MindSpinner

An Anglo-Saxon poet singer was called a scop (pronounced shop). The word means “shaper.” It is the best word in all the world to look to in order to unfold the significance of storytelling. The poet storyteller was a shaper of stories - that’s simple enough. But stories are not merely stories, and this is what we must grasp: our stories shape our perceptions of reality, our notions of our own identity and that of others, and by extension our choices. We don’t just tell our stories; we live them – nations rise and fall by them, and in the end, so may a world. So this business of storytelling, of shaping the “realities” we choose to affirm and to act upon, turns out to be a matter of fundamental importance, indeed, of individual and collective destinies.

I’m currently reading Why God Won’t Go Away: Brain Science and the Biology of Belief (just got started, actually). There’s some fascinating science about how our brains function during meditative or religious experience here, and, for me, a useful overview of how our brains create a mind. The second portion of the book delves into speculation that disappoints scientific purists, but I’m happy for the science and interested in the speculation, too, as long as I keep sorted out where one ends and the other begins.

In the opening pages of the book, the authors explain their understanding of what our brains are up to:

The goal of every living brain, no matter what its level of neurological sophistication, from the tiny knots of nerve cells that govern insect behavior on up to the intricate complexity of the human neocortex, has been to enhance the organism’s chances of survival by reacting to raw sensory data and translating it into a negotiable rendition of a world. (15)

Our “negotiable rendition” of our world is made up of the stories we concoct about why things are as they are, about who we are, about who they are, what our purpose is, and what our relationship is with our world, with others, and with the universe itself, whether we envision that universe as a creation or a happening. Our stories only work if they optimize our chances of survival, and they don’t work if they drive us closer to extinction.

In my own head, I’ve been working for years to uproot the stories I might tell myself - or that others might tell me that would work to cripple or diminish me in some way, and I strive to replace them instead with stories that continuously open my life into possibility and allow me to breathe and to live authentically. I won’t say I do not sometimes feel defeated; there are difficult battles I must quietly wage day in and day out, without certain hope. But I will not dwell in defeat. I will pick myself up every time and confront each day with a story that opens into possibility, however limited that possibility may seem, even if it’s just the peace I glean pulling weeds in the garden. If I had not done this over years, I might be curled up into a little ball by now. A principle seems to be emerging: if I embrace possibility in and out of my days, then possibility regards my pluck and embraces me back, sometimes all out of measure. This is good to know and comes to constitute a kind of faith.

All this said, my interest in our renditions of reality as shaping forces in our destinies extends far beyond the personal, to the national and the global, and that’s really where I’m headed with this thread, except that right this minute I have to finish packing the car and drive a long way instead for a family visit at which head and heart should be totally present, so there’s going to be a few days’ hiatus between point A and point B.

Best wishes for warmth, light, and love in the closing days of 2005.