this blog, I have spoken generally and as such rather vaguely, but I am merely emphasizing that we humans are indeed physical beings. This is obvious, but it is often (it seems) overlooked. We are quite physical, and as oxymoronic as it may seem, we need to become aware of just how unaware we actually are that we might use our infinitesimal consciousness to train our immense unconsciousness. If human consciousness is an ocean, then human unconsciousness is a galaxy.

Hamlet said, “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy,” and I might add, “there are many things in heaven and earth, Hamlet, that give you dreams of philosophy.”

On Story: our world

No matter your trade, station, vocation, or hobby, at one point or another you will likely come across the opportunity to tell a tale or two, be it about the size of the fish you didn’t catch or the distance of the marathon you didn’t run. We all tell a tale or two given the occasion.

Our lives are storied lives; we live stories, and we live within stories. Stories make for us a symbolic world within which we may reside. Given this, I think not of stories to read “before I die” but of stories to read in order that I might live richly. Some stories are like an entire house, while other stories are like the furniture inside a house. I tend to think of my own life as a story similar to the latter and the biblical story as a story similar to the former. My story resides within the biblical story. The biblical story then creates a symbolic world within which I may reside. Sitting in a single room of the house will not, of course, divulge all the happenings in the rest of the house. Discovering other rooms then is half the fun, and discovering other rooms in the house provides more symbols with which I might engage life.

Needless to say, the bible is not the only story. There are myriads of other stories. Whether we realize it or not, we are furnishing our houses with the stories we watch, hear, and read. If this is the case, then we will surely be careful what sort of stories we involve in our furnishings. I doubt if anyone desperately desires to put a mud puddle in the middle of the living room. However, some stories are not pleasant, but they are important. Therefore, I do not suggest that anyone should furnish the house with only pillows. We need more than pillows, lest we make for ourselves a padded room – and those are for crazy people. Also, it might be said that it is quite easy to decorate your house without spending so much as a bead of sweat and a dollar. But those who are unwilling to do the work may find themselves in a house without windows, a house resembling a coffin.

Regarding stories in such a manner, it is then less about reading particular stories “before you die” and more about reading particular stories in order that you might live with them. Whether we like it or not, we live storied lives, and the stories we invite into the house will most certainly set the trajectory for the sorts of lives we will live and the sorts of stories we tell.

A Puff of Smoke in the Imagination

In what I consider to be Camus’ greatest novel, the Plague, the doctor reflects, “And since a dead man has no substance unless one has actually seen him dead, a hundred million corpses broadcast through history are no more than a puff of smoke in the imagination.” If this is in any way true, then it should come as little surprise that news anchors speak of death and suffering without so much as a tear. They speak of tragedy without apparent remorse – it seems that this runs in accord with a long-standing tradition of reporting a neutral history (but that is another matter). For the moment, I would like to draw attention to the fact that we are a society saturated with simulated corpses, and we are blurring the boundaries of fiction and reality. There seems to be little difference between reality TV and the recent “high profile” court case. Though there is a large degree of difference between war in the Middle East and war in our local cinema, the two seem contiguous in American consciousness. We see corpses. We see lots of them, piles of them, and yet we do not cry out for a stop. We race to the cinemas for more. When we get home from the cinemas, we turn on our TVs and hear of more disaster. The transition from cinema to the evening news on TV, from fiction to reality seems slight. We have made life a stage and blurred the difference between fiction and reality, and consequently we have thickened our skin toward the wrong things, namely people. Our hearts seemed to have grown callous to the sight of corpses and familial deterioration. It is, after all, for our entertainment.

Without a doubt, social media has revolutionized cultures and societies. This is scary and exhilarating. There is such a great potential! However, “With social media we praise our Lord and Father, and with it we curse human beings, who have been made in God’s likeness. Out of the same social media comes praise and cursing. My brothers and sisters, this should not be” (James 3:9-10). There are living bodies on the receiving side of our messages. There are living bodies on the receiving side of our comments, pictures, and video posts. How long ago was it that a person was encouraged to commit suicide while on the Internet? And I’ll wager a guess that there are many other stories like it. “My brothers and sisters, this should not be.” Social media has a seemingly infinite capacity for good and evil. If never before has the human tongue been tamed, how might we tame the ever evolving world of social media?

I have never given Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath much credit. I often consider it an average novel, written for a few high schoolers who will hate reading it. However, it records the methodical deterioration of a Midwest family’s dignity as they seek merely to survive. With each step, they stoop lower; they are forced to stoop lower and lower. By the end, a reader must ask, “Is there any dignity left? And if there is not, when was the line crossed, when was dignity relinquished?” These are important questions, and I might add, “At what point do we murder other people’s dignity through social media?”

With the proliferation of technology, with the fast paced evolution of technological capability, the church needs to consider its profound situation. For now the value of both dead and living bodies seems to be losing their worth in the American consciousness, whether or not this is consciously realized. This is vitally important. The church must not miss the train on this issue; the church must not let this go unchallenged, unqualified. To this, to the rise of social media, the church must recover its prophetic voice more than ever, for even the sight of corpses and the knowledge of other living bodies are merely puffs of smoke in our imaginations.

Perhaps, a proactive start might be to hesitate and weigh carefully each word, picture, and video before posting. Perhaps, a proactive start would be to counteract the brutality with a few kind words and simple gestures of grace. This is surely possible. Just as the tongue may be used for good and evil, social media may be used for both good and evil. Let it be for good, and let us remember the value of other human persons.

Personal Continuity: Obvious yet Elusive?

I shall begin with a question and shall end without answering it. “Whence is personal continuity?” It might be said I am little more than this physical body. When I die and become compost and am eventually recreated perhaps the recreated version of me is the same me by virtue of my being preserved in the mind of God. In contrast, it might be said that I am physical with a sort of soul in which case my personal continuity lies with the soul. Either option, among many others, may offer a degree of solace. However, I find them each to be a bit inadequate regarding personal continuity in narrative (in response it might be said that the narrative is the personal continuity, but this is rather unhelpful when seeking to build personal continuity inside the narrative).

At what point does a reader or hearer meet a person in a narrative? Is it the learning of a name? Is it physical description? Is it the peculiar vernacular in a dialogue? Is it repetitive behaviors? Is it a combination? Perhaps, a reader or hearer never feels that he or she has “met” the person. Then in that case at what point does a reader or hearer feel as though there is someone to continue meeting over the course of the narrative? And if the reader or hearer continues meeting this person, what is “holding” that fictive person together so that it is the same fictive person that a reader or hearer is meeting?

Though it may be said that over the course of a narrative a person/protagonist “evolves” or matures, that hardly solves the problem. That is the problem. Of course, someone like Natasha in War and Peace perhaps matures into a fine young lady far from the terribly immature young girl in the beginning of the story, but it seems as though the Natasha at the end of the story is still the same Natasha from the beginning of the story, however matured she may be by the end. It is the immature Natasha who matured. And yet who or what is maturing? What, in a sense, is preserved? What is the “material” (that which is Sonya) that matures but is still the same “material”? I fear words such as “essence”, yet is that what I am pretending is necessary?

Again, speaking of essence and nature and soul and the like may provide some solace for some folks in some cases, but that sort of talk seems rather unhelpful for maintaining personal continuity in a narrative, especially when endeavoring to write a narrative. I care not if such diction is in vogue or not. What matters here is simply the retention of a person throughout an entire narrative while maintaining a development of the person that coincides with the dénouement of the narrative.

On the other hand, how might there be personal continuity, if the chronology is scrambled? In this case the development of the person does not coincide with the dénouement of the narrative in any straightforward way. If the chronology is scrambled, then it is up to the reader or hearer to piece together jagged fragments. I recently read Absalom, Absalom! and this was the case. I must say piecing together vague and unreliable fragments of Thomas Sutpen did not offer much hope that I would end with a clear portrait of Sutpen. But I suppose that even with an “ordered” chronology I may not end with a clear portrait of this person named Natasha. However, that I am supposing there is a Sutpen to piece together is precisely my problem. No matter if the chronology is scrambled, I am still supposing there is a person to unscramble, and that seems to insinuate that there is some sort of obvious and elusive personal continuity.

Am I merely seeking to discern an arcane shroud that lies behind the name? Is there not a shroud to be discerned? Well, that there is the story would seem to suggest that there is a shroud to be discerned. Of course, there are innumerable variables and philosophies at play in each of these narratives, so I do not mean to suppose that they are basically the same. Furthermore, I do not mean to ignore the various philosophies at play. However, I do wish to begin to discern how personal continuity might be established when writing a narrative. At the end of a story, a writer will surely ask, “Is this protagonist one or twenty persons?”

“Whence is personal continuity?” Perhaps, my question is much ado about nothing or is simply barking up the wrong tree. But even so, Flannery O’Connor still sat down in front of her typewriter for two hours each morning and wrote stories about people who by the end seemed to have become our acquaintances.

Narrative, Reduction, and Recovery

Complex systems theory suggests that a whole is more than the sum of its parts (or something of the like). Perhaps similarly, a narrative is more than the sum of its parts. A narrative may be “more” in so far as the narrative is distinct from being merely a grouping of its parts, distinct from being merely an unwoven string of people and events. Like an intricately woven tapestry being something other than threads lain side by side on a table, a narrative is “more.” This may be close to the truth, but the past two hundred years of critical hermeneutics suggests otherwise.

Operating in accord with an atomistic perception of language, the past few hundred years of critical method have considered the meaning of a given text to depend upon individual parts. The meaning of a text relies entirely on individual words and the grammar, syntax, etc. Thus, the synergy of the narrative is ignored and is reduced to individual parts. This ignores the possibility that the whole may “more” or something other than a mere disconnected grouping of its parts. This sort of reduction of a narrative is tantamount to the vivisection of what I have previously referred to as “synthetic philosophy.”

Hans Frei does more to explain the effects pre-critical and critical methods have had on narrative than I suspect I will ever do. But I shall offer an egregiously brief summary here. Pre-critical methods accepted the narrative and its world, and critical methods judged the narrative and its world according to how we presently perceive the world. This change in method raised as many new questions as it answered previous questions. To answer the new questions, a sort of polarization ensued. Some asserted that the language in Scripture referred to actual historical objects (and the actual meaning of referents could be determined according to grammar, as mentioned above), while others asserted that the religious language found in Scripture narrative is merely time-conditioned consciousness which does not necessarily refer to historical objects, people and events and geographical places. This polarization disregarded the nature of narrative and its world. In both cases, narrative was lost.

How might narrative and for that matter its meaning be recovered? This is a loaded question, which requires thorough attention. For now just a tidbit will do. First, narrative’s distinctiveness from its parts must be acknowledged. Perhaps, an example will offer some further assistance. If we consider, the opening sentence of Flannery O’Connor’s “Green Leaf,” we might see the synergy of parts forming a narrative distinct from its parts. “Mrs. May’s bedroom window was low and faced on the east and the bull, silvered in the moonlight, stood under it, his head raised as if he listened – like some patient god come down to woo her – for a stir inside the room.” For the sake of brief analogy (and omitting the philosophy of language in which she is operating), let us pretend that each word represents a sentence or even a paragraph in a larger narrative. “Bedroom window,” floating apart from the whole may be interpreted to mean a myriad of different of things. Ah, but it is “Mrs. May’s bedroom window,” etc. In conjunction with its narrative, “bedroom window” has a specific meaning or use. This may seem to be a rather rudimentary observation, but this observation is distinct from saying only it has a referent or time conditioned consciousness. Allowing the narrative to shape and provide its own meaning is something rather different, and it is not simply giving preference to context (for that would atomistic). Letting the narrative retain its own world of meaning requires that we consider the narrative to be its own complex system, which has its own particular uses and meanings of words but also whose uses and meanings of words must be considered in light of the synthetic whole instead of its parts lest the meaning of the whole be lost. But alas this is only the beginning. However, at least, acknowledging narrative and its distinctiveness from its parts is a start. More of this later.

A Winepress

Good writing seems to come most naturally to a few eccentrics every generation or so. This is likely the case for a multiplicity of reasons. One reason may be that many good writers lived lives just off the beaten trail and lived a few inches off kilter. They did not always tread on paved roads but on thorny and shadowy courses. Their paths contributed to who they would become as writers.

I doubt Fyodor Dostoevsky wished to face a firing squad. I doubt he wished to be sent to Siberia, but Siberia granted him torments that would shape the rest of his career as a writer. Of course, he published a few mediocre books previous to his time in Siberia, but he wrote his greatest and most existentially profound books after his sufferings in Siberia.

Flannery O’Connor suffered from lupus and died when she was only thirty-nine, but her pain seemed to have contributed to what she believed to be her calling, writing. For two hours each morning she sat in front of her typewriter in order to write, but she could not sit there any longer because the pain was too great. She did this in her twenties and thirties. Even on her deathbed she faithfully toiled over “Parker’s Back,” one of her many short stories. She did not choose this suffering or early death, but she persevered and let it shape her and let its intensity bleed into her writing.

These are just a few people who lived rather eccentric lives, lives just off the beaten trail, lives full of various torments, though there are many other torments I have left unmentioned. And it was these torments that shaped them and their writing. It was these torments that contributed to shaping what we now consider treasure, good writing filled to the brim with insight, horror, and wit.

It may be the case that the American Dream, if realized, cultivates poor writers with shallow content. Nobody desires to spend years in Siberia or to be essentially housebound in the prime of life. But such has been the case with some of the greatest writers ever to have lived. The American Dream, on the other hand, seems to quell potential hidden deep within.

Here I say that suffering can be a sort of winepress. This does not mean that all sorts of suffering are in this way a wine press. There are some sorts of suffering that seem absolutely unredeemable, that seem to be consequences of sheer brokenness. But here I note only that not all suffering is undesirable. Some suffering is the road to the highest quality wine. Some suffering is truly a winepress.

Many Books on Doubt and Ambiguity

Needless to say much ink has been spilt for thousands of years regarding the issues of doubt and ambiguity. Job curses the day of his birth. The psalmist says his bones are in agony. Hamlet’s many soliloquies bespeak the gnawing inside of him. Raskolnikov grows physically sick toiling over matters of murder and meaning. As Prince Andrei lies mortally wounded on the battlefield, he stares up at the sky and contemplates existence and thoughts of home flood his consciousness. Roquentin is surrounded by people yet he feels sick with loneliness among other things. There are numerous other fictional people to add to the list, but what do all these fictional people indicate about the nonfictional world of people? Of course, a glance at historical contexts and myriads of reasons and causes will surface. It might be said that books grieving over existential doubt and ambiguity are induced by a trifling interest. It might be said that many people continue reading such books out of curiosity. However, generally speaking, I think there are other reasons.

These fictional people were squeezed out of their authors as if squeezed out of grapes in a wine press. The grapes endured great suffering but for great result. Stanley Hauerwas said that we would lose something if Dostoevsky had lived today and we made him a psychologically “well adjusted person.” So perhaps doubt and ambiguity are not thoroughly evil.

A rudimentary observation will likely note that doubt and ambiguity are described with rather vague metaphors. This seems true and with good reason. Metaphors seem to capture what plain language cannot. Dark-grey clouds hang low overhead, and they suggest an imminent storm. The air grows thick and bursts of light flash through the sky. With a smile and a nod, the trapdoor falls and the rope grows taunt. Choking and kicking of feet. Then calm. The feeling of existential doubt may be vague, but it is certain. This is a reason for the use of metaphor. The metaphor may be slippery and difficult to pinpoint, but it is apt.

Again, why the fascination with such existential wallowing as doubt and ambiguity? As of yet, I have only mentioned these issues as expounded by the ink on innumerable pages. It may be that many have tasted the bitterness and then read Dostoevsky, and said, “Is it true? I am not the only one who has tasted this fruit?” I will wager a guess that so much ink has been spilt on the same issues because these issues are not merely interesting but they are unshakable and intrinsic. For these reasons, at least in part, much ink has been spilt and will continue to be spilt. As long as we humans continue to live outside the garden, we will continue to spill ink and to wallow and to groan and to read the ink that has been spilt.

A Grateful Heart and a Careful Eye

As I have experienced more of life bit by bit, I have realized that yes indeed I am my parents’ son. My inadvertent habits and mannerisms seem to fall not from the tree. I speak about important and unimportant matters as indirectly as possible. I mince words when I have the chance almost as if I am an Ent in the bloodline of the great Treebeard. This often ironic tendency seems akin to my dad, who has a way of making requests and assertions in a rather indirect way. One particular day in my teenage years, my dad called the house from his office.
“Hello?”
“Hey, Sam.”
“Hey, Dad.”
From this point I do not remember much save the following nugget of hilarity.
“Sam, do you think you could get someone to mow the lawn? The grass is starting to look a bit high.”
“Okay,” quickly looking around the house I had an epiphany, “but Dad I’m the only one here.”
“Yeah, okay, well if you could just get someone to do it that’d be great.”
And thus my dad has a tendency for the indirect, which I have unashamedly inherited and employ on a regular basis, though I like to think that I appreciate directness. My wife, Esther, can attest to this point. However, she has caught on, and now she likes to do it too. “Sam, could you get someone to take out the trash?” Of course, no one else is living with us.

I have inherited of few of my mom’s foibles too. She is what most people would consider a perfectionist. I think in that case “most people” are in the right. She has a propensity for reading, rereading, and rerereading etc. what she has been writing, be it a play, a paper, or a book. After rereading whatever it is for the umpteenth time, she remains dissatisfied, for she knows something is out of place or needs some subtle adjusting. I have inherited this proclivity with unmitigated enthusiasm. Whatever it is that I so happen to be working on, I check and recheck until I am seeing double. I know Esther laughs to herself about this. I often let my mom read what I have been writing (though she does not read these silly blogs, for then I would likely never get around to posting a blog!). One particular instance I let her read a piece of fiction I had been crafting, and the following ensued.
“Wow, Sam, this is great!”
“Thanks, Mom. So what’s wrong with it?”
She listed a whole host of things. I chuckled to myself knowing that I would have it no other way. After completing her laundry list, I showed it to her again.
“Is it ready do you think?”
“Well, Sam, I don’t know if I would say it’s finished yet. Just let it sit awhile, and then after you have developed some more as a writer perhaps you can go back to it and finish it.”

This could be taken poorly, but I enjoy her keen eye and perfectionism, knowing that I have indubitably partly inherited it, though I would not flatter myself to think that I have her same perspicacious eye. There are numerous other habits and mannerisms my parents have passed on to me, more than I care to mention here.

With these thoughts, I have come to realize that I am unavoidably not self-made. I have been and am shaped by others, most notably my parents. This reality has brought to my attention the fact that I will be doing something analogous to my children. It’s a scary thought. My goodness! To think that there will be a few little human beings walking around in the wide world having inherited some of my silly foibles. Fortunately, they will have inherited some of Esther’s too. Parents have the potential to bless the world or to curse it. And which they choose the world will see on display through their children.

A Few Recommendations

Jesus and the Victory of God. This book was placed in my hands, and before that moment I had not seriously considered reading it though I had heard of it. I am very thankful for “accidentally” reading this book. It’s long, but it’s quite readable. Whether or not you have an interest in any of the quests for the historical Jesus, this is an edifying book. If you are interested in Jesus academically, this is a good book. If you desire most of all to meet Jesus again for the first time, this is a good book. A lot of attention is aptly paid to Jesus' death and resurrection. But what about his life? Wright’s discussion is thorough, keen, and speaks on a variety of levels.










The Resurrection of the Son of God. I was spurred on to read this book after finishing Jesus and the Victory of God. I was not disappointed. This is a rather exhaustive discussion of resurrection language, its uses, and significance in the pagan world, the Jewish world, and especially in the early Christian communities. It was absolutely exhilarating to consider the early Christians' valuing of Jesus' resurrection and of their own future resurrection. I hope this book contributes to altering many of the current interpretations of resurrection language.







The Eclipse of Biblical Narrative. After having heard professors from different fields refer to this book as illuminating, I decided it was likely a good idea to read through it. I have not read anything that comes close to this book regarding hermeneutics. As indicated by the subtitle, this book is an overview of critical methods over the past few hundred years. Again and again, I located myself in the discussion and realized why I naturally make certain inferences. This is a valuable book, if for no other reason than engendering a reevaluation of critical method.










Beyond Liberalism and Fundamentalism. I read this for a class, and I am glad I did. For Christians and non-Christians this neat little book offers some insights into what on earth theological liberals and conservatives are fussing about. It turns out that the two camps may be merely in two separate spheres of reasoning and argumentation necessitated largely by modernity. Something’s gotta give. This is a rather brief book, but it is quite focused and offers some clarity regarding the water-and-oil relationship of liberals and conservatives.









Evangelism in the Early Church. This was an unlikely book to make this list. However, I think this is an important book to read for anyone who is involved in church. Green says, “evangelism was the lifeblood of the early church.” That may have been the case, but what does that mean anyway? And if that was the case, how does that compare to the contemporary church?

Ontological Quibbles: Postscript

The last entry was quite fragmented, as my entries are usually. As of late, I have felt unable to think to the contrary. However, I thought it would be appropriate to give the previous entry a postscript aimed at the issue of ontological distinction and development. But this will be no more thorough than any other entry, in fact less so.

Picking up where I left off…

If relationship has ontological significance and epistemology is a grammar for ontological nexuses, then the ontological difference between the pastor and the Hindu is with whom they each have relationship. The pastor allegedly has relationship with God. This relationship has profound ontological significance, and this may or may not be physically indicated by the community in which the pastor participates. Something analogous may be said of the Hindu, though I imagine it would look and sound much different. And in the pastor’s terms, the Hindu’s ontology would be without relationship with God, thus ontologically in the negative, which then ontologically distinguishes the pastor from the Hindu.

As a side note, which cannot and should not be omitted, praxis is a consequence of ontology. A nonreligious person may have certain practices, which seem rather similar to those of someone with a particular religious ontology. However, this nonreligious person, though he or she has certain practices, lacks the particular religious relationship which alters ontology (a horse may walk on its two back legs, but it is no more a human than when it walks on all four legs (a flippant example)). On the other hand, the person, whose ontology has been altered in accord with a relationship with God, shall begin a certain practice as evidence and as a consequence of the new relationship. Henceforth, this person’s ontology and praxis shall mutually inform each other as the person grows more fluent in relationship and proper praxis.

It may be said, for example, that the church is full of terrible people. This is a sound observation. Then it may be said, “how can it be that such a people have been ontologically altered due to their alleged relationship with God and consequent new praxis? If this is so, then God is a terrible one.” The last inference goes astray, for though the people may be a ragged group of deceitful egoists this is not evidence of God’s not existing or of God’s being a rather nasty brat. The last inference should be inverted. Instead of concluding that God must not exist or that God is nasty because God’s people are so. It may be concluded that God is one of mercy and grace that God should bestow such gifts upon even these such sordid people. Perhaps, God does so with the hope that the ontological alteration due to relationship will not be stagnant but will continue along with praxis to mold the people into something less ragged and nasty. Thus, ontological alteration due to relationship with God may be a reality, though socially it may seem as if nothing much has happened.

Fragments: Ontological Quibbles in Theology and Literature

What does theology have to say about ontology? What does literature have to say about ontology? Can they be mutually informative regarding this issue?

Over the course of a few years, I asked, “what is the essential ontological difference between the Hindu and the Methodist pastor?” (this inquiry could be ventured in a variety of ways, and there are many answers in theology, though I felt generally dissatisfied). They are after all right across the street from each other, not even two hundred feet. I erroneously began this inquiry with belief asking, “what is the ontological significance of belief?” I was gravely disappointed (belief has epistemological implications though not direct ontological implications).

Since then I have directed my inquiry in a different direction, and I have concluded that, though epistemology is a grammar for ontological nexuses, relationship not belief has (direct) ontological significance.

The importance of community for the sake of identity among other things is currently emphasized by many. (This correlates to the much discussed apparent contradiction that though we seem to be “knowers” we do not know ourselves but must rely on others knowing us to know ourselves - we see ourselves and have certain notions of ourselves, but are these notions accurate or fabricated or at least partial truths? We need other people to identify us, and we need other people inform who we are.) However, I think more often than not this hackneyed emphasis lacks clarity in so far as it inadequately shows the concrete reality of identity (it is limited by its expressiveness and lack of referent).

Often community is offered as a way of ratifying identity but these attempts seem to fall short in showing concretely what this means or what this terminology (“community”) is doing to indicate resolution regarding the issue of ontology. I suggest that, with the imaginative powers of literary theory and narrative, we may begin to grasp the concrete reality of what it is to identify and thereby validate ontology within the context of community (to validate ontology, a person must be capable of identifying what it is one is validating; thus, identity is crucial for ontology).

Do modern novels have the potential to help us begin grasping the concrete reality of what it is to identify and thereby validate ontology within the context of community? Maybe. Some can answer this only in the negative, for their writers had a much different agenda - showing the protagonists in isolation to reveal the true “nature” of the person (but in seeking to truly reveal the identity of the person the person was lost in phenomenological wallowings (isolation is an ontological vacuum-like relational inversion; the ontology is evanescent in this circumstance)). However, novels such as The Brothers Karamazov, a novel way ahead of its time, may be helpful in this area, for much of the identity and thus the ontology of the brothers (as even the title suggests) relies heavily on relationships. The immediate and also the extended communities of the brothers give tacit remarks and validations regarding identity and thereby ontology. We “know” Dmitri, Ivan, Alyosha, and Smerdyakov, according to their mutually informative communities. I began to realize the potential of The Brothers Karamazov regarding ontology, when Esther exclaimed after reading a disturbing passage seemingly focused on Dmitri, “where is Alyosha in all of this!” Then I realized, “yes, Alyosha is there! Dmitri is the brother Alyosha wishes with all his heart to save!” It in this unsettling passage that we see a snippet of Alyosha’s enduring mercy. He would wish to save even this mongrel (this could and should be explained further, but this is at least a start).

Should theology and literature be divided? With the example of the bible, we see that it is best not. In terms of identity and consequently ontology, the bible is easily (apart from its canonization) the highest quality theological treatise, if for no other reason than it captures the imaginative powers of literature and thereby shows concretely the reality of what it is to identify and thereby validate ontology within the context of community (think of Genesis and 2 Samuel as examples). To this end, theology should rightly appropriate the powers of good literature and find its home in narrative.

Literary theory, on the other hand, may do well to learn from theology in learning how identity and consequently ontology is validated (in community) and thus develop new means of crafting the identity and ontology of a given protagonist(s).

Narrative Voice

It’s a curious thing that often when we begin to describe or retell a story we begin describing not the story but our own creation that may or may not have analogs to the story that we are intending to retell. This is an issue for students, novelists, pastors, historians, and anyone holding a casual conversation on the street corner. It’s likely a helpful practice then to be aware of what we are doing when we retell a story.

There are some stories reported by a named or anonymous persona. This persona may be loquacious or laconic. The common denominator is the persona’s conspicuous presence in the telling of the story. Though the persona may not be directly involved in the story, the persona is involved in so far as the persona engages on occasion with the reader and the characters’ thoughts and actions. The persona in a sense commentates on the story while telling the story. Perhaps, at times, the persona budges into the front and center of the stage so that the people, places, and events of the story are a backdrop to the persona’s commentating. The story may then be pages and pages of commentary and less actual action by the given people in the story. This sort of narrative voice is often simplistically referred to as telling.

In contrast, there may not be a persona telling the story. You may begin reading or for that matter listening without any inclination that there is someone telling the story other than the fact that portions of narrative are included and excluded in the telling of the story. The people, places, and events are front and center throughout the entirety of the story. There is not a persona commentating on the story’s happenings. There are merely people doing and saying things. This sort of narrative voice may be referred to as showing (similar to telling, this form of narrative may take on numerous forms such as implied third person, first person reflective, first person stream of consciousness, etc, so there is not one single form of showing).

However, the distinction between telling and showing is naïve, for never is one form present and the other form absent. The difference then is that one form may be more present than the other. There are innumerable combinations. Gogol and Dickens come to mind as two novelists who do commentate but restrainedly, while there are some earlier novelists who find themselves most interesting and thus chat more than their characters. This lies in stark contrast with Sartre’s protagonist in Nausea. Antoine Roquentin journals about the world around him and within him. Sartre or Sartre’s possible persona is not commentating on Antoine. The reader encounters Antoine filtered only by the implied narration of the narrator, implied because some happenings are included while others are excluded, and even then it would seem that Antoine is his own narrator. Other examples of this sort of extreme showing are As I Lay Dying and The Sound and The Fury. However, showing may also be merely people doing and saying things without a chatty persona. An example of this sort of middle of the road type showing is seen in O’Connor’s The Violent Bear It Away or McCarthy’s Sutree. Telling and showing a story are both intermingled processes of telling a story and thereby including and excluding many people, places, and events. Though some stories may exclude a lot of events, no story is exhaustive, even for that matter War and Peace.

It seems nearly impossible then to retell a story that already formally tells (thus furthering the filtration of the events in the story) or to retell a story that accentuates the form of showing events as they happen. In either case retelling a story seems to subtract and add to the original story thereby creating something different (there are a few cases when a story can be precisely reduplicated but even those cases seem suspect). This seems to be the case even with stories told the first time around; the people, places, and events are filtered through a narrator. No matter which form of narration is employed, the narrator is a present filtration at least by implication. Thus, awareness of the form and limitation of narrative is indispensable no matter what telling or writing is at hand.

The student may find that self-awareness in the writing process heightens the accuracy and efficiency of his essays, for he may then begin to locate which narrative voice he naturally uses (fortunately or unfortunately), which he may then alter accordingly. The novelist may appropriate certain methods in writing that may enhance the fabric of the narrative and thereby avoid certain clunky foibles. The pastor may employ certain restraints while sharing a story thereby revealing a story that is vital in and of itself without distracting impositions. The historian may find that thinning the filter (fewer fabricated inferences) may prove to be much more exciting and informative for readers. And the person on the street corner retelling the comical happenings at work may find himself giving a much more lively account with more or less commentary. Thus, a crucial element in narrative voice is the awareness of the narrator, that he or she realize what he or she is and is not doing.