Notice I titled this “OUR” stories.
MY
story is important. It is who I am. But OUR story is also important.
The
problem is that our society, and most “modern” societies are so individualistic
that people no longer have stories that give them a sense of belonging. People
grow up being told that they can do and be anything they like, without
reference to other people. They are not given stories that locate them in a
larger context.
Two
events are grounding this reflection of mine. One is the blockade created by
truckers on the Canadian border of the U.S. There is fear that the idea will be
picked up and replicated all over the country. Truckers are the ideal carriers
of such a vision. They occupy a special place in popular imagination. They pilot
huge rigs, symbols of American power, and they are loners, on the road alone
day after day—the American dream.
But
if they have no group story that can locate them, that can give them a sense of
belonging, something like this protest will provide that. It is a cause beyond
themselves. The Canadian truckers are crusading against an oppressive Canadian
government forcing people to accept vaccination. They now have a story, a
cause. Finally, life has meaning.
The
other event grounding my reflection is a book I have just begun to read. It is
by two Mennonite people struggling with the stories of their peoples. The story
of one of them begins in Ukraine, when the Russian government, in the early
days of the Communist revolution, forced their Mennonite ancestors to flee the
country. They “settled” in western Canada. The word “settle” is important in
their narrative, because their settling displaced other peoples who occupied
the land before them. Their story is a combination of personal history and
place—Ukraine and Canada—and the “songs” that have given meaning to the journey
of all the peoples. Their book is a plea for taking seriously physical places,
the physical surroundings from which one has grown, as well as the stories of
other peoples who occupied those same physical spaces.
Places
are important. Much of the energy behind Trumpism is resentment against an
economy that destroys the places that give people roots. Rural America is being
hollowed out, and with it, the family stories that tell people who they are. People
left behind see Donald Trump as leading a protest against the system.
The
authors of the book use three tag-terms to keep all this together: “landlines,”
the physical places that have grounded their stories and the stories of their
ancestors; “bloodlines,” the physical and cultural histories of their peoples;
and “songlines,” which they describe as “liberative traditions that inspire
practices of justice and compassion.”
What
intrigues me about this book, which I have just begun to read, is its grounding
in the experience of indigeneous peoples. The recent “Amazon Synod” which Pope
Francis convened, made us think about the importance of people all over the
world who have been thrown away as useless relics of the past, including the
indigenous peoples of the Amazon rain forest. But those peoples have not gone
away.
The
book is Healing Haunted Histories: A Settler
Discipleship of Decolonization, by Elaine Enns and Ched Myers. I got it on
Kindle.
Back
to the truckers.
Too
many of our fellow Americans are spiritual truckers, driving all over the
landscape without a story to tell them who they are.
This
morning I was praying Psalm 105. The psalm is the story of a people who began
with an enslaved person, Joseph, sold into slavery by his brothers, and
continued through Moses, who led the people from Egyptian slavery into freedom
in the promised land, where they, sadly from our Christian perspective,
benefitted from appropriating the places and properties of the people who were
living in those places before. The story of the conquest of the chosen land by
the chosen people is a story of genocide.
But
it is our story. Our own American story is a story of genocide, and our
American forebears carried it out with the same ideological fervor that must
have inspired the biblical actors, or at least the bibical authors who told
their story. “God willed it” they would have said, and even if they did not
have God in mind, as most of them probably did not, the term “God” functioned
just as successfully for them as for any pious believer. Our truckers probably
also would say “God wills our action,” even if they do not have God in mind.
In
this context, it is useful to think about the term “God,” and to reflect on the
merits of having a more disciplined story about God than the wild and unbridled
gods that inspire truckers and so many others in our country, such as predatory
investors who crush local cultures all over the country. Surely those investors
too will say that the gods want them to do it.
We
as a people need to take seriously the physical places where we live and have
lived, and the stories of the people who have made us who we are. Then we need
“songs” that will inspire us to create greater justice in the midst of the
chaos that we have created.
Not
a new situation. That is why generations of our ancestors kept telling the
stories to their children. We need to take up that custom again. Our people
wander in a wilderness of loneliness and hunger for meaning.
Our
churches are a place that should be telling these stories. Evidently our
churches have gotten away from doing that. The stories are not being
communicated. No wonder church membership numbers are down. We are not
reminding our people who we are.
