On Faith
Rev. Mike Young
Saturday, March 24, 2001
WHEN I WAS ABOUT 4 years old, I lived in Calexico, Calif., on the Mexican border about halfway between San Diego and Yuma. They used to drive cattle through town on their way to the stockyards, half a block from my house. Stories people tell help
shape who they areMy sister and I saw the cattle going by one day. She and I and our dog Daisy went down to the corner and stood there as I don't know how many hundreds of steers came roaring past. One of those steers veered out of the mass of cow flesh and was headed right for us. Daisy, a little cocker spaniel, went running right at that big steer, barking and growling and raising an awful ruckus. She turned that steer back into the herd and saved our lives.
I was raised with that story. Only Sis and Daisy and I were there. Although I was only 4, I remember that incident as clearly as I remember any other incident in my life. But whose story was it? Who told that story? Surely, it wasn't Sis or I at 3 and 4. How did it get to be a physical memory of mine that I remember as if I, indeed, were standing there, smelling the dust and stink of the cows?
The stories we tell shape who we are and how we are; shape the world we live in. They become the things that we think are our own experience, our own memories. In that very real way, they become a part of the fabric of who we are.
I look at who is telling the stories to my children. My son Jot and I have a storytelling pattern that we have had since he could talk. At bedtime I go in and sit on his bed and say, "Well, what's our story going to be tonight?" He gives me the characters and the setting.
NOW, SOMETIMES it's Auntie Pele meets Gargantua, but the characters and setting he gives me often subtly allude to pieces that are going on in his life.
Then I have to make up a story that fits the parameters he's given me. I realize quite consciously that in telling these stories I am telling Jot who he is. But I am keenly aware that there is also that television set that is telling stories, and I'd darn well better be at least as good a storyteller.
Be careful about the stories you tell. The stories you tell are shaping how you see your reality, for you are listening to the stories you tell as well. Who you are is very much influenced by your own stories. And be careful of the stories you tell about others.
The story is told of the lady who said terrible things about the rabbi. Finally, she felt very guilty about it. She went to the rabbi and apologized deeply for passing this vicious untrue gossip about him. She said, "What can I do to make up for it?" He said, "Here's what you must do: Take your best feather pillow up onto the hilltop, rip the pillow open and scatter the feathers. Then go pick up every one." Gathering back the gossip is as easy.
It is not insignificant who gets to tell the stories and what stories they tell. We so easily end up with the scent in our nose of cows not our own.
Rev. Mike Young is pastor at the First Unitarian Church of Honolulu.
Alfred Bloom is a lecturer at the Buddhist Studies Center.
