Using the language of the cosmic egg, author Felicia Murrell shares her experience of growing up with a strong sense of our story that was limited by the power of other stories:
I never questioned the world in which I grew up. I followed the rhythms set for me by those around me, understanding the world and how to situate myself in it through the lenses and lives of those in authority over me.… In the small rural North Carolina town of my youth, Blacks lived on one side of the tracks and Whites on the other…. Nothing about this life seemed abnormal. This was our story.…
No one talked about race. No one expressed discontent or named things aloud. No one mentioned the way things were. We didn’t buck the system. We kept our heads down and did what we were supposed to do. Success and advancement were others’ stories, for people across town on the other side of the tracks. We were to stay in our place and follow the natural order of things, which I did until I no longer could.
Like matryoshka dolls nesting within one another, my story as a small child was a fragmented, compartmentalized part of our story. In the shadow of dominant voices, my story felt less essential, even unnecessary. Without a clear understanding of the whole, my story was incomplete. But my story was all I knew until I was exposed to other stories.
Murrell highlights the importance of allowing other stories to draw us into intimacy with one another and into the union of the story.
When we remain stuck in the loop of our story without consideration of other stories, particularly when “our” is framed in (or lived in response to) a Eurocentric, patriarchal, dominant paradigm as the standard of measurement for all other stories, we are left with an incomplete model. Exposure to other stories is an invitation, a gateway to knowing. But it’s merely that—an opportunity to know. A welcoming and acceptance of diversity may create familiarity, but it’s not the same as knowing. Deep, intimate knowing empowers agency, offers reciprocity, and, through mutuality, affords us the opportunity to be the custodians of our own story without being othered as an aside or a concession to dissent….
How do we move toward each other in love, the truth of our authentic power? Perhaps, we welcome change instead of resisting it. To expand my worldview beyond the paradigm of Southern, Christian, rural or working poor to a larger cosmic frame that is inclusive, universal, affirming, and accepting, I needed to see the parts and the whole in all their majestic splendor and their messy complexity.
Transcendence is not a denial or detachment from my story or our story. It is an arduous commitment to truth-telling; to fully seeing; to empathetic listening that requires the work of living and be-ing in the world; of deep, intimate knowing; of moving beyond our theories and maps into relationship building.
Read this meditation on cac.org.
A few Shards from our friend Chris Green
“Job took a potsherd with which to scrape himself, and sat among the ashes.”
Job 2.8
“Christ is a shard of glass in your gut.”
Christian Wiman
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The opposite of powerlessness is not power but playfulness.
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Psalm 19.10: God’s words are honey not only because they are sweet but also because they are slow and sticky.
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Difficult passages of Scripture are like gastroliths—the gizzard stones toothless birds need to digest what they’ve eaten. If we cannot stomach the hard words in the Bible, we will get no nutrition even from the chewable ones.
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Jer. 23.29: God’s word is the hammer and you are the rock it shatters—into bread.
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Jesus lets his father die. The Father lets Jesus die. That “letting” is the room created by the infinite love of God so we can grow up into the fulness of Christ.
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It’s tempting to think God wants us to be Christians and that he wants us to make other people Christians—as many as possible, as quickly as possible. It’s tempting to believe God wants us to be Christian, believing as we should, living as we should. But no, what God wants is for us to be Christ’s, not just devoted students but dear friends and confidants, his nearest co-conspirators. And God wants something infinitely more even than that—for us to be Christ, bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh.
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The boundaries of our understanding are never the same as the borders of the faith.
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It is better to have received mercy than never to have needed it.
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The opposite of powerlessness is not power but playfulness.
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Finally, a house blessing:
Sweet Jesus, the Spirit who made all things was at home in your body as you were at home in your Mother’s. Bless us with your presence and make this house a sanctuary for us and for anyone who shares the road with you. Amen.
Keep praying for me!
