Truth or Meaning?
"The truth is rarely pure and never simple." — Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest
It's highly unlikely that anyone, Christian or otherwise, will spend time arguing whether or not the Good Samaritan was a real person, or if the man he helped was a real person, beaten by real bandits. Likewise, people are not seeking historical evidence for the man known as the prodigal son, nor for his dad or brother. These are stories, parables, and we accept them as such.
I've been reading Tales of the Arabian Nights on and off over the past months, and have been intrigued, and delighted by the multi-layered stories about storytellers telling stories about storytellers telling stories... Seen within this tradition, the Gospels could be understood as stories about a storyteller. If the stories told within each gospel are effortlessly accepted as stories, why not the story about the storyteller itself? Why must the outer story be true? More poignantly, does it matter if it is true or not?
Another book I recently completed, The Last Week*, opened my mind to just how far to the left our brains have drifted when contemplating metaphysical ideas. We seem to have surrendered meaning for accuracy. We seek truth, which sounds like a noble endeavour, but in practical terms means we demand evidence—somewhat less noble, and actually rather small-minded. Fundamental Christians and hard-core (e.g. Dawkinsian) atheists, suffer from the same disorder: context blindness. The arguments between the two are focused on literalism, on whether scripture is true or not true. On one side, it is argued the Bible must be the literal truth because the Bible itself says so—a rather shaky position to take, and a difficult one to uphold given that the Bible contains a number of contradictions and inconsistencies. On the other side it is argued that 'science' proves many of the events described cannot possibly be true, and that there are no reliable records to validate the historicity of other events, therefore the whole book is invalid. And both sides (as is usually the case when there are sides) miss what really matters. In the search for truth and proof, meaning is pushed to the margins and the bigger picture is lost to the detail. The Bible is fable, parable, analogy, poetry, metaphor, teaching, awakening and social commentary, almost from start to finish. Reading it as you would yesterday's newspaper (and assuming journalistic integrity!) or picking it apart for factual inaccuracy as you might your professorial competitor's academic thesis are not particularly useful ways to engage with a book (or more accurately several books) of lived experience.
Arabic storytelling meets Christian theology to shake me awake. It was no surprise then, in this receptive state to pick up the latest copy of the Human Givens journal and be drawn to a lengthy interview with Iain McGilchrist, author of The Master and His Emissary**, which, according to the Guardian's Salley Vickers, "persuasively argues that our society is suffering from the consequences of an over-dominant left-hemisphere losing touch with its natural regulative 'master' the right". McGilchrist identifies three periods in western history where our two cerebral hemispheres were aligned: ancient Greece, the Roman Empire and the Renaissance. In each case great advances in civilisation and knowledge were made, always followed by stagnation as the left-hemisphere took over—a necessary adjustment to impose order, and to logically scale the new ideas, but an adjustment that predominates to the detriment of creativity. McGilchrist claims that today we are suffering left-hemisphere fallout from the Enlightenment, another milestone in knowledge but one that never quite shook off the left-hemisphere's dominance after the Renaissance. Maybe we were enlightened a little too soon, or a little too brightly. Blinded, perhaps.
There are of course a great many non-western periods of history where understanding, knowledge and civilisation advanced, but in case you are wondering, no, we are not in one now. Despite all the advances in technology this is not a period of awakening, enlightenment or even learning, not with the systematic relegation of anything remotely artistic, with spirituality being packaged up as corporate mindfulness, and with our obsessive focus on facts and evidence. One cannot post an intuitive thought to LinkedIn without at least one person demanding evidence, proof, data, facts, or peer-reviewed (read echo-chamber) academic papers. If you're not worried by this, maybe you should be. Make it your new year's resolution.
And speaking of new year resolutions, I don't have one, but I do have a word: Less. It will be a year of reduction. Less work certainly, and less of some other things too, like knowing and noise. Last year my word was Big. If you'd like to know how I lived up to that word you can write to me, or corner me at some event.
* The Last Week: What the Gospels Really Teach about Jesus's Final Days in Jerusalem by Marcus J Borg and John Dominic Crossan, Harper Collins, 2006
** The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World by Iain McGilchrist, Yale University Press, 2009
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December News
Not much to say about December. It is anticipation of Christmas, Christmas, and Christmas fallout, and we had our fair share of all three phases. I spent a fair bit of time in London, alone and with family. I taught, and I learned. Later in the month I even got to hold a two-day workshop in a cafe in Sheffield. A first for me, and one that firmed my resolve to avoid all corporate training venues in future. Community space is where I prefer to spend my time; the energy is altogether different, riskier, more connecting, more real. In other news Rayna's sister came from California to stay for a week and all five of us went to a wonderful production of Guys & Dolls at the Crucible. Charlotte, our au pair, moved in on the 28th, and today is new years eve.
I spent the morning procrastinating so as not to write this newsletter. A collection of photographs is the result of my distraction: Rivelin Valley. It's like a blog post with no words.
I'll start the year tomorrow as I start every year: one year older. This year it's 61. It's the 1s that get me every time. I happily turned 30, 40, 50 and even 60, each transition a smooth continuation of the year before, and then the 1s hit, 31, 41, 51, 61, each one jolting me into the reality of my new decade. Yes, I am really here now, firmly ensconced in my seventh decade. So be it. I still have hair on my head and a scooter beneath my feet, and as George Clooney supposedly said,
"I'm kind of comfortable with getting older because it's better than the other option, which is being dead."
Enjoy January, and enjoy 2020—the year that makes it sound as if we're living in an episode of The Jetsons. Oh, the future! Here you are at last.
Tobias
31st December 2019, 11.59 pm