Telling the stories
13/05/16 05:47
In the history of human civilizations, written language is a relatively new invention. Although forms of writing go back thousands of years and alphabetic languages may be as much as 4,000 years old, it was only in recent centuries that large amounts of people became literate. Reading and writing were the province of scholars and experts. Prior to the invention of moveable type, books were incredibly expensive and time consuming to produce. Compared to writing, however, electronic media such as television and movies streamed over the Internet are brand new. Worldwide access to those media has taken place in my lifetime. It is probably too early to determine all of the effects of this relatively recent and sudden change in human culture, but one thing we old timers note is that the skill of memorization is declining. With all of the very capable machines to which we have constant access, we don’t have a need to memorize much at all. We can use the computer to file and then to access the information that we need.
When the majority of our people weren’t literate, we were very good at remembering our stories with incredible accuracy. One of the pivotal dates in our story that we remember occurred a long time ago, in 587 BCE. It was the destruction of Jerusalem during which a large number of the people of Israel were forcibly taken from their homes into exile in Babylon. If you read the Hebrew Scriptures that we call the Old Testament, you will find that this event is so important that there are subtle references to it throughout the entire document.
To understand the importance of the event, you need to remember that most of our people couldn’t read or write. There were a few scholars and learned people, mostly men, who were able to read and write. There were a few documents that had been treasured and kept in important places such as the temple. For the most part, however, the knowledge and stories of our people lived inside of our people. They had been taught from generation to generation by a process of group memorization. People would sit around in private homes and public dwelling places and tell the stories over and over again. With no reading, no television, no radio, and very few public entertainments, this process was built into the everyday lives of the people. One of the stories that was most often told was the story of the Exodus form Egypt. The history of enslavement, combined with the dramatic actions of God in the salvation of the people was exciting fare for eager ears and we remembered that Moses had been commanded by God in the giving of the laws to our people that we should always teach this story to our children. We had pledged to never forget what had happened and we were faithful to our vow.
In fact, the people of Israel were known by all who met them for their stories. These stories contained the identity of the people and they became even more important with the exile. Now, no longer able to gather in groups, every family became responsible for teaching the stories to the next generation. It could not have happened were it not for the generations of group memorization. If we had not learned our stories well, what would have resulted was that different stories would be told in different places and before long no common story would remain and the people would be fully assimilated into the wider culture and adopt the stories of their captors. But that is not what happened. Our stories became even more important and our people even came up with some new stories as a response to the stories of the dominant culture. Out of this experience a firm set of stories began to emerge and when the Persians conquered the Babylonians and our people were allowed to return to Jerusalem the process of forming a unified story - a bible - was undertaken in earnest. It still took centuries before we had anything resembling a common book, but making permanent copies of our stories became a high priority for our people.
I was thinking of that process last night as I lay on my back on the floor of the living room of our son and daughter in law’s home. Next to me was our five-year-old grandson. We were coming to the end of a very exciting day. Having traveled from South Dakota to Washington we were so excited to see each other. We played games and sang songs and were so happy to be together that it was hard for the young ones to begin to wind down and get ready for bed. So I began to tell stories and our grandson was interested in the stories. Our son, helping to get our granddaughter bathed and ready for bed was listening from the other room. I was telling stories of what happened to my father when he was a young man, younger than our son is today. They are stories that my father told me when I was a child. They are stories that I told to my son who was born after my father died. And now I have the privilege of telling them to my grandson. He was very interested in the stories and the process of listening and asking questions calmed us all down and prepared for the remaining events of the evening. Before long the children were sleeping in their beds and we adults lingered a bit longer to tell a few more stories, mostly of more recent events.
Earlier in the day, as we sat down for supper, our grandson had said to me, “I want to ask you about God. What about God is like people?” I had answered that there were many things but one important thing is that God loves, just like people love. When you love other people you can tell a little bit about God. Our daughter-in-law after our commented, later: “He has lots of questions about God sometimes and I don’t know the answers.”
I’m happy to know that there are some questions that aren’t best answered by Google and Wikipedia. I take delight in questions whose answers come not from some external source, but from our hearts. The stories that live, not in a book or in an archive, or in a data storage device, but in our hearts are still incredibly valuable to our people. We’ve been teaching each other that God is love for so long that I don’t need to look it up in the book. It is inside of me. And It is inside of my son and it is inside of my grandson. Our people will be telling these stories thousands of years from now, when the technologies are all different. In the end, what remains are not the inventions and the structures. What remains are the stories.
When the majority of our people weren’t literate, we were very good at remembering our stories with incredible accuracy. One of the pivotal dates in our story that we remember occurred a long time ago, in 587 BCE. It was the destruction of Jerusalem during which a large number of the people of Israel were forcibly taken from their homes into exile in Babylon. If you read the Hebrew Scriptures that we call the Old Testament, you will find that this event is so important that there are subtle references to it throughout the entire document.
To understand the importance of the event, you need to remember that most of our people couldn’t read or write. There were a few scholars and learned people, mostly men, who were able to read and write. There were a few documents that had been treasured and kept in important places such as the temple. For the most part, however, the knowledge and stories of our people lived inside of our people. They had been taught from generation to generation by a process of group memorization. People would sit around in private homes and public dwelling places and tell the stories over and over again. With no reading, no television, no radio, and very few public entertainments, this process was built into the everyday lives of the people. One of the stories that was most often told was the story of the Exodus form Egypt. The history of enslavement, combined with the dramatic actions of God in the salvation of the people was exciting fare for eager ears and we remembered that Moses had been commanded by God in the giving of the laws to our people that we should always teach this story to our children. We had pledged to never forget what had happened and we were faithful to our vow.
In fact, the people of Israel were known by all who met them for their stories. These stories contained the identity of the people and they became even more important with the exile. Now, no longer able to gather in groups, every family became responsible for teaching the stories to the next generation. It could not have happened were it not for the generations of group memorization. If we had not learned our stories well, what would have resulted was that different stories would be told in different places and before long no common story would remain and the people would be fully assimilated into the wider culture and adopt the stories of their captors. But that is not what happened. Our stories became even more important and our people even came up with some new stories as a response to the stories of the dominant culture. Out of this experience a firm set of stories began to emerge and when the Persians conquered the Babylonians and our people were allowed to return to Jerusalem the process of forming a unified story - a bible - was undertaken in earnest. It still took centuries before we had anything resembling a common book, but making permanent copies of our stories became a high priority for our people.
I was thinking of that process last night as I lay on my back on the floor of the living room of our son and daughter in law’s home. Next to me was our five-year-old grandson. We were coming to the end of a very exciting day. Having traveled from South Dakota to Washington we were so excited to see each other. We played games and sang songs and were so happy to be together that it was hard for the young ones to begin to wind down and get ready for bed. So I began to tell stories and our grandson was interested in the stories. Our son, helping to get our granddaughter bathed and ready for bed was listening from the other room. I was telling stories of what happened to my father when he was a young man, younger than our son is today. They are stories that my father told me when I was a child. They are stories that I told to my son who was born after my father died. And now I have the privilege of telling them to my grandson. He was very interested in the stories and the process of listening and asking questions calmed us all down and prepared for the remaining events of the evening. Before long the children were sleeping in their beds and we adults lingered a bit longer to tell a few more stories, mostly of more recent events.
Earlier in the day, as we sat down for supper, our grandson had said to me, “I want to ask you about God. What about God is like people?” I had answered that there were many things but one important thing is that God loves, just like people love. When you love other people you can tell a little bit about God. Our daughter-in-law after our commented, later: “He has lots of questions about God sometimes and I don’t know the answers.”
I’m happy to know that there are some questions that aren’t best answered by Google and Wikipedia. I take delight in questions whose answers come not from some external source, but from our hearts. The stories that live, not in a book or in an archive, or in a data storage device, but in our hearts are still incredibly valuable to our people. We’ve been teaching each other that God is love for so long that I don’t need to look it up in the book. It is inside of me. And It is inside of my son and it is inside of my grandson. Our people will be telling these stories thousands of years from now, when the technologies are all different. In the end, what remains are not the inventions and the structures. What remains are the stories.