Story Teller's Story

"You walk around and tell these stories, Story Teller. What is it you truly believe?"

The question was asked by Sarah, a friend since childhood. They sat together in the shade of a tree on a grassy slope overlooking the valley below.

"Do you believe the stories you tell?" she persisted.

"Every story resonates within both teller and listener," said Story Teller. "The images, the characters, the plot, the action, all have an immediate effect on the consciousness of the hearer. How deep an effect and how long-lasting depends upon the story and the openness of heart of those listening. I resonate with the stories I tell. I transform as I tell them."

"Yes," said Sarah. "But what is your core story? The story you most believe? Your guiding story?"

Story Teller smiled.

"The story at the core of me, the story that guides me is the story arising from my direct experience," he said.

They sat quietly for some moments. A breeze rustled the leaves of the tree.

"The cosmos in which we live and which we embody is far more than that revealed by our basic physical senses," he said. "I saw through this veil that shrouds our consciousness. And continue seeing through. I live in realms beyond the usual work-a-day world while living fully in this world."

"This is your story?" asked Sarah.

"This is my vision," said Story Teller. "This is what I see and experience. My description of it is the story."

"When I was a boy," he continued, "I suddenly left my body and saw the Earth as a beautiful sphere floating in the cosmos. All was in harmony. Infinity was in every 'direction.' I looked 'down' to where my body was supposed to be. I had no body. I was the cosmos embodying. I was a part of it and It simultaneously."

"This is your story, your core story." said Sarah.

"Yes. We are the cosmos embodying. All that is is the cosmos embodying. The cosmos is alive, intelligent, aware. As one person put it who had similar experiences, we are the nerve endings of God."

"Wow," said Sarah. "Why don't you tell this story all the time instead of the other stories?"

"I tell it when people are open to it," he said. "People do not want to be beat over the head with stories. Each culture and sub-culture has its stories that are loved. These stories are meaningful, full of importance. They give people a commonality of purpose, of vision, of understanding. These are what I tell."

"I notice that your current stories are from the Bible." said Sarah.

"Yes. This is the culture in which I live. Even the folk who want nothing to do with the Bible are affected consciously and subconsciously by the Bible stories.  I tell the stories as they have been handed down. Each person then resonates with them according to their nature."

"Thank you for telling me your core story," said Sarah.

"You bet," said Story Teller.

They sat quietly opening to the peaceful surrounds.

Wrestling With God

Several of the younger girls and boys were wrestling as the community began gathering for the nightly story. Grabs, holds, pins, escapes, surrenderings -- the usual flow of two humans each looking to physically and mentally overcome the other.

The Story Teller smiled. This fit right in with his Story of God for the evening.

After the parents had called the children in and all had settled around the fire, the Story Teller said, "I saw that some of you younger folk were wrestling with each other before we began tonight. Why do you do that? What is its purpose?"

A brief silence. Then one of the girls said, "Because it's fun!" "To see who is strongest," said one of the tougher boys.

"Yes," said the Story Teller, "And there may be other reasons too. Tonight I will tell a wrestling story. See if you can spot other benefits for wrestling with another. You may find out that while wrestling with another, you are also wrestling with yourself."

"Long long ago, there was a man called Jacob. One of the meanings of his name is Trickster. He had tricked his father into giving him his older brother's inheritance. His older brother, Esau, was not older by much. They were twins but Esau emerged first with Jacob grasping him tightly by the heel. They were the children of Isaac, the son of Abraham."

"Jacob was returning home after many adventures in the world and his brother, Esau, was coming to meet him with an army of four hundred men. Though he was afraid of what was going to happen, Jacob decided to face the music. He and his entourage of wives (he had two), children, servants, and animals of various kinds came to a brook which, in his mind, was the boundary between him and his brother. There he made a camp for the night.

"In the early part of the night, he sent everyone across the brook. And he sent across all his stuff, everything he had. He was left alone. This is where the wrestling began.

"Some say Jacob wrestled with a Man (capital M); some say an Angel; some say with his own conscience. Jacob said he wrestled with God. I believe all four are true. They are not mutually exclusive.

"Night time is a special time for wrestling with what bothers you. All the daytime distractions have fallen away. You are faced with yourself. You are face to face with your Origin and your Destiny. You are face to face with your shortcomings, with your strengths, with your fears, your hopes. The mirror of you is held before you and you gaze unblinking. That is, if you are a good wrestler.

"Jacob was a good wrestler. He and God wrestled through the night. Daybreak approached and God knew he would begin to fade so he made his best move. He put Jacob's thigh out of joint. But Jacob would not surrender.

"God said 'Let me go.' Jacob said 'Not until you give me your blessing.'

"God said, 'What is your name?' I'm pretty sure that God already knew Jacob's name. He just wanted him to say it out loud. Jacob said, 'Trickster, deceiver, schemer, swindler.'

"Jacob said, 'What is your name?' Funny guy. He knew that God's name is 'I Am.' God said 'Never mind that. I give you my blessing.  Your name is no longer Trickster. Your name is now Israel, contender with God, for you have wrestled with me and have prevailed. Now that you have been victorious with me, you will also be victorious with humans.

"God left, the sun rose, and Israel named the place Peniel (Face of God) because, he said, 'I have seen God face to face and I have survived.' "

All were quiet, caught in the story's visions and in their own recollections of wrestling through the night.

Grow With God

"Story Teller, we are concerned about the images of God that you are putting in our children's heads," said the village elder. A second elder nodded.

"No, not all of us," said another. "Mostly just you two."

A Council of Elders from various villages gathered every third moon to confer on needed topics. Two of the elders had made sure that Story Teller was an agenda item for this particular meeting.

"What are your concerns?" asked Story Teller, though he already knew. He knew the consciousness states of all the community members, especially the elders.

"You are not portraying God as All Wise, All Powerful, and Perfect In Every Way."

"I am telling the Stories as they have been passed down to us from the Ancestors," said Story Teller.

"Yes, but you are emphasizing God's weaknesses, as if he is new at the game and still learning."

"You would agree that one's relationship with God is highly important, perhaps the most important part of being a human, would you not?" asked Story Teller.

The two elders who had put Story Teller on the agenda hesitated, smelling a trap beneath the scent of the Walking With God perfume they knew and assented to so well and deeply. How could they say no?

"Well, yes. Of course." said the more outspoken of the two. "But that doesn't mean that we agree with the picture you are painting of God."

"It is okay if you do not agree," said Story Teller. "Disagreement about who God is and what God is like and even if God exists has always been the case with us humans."

Uh oh. Now they were put in the position of claiming that their view was the only right view. So they said nothing.

"I agree that relationship with God is important whether you call God God or Our Source or The Wellspring or some other descriptive name of reverence. It is the relationship that counts, that matters." said Story Teller.

"Think of your relationships with others, with me for example. Are they not always ongoing, evolving? Is not a relationship a lively dynamic process with all parties involved ever changing?"

The two elders thought of their relationships with their mates, the one with his wife, the other with her husband. What the Story Teller said was true. They were not the same giddy teens who had met long ago.

"Yes, but God is always the same," said one. "All powerful, all knowing, all wise."

"Not according to the stories," said Story Teller. "He is in relationship with his creation, especially the humans and they are all changing together as each experiences the other more deeply and more fully. As you have seen, God gets mad, gets jealous, gets destructive as well as nurturing, caring , and protective. God is on the move with his personality, learning as he goes."

A third elder spoke up. "What Story Teller is saying is obvious to anyone who listens to the stories without overlaying them with their own preconceptions and insistences. We must take off our thought helmets we fashioned in younger years and open to fresh understandings."

A fourth smiled and said, "We tell each other when we part to 'Go with God.' Perhaps we should add 'Grow with God.'"

The Story Teller smiled. He knew that the doubts of the two elders would not be resolved at this one meeting. He knew that all of us are in continuous relationship with the stories we tell ourselves and those told to us. He knew that all is Story and that all true stories are open-ended, always solving and resolving.

"I ask for blessings on all elders gathered here," he said. "And I will keep in mind the Story of God you two told us today about God All Perfect and Never Changing. At some point, I will tell the story of that God."

He got to his feet.

"Thank you for letting me know your hearts," he said. "I will let you continue your meeting."

"Go with God," chorused the elders.

"Grow with God," smiled the youngest and most mischievous of the assembly.

Sacrifice

"Have you ever been given a gift you truly treasured and then been asked to give it up?" asked the Story Teller.

The listeners grew even quieter as they thought of such a time. Their thoughts were in many different places. One thought of a bracelet her parents had given her but then was sold to get the money needed for her baby brother's operation. Another thought of the gift of his first sweetheart's love who then moved away.  An older couple looked into each other's eyes and smiled, remembering their house that had burned with all their possessions.

"That is the theme of the story tonight," he said.

The Story Teller paused, knowing that each listener would take the story personally. How else could they understand it? He hoped that some would see larger meanings.

"You may remember the story of Abram and Sarai who were escorted to the border of Egypt and asked to leave when Pharaoh found out that Sarai whom he had married was Abram's wife and not his sister as he had been told. This is a story about Abram and Sarai in their later life.

"After they had moved on and settled down elsewhere, God gave them a name change. Abram was now Abraham and Sarai was Sarah. Often in later life, when you no longer go by an earlier name, it means that you are a little more grownup, that you have left those earlier years and their foolishness behind.

"Even though Sarah was older and past child-bearing years, she had a son just as God had promised her. His name was Isaac.

"You may remember from the story of Cain and Abel that long years before Abraham the custom was to offer sacrificial food to God and that God didn't want vegetables. He liked meat. So Abraham was accustomed to burning recently killed animals on an altar to God.

"One day God decided to put Abraham to a test. Would Abraham do whatever God asked? God called out to him, 'Abraham, Abraham.' Abraham said 'Here I am.' God said, 'Take your son, your only child Isaac, whom you love, and go offer him as a burnt offering on a mountain I will point out to you.'"

The Story Teller paused to let that sink in. Before resuming the story he thought to himself, this is probably where God first got the idea that he put to use later in his own transformation.

"We don't know what Abraham thought about the matter. We can presume it caused him some anguish. But maybe not. He was firmly established as a prophet of God by that time and may have figured that God knew what he was doing.

"Abraham got up early the next morning, chopped some wood for the sacrificial offering, loaded it on a donkey, and took off in the direction God indicated with Isaac and two servants. On the third day of travel they arrived.

"Abraham told the servants to stay with the donkey, loaded the wood on Isaac, took some fire and a knife and headed out. Isaac had no idea what was going on. He said, 'Dad, we have the wood, the fire, and the knife. Where is the lamb for the burnt offering?' Abraham said, 'Don't worry. God will provide.'

"They got to the place. Abraham built an altar, arranged the wood on it, then tied up Isaac and put him on top of the wood. You can only imagine what was going through Isaac's mind.

"Abraham took the knife and was ready to do the deed. He was told, 'Stop!' God said, 'Now I know that you fear me and will do what I say. You have not refused me your son, your only son.'

"Abraham put the knife away and untied Isaac. He saw a ram nearby with its horns caught in a bush. He sacrificed the ram to God instead of his son."

Even the people who had heard the story before heaved a sigh of relief. It was a powerful story that raised more questions than it answered. Who is this God who asks so much of people?

An Aside

The Story Teller's Aside: What may seem to you as you hear these stories of God over time as God evolving is actually the evolution of human awareness. These peeks at God come from two aspects of human awareness: the ordinary, ordinal, or linear mind and deep intuition. The first is human insistence on everything being within the realm of logic and two-legged human understanding, such as might appear in the daily newspaper or on an electronic news program. The second is a nonverbal awareness received through imagery, through the imagination, an organ of consciousness interflowing with all that is. This second awareness is produced by the Godhead, the Wellspring from which all springs continuously. From here we get the true knowledge which is blocked only by the first awareness. Understanding is experience. As we experience God more clearly, the two merge as one and not even one, for "one" itself implies a separation. The first aspect of human awareness produces the exclusiveness of all fundamentalisms, religious and secular. The second opens beyond all such enclosures. 

Abram, Sarai, and Pharoah

The day's work was done, over, each person doing what they needed to do to help make the community survive and prosper. Folk had finished their evening meal and washed up the dishes. The smallest children had received their baths since they tended to go to sleep during the nightly story around the community fire and could be put straight to bed later.

By the time the Story Teller had completed his evening walk alone under the stars allowing the story to form in his mind, everyone was gathered expectantly. He walked over to his reserved spot and stood quietly.

"After God confused the people's language and scattered them over the earth, nothing more is heard from him for 10 generations. People lived a long time in those days. Methusaleh, Noah's grandfather, lived to celebrate his 969th birthday. Noah's son Shem lived 500 years. So when I say 10 generations, I mean hundreds and hundreds of years passed by. And nothing from God.

A man named Abram, later to be called Abraham, was born of Shem's lineage and it was with Abram that God makes an appearance once again. Abram was married to Sarai and they had no children. Abram's brother, Haran, had died leaving a son so Abram and Sarai adopted him. His name was Lot."

The younger members of the community, the children and the teens, were bored and restless with this genealogical info and were ready for the Story Teller to get into the more juicy stuff.

"All you young folk need to know is that a long time went by and then God appeared again. We don't know where he was but evidently he was satisfied enough with his creation to have a hands off policy. All we know is that God appeared to Abram and said, 'I want you to get out of here and go to a land that I will show you. You are going to be famous. I'm going to be with you. Anyone who messes with you has me to mess with.'

Abram said okay. He, Sarai, Lot, and his entire household went on the move to the land God showed them, but there was a famine and Abram and his family went to Egypt. Here is where tonight's story begins."

The Story Teller paused, allowing time for those who had been distracted through lack of story action to rejoin the group.

"Now Abram's wife Sarai was very beautiful. Just before crossing into Egypt, Abram told her, 'Look, I know that if the Egyptians think you are my wife, they will kill me so they can have you. You tell them you are my sister and we will both be safe.'

So they did. Abram and his beautiful sister were the hit of Egypt. Because of Sarai, the Pharaoh treated Abram really well, giving him 'flocks, oxen, donkeys, men and women slaves, she-donkeys and camels.' He treated Sarai well too, taking her for his wife.

God was true to his word. He took Abram's side in the matter. Rather than being mad at Abram and Sarai for lying and for their living arrangements, God gets mad at Pharaoh. He 'inflicts severe plagues' on Pharaoh and his family. We are not told what those are but they catch Pharoah's attention enough to ask Sarai what is going on.

She tells him. He calls Abram to him and jumps his case for lying to him, for telling him Sarai was his sister. He tells Abram, 'Here is your wife. Take her and go!' Abram, Sarai, Lot and all that Abram owns are escorted to the border by Pharoah's men."

Silence. No one speaks. Those gathered around the fire are absorbing the story.

"I don't see why Pharaoh was punished," says a young woman. "Abram and Sarai were in the wrong."

"Yes," said another. "Why is God on some people's side and not on others?"

"All I can do is tell you the story that has been handed down. You have to make sense of it for yourselves," said the Story Teller. "I can tell you this though. We are beginning to see more of God's way of operating. He disappears for long intervals. Then he appears and sides with the descendants of Noah. A bond was formed between him and the man he saved from the Flood."

Mothers and fathers began taking their sleeping children home. Others stayed around the fire late into the night discussing the implications of the story until sleepiness also began to overtake them and the only person left was the Story Teller who sat gazing into the coals.

Story Telling Spring Retreat

"The story of God is the story of different levels of reality getting acquainted with each other," said the Story Teller.

He was passing on his story telling knowledge to a group of apprentices who had gathered for their spring retreat at his hut in the mountains.

"Many folk are not ready to hear this, so you do not need to state it so directly when you are telling stories at the nightly fires, but you do need to keep it in mind yourselves."

"Give us an example," said the story teller from Tanzania.

"In the story of God, the first man, the first woman, and the serpent," said the Story Teller, "you have four components or levels of reality at their first meeting, their first awareness of each other. They have to come to terms with each other.

God, who emerged from the Godhead (another story), is first on the scene. He has seniority. The others are his creation, came from his imagination. He imagined them and they came into being. But they were not quite as he imagined. Or rather they began to take on an independence of being and of action."

"I see," said the story teller from Arkansas. "There is a metastory."

"Yes," said the Story Teller. "One for you to keep in mind but not necessarily tell. The major stories that you tell, have been telling, are the ones that have been told repeatedly in the tribes that you visit. They have a cultural life of their own. No need for you to jump out from them and say they are embedded in a metastory.

To continue with the Garden of Eden story as an example, Reality begins changing as its four levels get to know each other. All four become different as a result of the encounter: God, the man, the woman, the serpent. The overall Reality thus changes. And so it goes. And so it continues to this day."

"God is evolving and all else along with him," said the story teller from Norway.

"Yes," said the Story Teller. "This includes us story tellers. As we become more deeply acquainted with the stories, we transform. Our story telling becomes richer, deeper, more satisfying to us and to those who hear. Interwoven in the fabric of each story is a Mystery that can be felt but not directly expressed.

Story telling is an art. We learn not only by telling the stories but, more importantly, by communing with the First Story Tellers, the Godhead and God. Let's take a break now and go do that."

They all got up, stretched, and scattered along the mountain paths, to their favored meditation / contemplation spots. The day was calm and peaceful and the stories they would soon begin telling blossomed like flowers in their hearts.

The Tower

They gather around the fire. The night is pleasant but cool.

Rather than wait to see what emerges, a young girl asks, "What happened to Noah's family after the flood?" Her mother puts a restraining hand on the girl's arm.

The Story Teller smiles.

"An excellent question. That is exactly where I am going in tonight's story. After the waters recede and they get off the boat, they start a new life, with God's blessing. God tells them to make a bunch of babies and fill the earth with humans.

But God says a strange thing here that shows that Love is still not the ruling ingredient of God's consciousness. He tells them, 'Be the terror and the dread of all the wild beasts and all the birds of heaven, of everything that crawls on the ground and all the fish of the sea; they are handed over to you.'

God shows no compassion for the non-human life he has created. He still has a long ways to go, as we all do. God is very human at this stage of his life.

He tells them three things. --Don't eat flesh that has blood in it. --Anyone who sheds a human's blood shall have their blood shed by humans. --Get out there, 'teem over the earth and be lord of it.'

Before they depart, God also tells them that he will not destroy the earth by flood ever again. He creates the rainbow as a reminder to him and as a sign of his pledge."

The Story Teller pauses and takes a drink of water. He surveys his audience and sees that they wait expectantly.

"Time goes by. Three tribes form, one for each of Noah's sons. They all move together to some nice land and settle down. They speak the same language so have no trouble communicating. They learn to make bricks and they build themselves houses and a town.

Then they aggravate God once again. Just by being themselves. They decide to build a tower 'with its top reaching heaven.'

He comes down to see what they are doing. (Evidently God goes away and comes back. He is not eternally present.) And he is not pleased!

He says, 'They are just getting started. If they go on like this, there will be nothing too hard for them to do.' He decides to reign them in by confusing their language 'so they can no longer understand one another.'

It works. The humans can no longer understand one another and stop building the town and the tower. They scatter over the face of the earth."

The listeners around the fire look both interested and perplexed. "Why would God do a thing like that?" asks one. "Sounds like he might have been jealous," says another. "Maybe he just wanted his privacy," says a third who lived at the edge of the village. "He didn't want such close neighbors."

The Story Teller chuckles. "Good thoughts. As the Story progresses, maybe you will get new insights."

They sit quietly and watch the sparks from the crackling and the snapping of the fire drift upward into the cool dark night.

Interlude

"From where do stories come?"

They sat beneath the shade of a tree near the spring around which the village had settled.

"You wish for me to tell you a story about the origin of stories?" asked the Story Teller.

"Yes," said the children gathering around him after seeing him arrive in the town.

"Daylight stories are different from night stories told around the fire," he said.

They waited quietly, expectantly.

"Daytime stories want you to accomplish something. Get something done. Nighttime stories feed your restless soul, baptize you into a community of understanding."

Birds gathered in the tree as if listening.

"Stories come from the creativity of the conflict within you."

He saw they did not know what he meant.

"When you do not know what is going on, you are conflicted. You are at odds within yourself. You feel alone, isolated. You do not understand and you feel that no one understands."

"Like when my mother died," said Griselda.

"Yes," said the Story Teller. "And what happened with you?"

"I told myself that though she was gone she was not dead. Not completely. I still feel her presence."

"Where did this story of your mother still existing come from?"

"From my mind and my heart."

"Are you more at peace now with your mother being gone?"

"Yes, though I still miss her."

"Your story, all our stories, arise from the creativity of the conflict within us. We cannot bear the pain of separation for long. Of being separate from ourselves. Of being separate from the world around us. A story arises that helps dissolve that pain and bring us back into community, into harmony with life."

They sat quietly together, absorbing. Listening to the soughing of the wind in the tree, the gurgling of the ever-arising spring.

"The great stories that captivate us arise from the conflict and struggles of our visionaries, women and men who want to answer the great questions: Who are we? What is all this? Where do we come from? Where are we going?"

"You tell the Story of God." said Herman. "But I know there are other stories."

"Oh yes," said the Story Teller. "Plenty. And I have them all in my story bag. But one can ride only one horse at a time. And this is the horse that is riding me right now. It's an ancient story, a powerful story. I think you will be surprised at its outcome."

He got up and stretched. "I will see you tonight at the Story Telling Fire."

They wandered together for a while through the streets of the town.

Regrets

Come on over by the fire and sit down. We resume the story, the Story of God. You might think this is about us, about the two-leggeds of the earth. This is the way we are. We always think it's about us. No, no. This is about God.

After Eden, the man and the woman went out and multiplied and divided, became numerous. Time went by. The story says that God "saw that the wickedness of man was great on the earth, and that the thoughts in his heart fashioned nothing but wickedness all day long" and that he "regretted having made man on the earth, and his heart grieved."

He decided to kill them all, wipe them out, murder them, man, woman, and child. Drown them. While he was at it, he decided to kill the "animals also, reptiles too, and the birds of heaven." Once again, the sea creatures are not mentioned. They are not targeted. Drowning would not affect them.

You know the story. This happens more than once with God. One man is seen as worthy. Only one. He and God walked and talked together. Buddies. The man's name was Noah and Noah was "a man of integrity." What does that mean? Integral. A man of interflow, able to relate to all with no barrier while keeping his core, his center. Noah sat in the seat at the center of his soul. He radiated outward from there.

So listen up, children. If you don't want to piss God off, grieve his heart, make him regret that you were born, do likewise. Be a person of integrity. No separate compartments that ulcerate, stagnate, fill with puss. Sit in the seat at the center of your soul. At your core. And open outward. Like the sun. Shining your light on all that is.

And God will float your boat.

But everything about you that is puss-y, is mean-hearted, is separated in greed and anger and just plain ignore-ance will be destroyed. Drowned.

It's just the way it is. God wants it this way.

But God doesn't do right either. He has shown his anger once before, back in the garden of Eden. He cursed the man and woman, kicked them out. Now he is going for murder. Wholesale slaughter.

I know. I know. We are not to sit in judgment on each other or on God. I'm just telling you what the Story says that has been passed down since forever. God repented of having made his creation and wiped it out. Except for one man and his household and the creatures they saved.

Stir up the fire there a little. It's getting cold.

The Story Teller

Lean and strong, chocolate skin, with deeply lined face etched from decades of watchful and active living on the plains, tall with splayed feet from miles of territory covered each day in his ministrations to his tribe, his group, his people, the Story Teller sat at the nightly fire, his cape of warmth slung loosely on his shoulders, his staff bespeaking his status resting angled from the earth to the crook of his shoulder ready for his grasp now and then to make a point. I saw him, felt his presence, heard him speak as I began to read (and hear!) his accounting of the story of Creation in the first three chapters of Genesis. A surprise. Yet he was there each morning of my reading and my writing. He is here now smiling approvingly of my announcing of his presence, his life, his art. Story Teller: shaper of the consciousness of his people.

Note to the Reader

Though I know there is and has been for some time strong movement to renounce patriarchy in any form (I was the only male member of a group of women in 1964 who met regularly to discuss Betty Friedan's "The Feminine Mystique" and its application to American society beginning with our immediate surrounds), and though I love and appreciate the appellations of Mother, GrandMother, She Who Is, and Goddess, confronted with the only choices (in English) of she, he, and it to refer to God, I choose "he." In the past I have experimented with s/he, which quickly gets awkward, especially when moving from subject to object (her/him).  To me, our Source, the Wellspring, is beyond all gender. Our Source is neither he, she, nor it while encompassing all three. I have no gender axe to grind here. 

cast out

God now pronounces judgement and sentence on each of the trio that went against the rules that he set up. We do not know why he put the trees there if he did not want the man and the woman to touch them. We do not know the mind of God, the one who brings everything into being.

The story is so human though. And it is said that we ARE made in God's image, so we are easily led to interpret God's actions and emotions as similar to our own. Parents put things out of reach of their children and say do not touch them. The children will explore, however, and especially when reaching a certain age will seek out and experiment with whatever is there. What is forbidden becomes familiar.

God comes home and finds his liquor cabinet raided and his children drunk, their virginal consciousness irrevocably changed. What is he to do? He locks up his liquor and puts a guard on it, angels who never sleep with flaming swords. The message is clear. You two may have fallen into dualistic thinking but you are not going to gain access to the tree of life. No eternal life for you.

The man and the woman are banished from the garden. But first, God takes care of the serpent. The somewhat amicable relationship between the serpent and the woman is destroyed. They will now be enemies. The serpent now has to crawl on the ground and "eat dust" every day of its life. Its offspring and the woman's offspring will naturally look to harm and destroy each other.

The woman is next in line for judgment. Her punishment is twofold. God says her pains in childbirth will be increased. Plus "your yearning shall be for your husband, yet he will lord it over you." The gender battle begins.

The man no longer has easy pickings. Work is introduced. He can only get food from the soil through hard labor. This is a life sentence, says God. It will be so until the man returns to the soil from which he was made. "For dust you are and to dust you shall return."

Death now enters the garden. Up until now, no mention has been made of any animals being killed. It appears as if the man and the woman are vegetarians. Before they leave, God makes clothes for them "out of skins." Something has died so the man and woman can have protective clothing (the earth now has "brambles and thistles"). Fig leaves obviously won't do. The man and woman don the skins and step outside.

hiding out

The man and the woman, both as yet unnamed, were hiding from God. Their consciousness had changed. They had moved out of simplicity of flow into a rugged splitness. Their world had divided into the realms of good and evil. Their previous world was smooth. Now it was friction. They saw that parts of the world were against other parts. They had become like gods. Not as much fun as they perhaps thought.

They now saw themselves. Part of themselves stood aside and looked at the other part. They did not like what they saw.  Their genitalia were particularly disturbing. They decided to cover them over. When they did, they appeared less like the other animals and more like gods.

Judgment and blame also came into the world through their actions and through their new consciousness. They had already judged themselves as "wrong" by hiding. They had not done "right." They were convicted. The evidence was there: the fig leaf clothing, their new evasive manner. Hiding was not possible. Guilt must have also come into play. Judgment, blame, and guilt, the new world order.

They heard God coming. God called out to the man, "Where are you?" (God was either not omniscient at this point or was acting as if he was not.) The man said, "I heard you coming and I was afraid because I was naked, so I hid." (If the fig leaves had not already fallen away, the man was certainly naked to the gaze of God into his soul.)

God played the game on through. He asked two questions. "Who told you that you were naked?" "Have you been eating the tree fruit I told you not to eat?"

Now blame is born. The man says "the woman gave me the fruit and I ate it." Which was true, but did not answer God's two questions. The man did not say, "Yes. I ate it. And when I did I knew I was naked." The woman follows the same path. God turns to her and says, "What is this you have done?" She blames the serpent. "The serpent tempted me and I ate."

Both of them are telling the truth. But perhaps because they had very little experience at being an "I," a separated entity, an encapsulation, they did not know how to say "I" did it. In any event, from the viewpoint of an "I," they pointed the finger and cast blame elsewhere.

the serpent asks a question

Our storyteller comes back with a third story.

If you remember, the garden that God created had a relatively small cast of characters. We are told of the man, the woman, the cattle, the birds, the wild beasts, and of course God. One of the wild creatures, the serpent, was "the most subtle of all the wild beasts that Yahweh God had made." It could reason and it could talk.

So far in the story, only God and the man have talked. Now comes a conversation between the serpent and the woman. Rather than making a statement, the serpent asks a question. A statement does not necessarily require an answer. It can be ignored, left standing there all alone. But a question insinuates itself into the mind, requires an answer, gets thinking going. The one questioned is now in movement and more easily unbalanced.

The question implies doubt from the start. "Did God REALLY say…?" (Did God really say that to you? I can't believe he really said that!) It then follows through with false information requiring clarification from the woman. It has a hook. Are you "not to eat from ANY of the trees in the garden?"

The woman is now put in the position of being (supposedly) wiser than the serpent. She hastens to educate him. No, no, we may eat the fruit of the trees in the garden. It's just the fruit of the tree in the middle of the garden that we are not supposed to eat or to touch or we will die.

The serpent says, Nah, that's not true. God has told you a lie. God knows that if you eat fruit from that tree, your consciousness will expand, your eyes will be opened. You will be like gods yourselves. You will know the difference between good and evil.

The woman thought that was a pretty good thing. She found the fruit was good to eat so she shared it with the man. Bam! They became self-conscious, especially of their genitals, so they made themselves loin cloths and hid from God.

the second story

In this second story of creation, we zoom in for a finer look at God's creative process. Nothing was growing on the earth nor was there any rain. An irrigation system was in place: water was rising up out of the earth and flowing over its surface.

God is not saying anything is good. He is at work. He takes some "dust" and molds a man. Perhaps a mud man. God then breathes life into the man by exhaling into his nostrils. The man is put aside for the moment while God plants a garden of fruit trees. The garden has a river running through it for the convenience and necessity of watering the trees.

In the middle of the garden, God plants two trees: one is the tree of life, the other is the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. These are the trees of forbidden fruit.

God puts the man in the garden and tells him to take care of it. But he says, see those two trees? Don't eat their fruit or you will die. Why did God make those two trees? What was their purpose? Did someone other than man eat their fruit? If so, who? Such questions appear beside the point, the point being that man was NOT to eat from them. This is the first NO in the cosmos. When God made the two trees of forbidden fruit, right and wrong were born. Morality came into existence.

At this point, other than the trees and God, the man is the only living being. God thinks it is not good for the man to be alone (How does God know this? Because he has been alone himself?) so he creates animals and birds. No mention is made of fish or sea creatures. This is an inland project.

The first roundup begins, complete with branding. God tells the man to name all the creatures ("all the cattle, all the birds of heaven and all the wild beasts"). And the man does. But nowhere amongst them was found "a suitable helpmate" for the man.  None of them did the trick.

God had an idea. The first surgery was performed, complete with anesthesia. God put the man in a deep sleep, removed one of his ribs, and made a woman. When the man woke up, God said, look what I have for you.

The man was so happy, he sang a little song.

"This at last is bone from my bones,
and flesh from my flesh!
This is to be called woman,
for this was taken from man."

The story teller, who we may forget exists, cannot resist adding a little aside here to educate the listeners. "This is why a man leaves his father and mother and joins himself to his wife, and they become one body."

The story teller adds one more tidbit of information before completing this part of the story. Both the man and his wife were naked but they felt no shame. Self-consciousness had not entered the picture.

the power of story

Let's pause a moment in our story. What is a story? We may think of a story as a flight of the imagination, that we (or someone) makes up. Consider the obverse: stories make us up. Stories create who we are.

You have your story. Your story of where you came from, of who you are, of where you are going. Yes, you say, but my story is real and true. It is not just a story. And here it is once again, the eternal bifurcation. Your story is real and true. Mine is suspect. Our story is real and true. Theirs is suspect.

You object. "My story is backed by data. I can prove it." Yes. You can prove it to your satisfaction (or it would not be your story). But you may not be able to prove it to someone else's satisfaction. That does not matter, you say. It is my story and I experience it as real. Exactly my point.

The story we experience as real creates who we are. Our story makes us up.

The story we tell ourselves is who we are.

Each of us has the power of changing our stories, of transforming who we are. The story we told ourselves at age 10 is probably not the story we tell ourselves now.

Some of us change our meta-stories, the large stories of the origin of the cosmos and its unfolding. We shift from Christianity to Buddhism or from Vedanta to Wicca. We may change our story yet again. Many believe the Science story for its power in producing tools for transforming matter. Some on the Zen path believe in the story of No Story.

I remember changing my story. I opened beyond my birth family and the realm of small town society. In the cool night air by a running river, I claimed the Sun as my father and the Earth as my mother, the wild foxes, the trees, the planets, the galaxies as my siblings and my cousins. The story claimed me. My life transformed.

Now back to our story. The Story of God.

Interlude

"Stories are what the history not made of time is made of."
(John Crowley, The Solitudes)

When the story opens

When the story opens, only two characters are present: the story teller and God. The story teller begins telling of the beginning and God. Though I do not know the gender of the story teller, I will use the masculine form, he. If you wish to argue with me about that, step into that room over there. We can argue until the cows come home. Meanwhile, we go on with our story.

The story teller says that what is before the beginning is without form, formless, a void. Completely empty. He does not say where God comes from. The implication is that God comes from the formless, that God himself is formed.

(in later perusings and musings over this story, some call the formless the Godhead. I call it the Source or the Wellspring. But now we start to get into theology or story interpretation and I guarantee theology will make your head hurt, though it can also make your heart sing.)

God begins to make things. First he gives himself some light to work by. Next he clears some space, some working room, an "expanse." In doing so, the Earth and Seas and Sky were formed. Then, he creates vegetation ("seed-bearing plants of every kind" and fruit trees of every kind) and the sun and the moon (thus creating time). The light from the sun and the moon are different from the light that God gave himself.

God keeps nodding in satisfaction. After each thing he does, he sees that it is good.

He then creates the Sea creatures, the Sky creatures, and the Earth creatures. He is pleased.

The stage is set. Now he creates something he begins to regret. "And God created man in His image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them." This is the first version of the story. "Man" included both genders. This also implies that God is both genders.

He is not done yet. He blesses the man and woman with fertility and asks them to rule the beings of the Sea, the Sky, and the Earth. He asks them to be vegetarians. "See, I give you every seed-bearing plant that is upon the earth, and every tree that has seed-bearing fruit; they shall be yours for food." The beings from the three kingdoms are also "given plants for food."

Then God takes a break.

"Such is the story of heaven and earth when they were created," says the story teller.

This is the end of Story One. It is quickly followed by Story Two.

the story of how God changed

A story is the recounting of events that happened to real or imagined characters. The events unfold or evolve. In the story of God as represented in the Judeo-Christian Bible, God is the main character. The events that unfold in this story of God tell of God’s interactions with the Earth and with all its inhabitants, especially humans. This is the story of God with which I begin, the story of the evolution of God, how God changed over time. This is the story of God and how God changed.

At least two ways exist of understanding a story. One is the linear depiction of events. Here is how the story develops. Here is the beginning, the middle and the end. The other is a description of the patterns lying underneath the events. What do these recurrent themes of patterns tell us? My focus will primarily be upon the latter.

I will look at the patterns that occur in God’s relationship with humans -- with Adam and Eve, with Noah, with Moses, with Job. After that, I will look at God’s relationship with Jesus.

Interlude

The hermit crab 

is continuing

continuously 

outgrowing

its shell.

Belief, faith, and dogma

Imagine a chair. You are standing by the chair. You look at the chair. You believe the chair will hold your weight, will seat you without fail, will seat you comfortably though you may need to shift your position every once in a while. This is your belief. Nothing happens unless you try it out.

You sit in the chair. This is faith. You have faith that the chair will hold you. Faith is action. The chair holds you. You grow. The chair grows with you. You and the chair have melded. You do not know where you begin and the chair ends. Once two, you become seamless.

Now you start to believe that your chair is the only chair, that other people’s chairs are false, unreal. If they do not adopt your chair, they are doomed to a life of false chair. You have the exclusive seat. Other seats are seats of error. You have the true and only seat. This is dogma.

Any chair can become dogma. The theist chairs of various kinds and genders. The a-theist chairs, seats of no theism. The materialist chairs which seat those who say that only matter matters. The chair of being that says only just be. The chair of nonbeing which gives rise to all being. And so on. Many chairs.

Many chairs exist because many humans exist. Each human needs a chair that fits. Both chairs and humans evolve, grow over time. "When I understood as a child, I sat in a child’s seat, but as I grew, I put away childish things." This too can become dogma. Your seat is childish. Mine is mature.

A chair is a vehicle. Our transport. We believe in our transportation, have faith. We refuse to exist naked and open in the cosmos, with no bounds. We need a safe taxi. So we take it.

Interlude

God and I have become

Like two giant fat people

Living in a tiny boat.

We keep

Bumping into each other

And laughing.

-- Hafiz

The Beginning

In the familiar lull that comes between the writing of books, the inevitable and welcomed morning came. "Focus on the Book of John." I said okay. I began re-re-reading John, always my favorite book in the Bible. I read the Prologue, which starts with the familiar "In the beginning was the Word" and ends with verse 14, which starts out with "And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us." John then continues with the story of Jesus.

Some days went by, weeks. John sat quietly at the back of my mind, present but unfocused. Then, within a three day period, John began flooding in upon me from various sources. From Eriugena, that great scholar / mystic / teacher / theologian of the 9th century, a man who continues to be ahead of his time and even this time. From Jack Miles, a former Jesuit, and brilliant and articulate writer on God and on Christ. From the Book of John itself.

These early morning readings and understandings (I arise about 2 a.m. and read and listen and comprehend while the rest of the world around me is asleep; a magic time) led me to announce a public lecture on "The Story of God." Eight people came. We sat in a circle at the Human Nature Dance Theatre, a delightful environs where, among other things, tango is taught and practiced. I told the story of God. Or at least one version. I found I had too much material (laughing…. in retrospect, no surprise).

The audience was attentive and the phenomenon that shows that something real happened occurred: everyone stayed around and kept talking to each other and with me after the event was officially over. The remarks were positive. We will meet again for further story (and with anyone else who wishes to come.)

I will keep you posted on the Story of God with the aid of this blog. In fact, I will follow the format I followed on my previous books (Jesus and Lao Tzu: Adventures with the Tao Te Ching; The Hidden Words of the Living Jesus: A Commentary on the Gospel of Thomas) and my forthcoming book, Zen Baptist, and write the book "live" here on this blog.