Yes, yes…I am quoting Katy Perry. And shamelessly at that. She has actually become one of my favorite pop artists as of late…mostly because I got to see just a glimpse of her story in the advertisements for her movie. What was said resonated with me…her lyrics – they resonate with me. This song…well it is the best that I can do to put into words what these last couple of weeks have produced in me – another awakening.
Katy’s words happen to describe this perfectly: “Thunder rumbling, Castles crumbling, I’m trying to hold on. God knows that I’ve tried seeing the bright side – I’m not blind any more. I’m wide awake…I’m wide awake. I’m falling from cloud 9, crashing from the height. I’m letting go tonight – yeah I’m falling from cloud 9.”
It’s true. I can’t quite even begin to put all the words, thoughts and revelations that have come from this journey out of my faith, out of my idea of who God was, out of the Church …out of the life that I thought I was leading…into a new space. I’ve been shotgunned into a new direction – into a land where there is no black and white but instead this obscure tinted shade of grey. Into a land where there is no longer place for childish thinking, where there is no more space for a big daddy up in the sky to be watching over me and telling me the rules…into a land with a space where the ground is a little – okay a lot unstable…like trying to stand on the smokey fog coming from the stage at a concert- and the strange thing is I’m strangely okay with all this.
You know, to put it a different way – it’s almost like I’ve been reborn…or born again. Birthed into a different world, a different reality. Looking back on this past year, I can clearly see that about this time last year, maybe a tad bit earlier, I had entered the deep, dark labyrinth of the “womb”…and now I have followed the thread back out. At least I think I have – but you know…I’m not really sure, no I’m pretty positive I’m not done quite yet. I might never be.
But I digress…let’s go back to the whole not having words to express everything right now thought. This, this not having words has brought me to a revelation about writing, or teaching – whether it be through writing or standing up at Church or in the classroom.
That the point of a writer/storyteller is to try to put into words experiences of people in the world…to try to formulate descriptions in the physical tangible world of what happens in another realm…in another world…through the WORD. Yet there is not always language for the things that we experience in this world..wouldn’t you agree?
SYMBOLS, SYMBOLS EVERYWHERE
“Does everything always have to have so much meaning?” Ben asks Felicity.
She emphatically answers, “Yes, yes it does.”
Loosely quoted from some episode in I would guess their Junior year on the show “Felicity”.
Recently I had a discussion on my personal Facebook page about the serpent in the Bible…in the story of Genesis. See, I had recently learned that in the times the Bible was written that the serpent was representative of women – of their sexuality to be more exact…of their ability to grow a new life in them, to reproduce life and to birth that new life. It – the serpent – is also a symbol of wisdom – a symbol found in the bible. A certain friend disagreed with me about this – that the Bible in fact really was saying the serpent was the devil and this was the only way to look at the serpent. Long story short, this conversation led into a much deeper discussion – at least for me – about the way I used to view the Bible and how a lot of people still view the Bible.
The thing is, without going into all of my thoughts about this, this conversation was another catalyst that led me to look at the Bible in a whole new way. I started to think about how deep and impacting stories, movies, books that we read – how much impact these stories can have on us. That as we plod through the top layer of a good story, we see what the author’s main points were. However, as we sit with the story longer, mull over it more…we start to see the subplots…and then the sub-subplots that take us deeper and deeper – reveal more and more.
In light of this thought, I then started to look at how Jesus taught those around him. How he would take the physical world and use it to relate the spiritual world to us. How he would use parables to describe the truths of this other kingdom he is from.
“Well, if Jesus could use parables – which are really just stories…which are really what myths are – then why couldn’t God have used the prevalent stories of the Ancient Near East to communicate truths of the spiritual world to us?” I found myself asking.
Why couldn’t the Divine use symbols that could represent more than one thing interwoven into a symbolic story that could be unpacked time and time again for more and more meaning? Wouldn’t this way of communicating with us – wouldn’t this be so much bigger and meatier and in a sense more fun for us to have as Scripture…rather than a literal interpretation of the scriptures that leaves no room for contemplation and questioning? Where’s the depth in that? I mean, isn’t God supposed to be deep, really really deep?
Following these thoughts through, I now realize I am no longer a literalist (even though I have to be honest and say I did not know this was what I was). No, I am no longer a literalist…now I am completely, 100% absolutely sold out and IN LOVE with viewing the bible as a literary piece with its symbolism and diverse meanings. I am fascinated with the new depth of meaning I am finding and with trying to understand how these stories – these myths from the Bible can bring me into a deeper spiritual meaning of life and of the “other” world Jesus was always talking about.
And like Felicity I would definitely agree that yes, everything in life does have so much meaning:
from the way you “randomly” meet new folk who are connected to you by “6 degrees of Kevin Bacon” to the way you react when the person you admire
catches and holds your gaze from a few feet a way…
from the way you think about Jesus and interpret his words to the way you put those words into tangible action…
everything has meaning – but not always the words to describe that meaning – and that is where symbolism plays its part. Our individual and collective psyches are deeply attached and in need of symbols to try to help explain the inexplicable…
BACK TO THE BEGINNING
This leads me back to where I started…to this new place I find myself in where I am – as best as I can tell for now – wide awake.
In Jesus’ day they would have used the term “reborn” because this was the symbolic term that existed from the myths of that time. Myths that described people entering and exiting a labyrinth and how this represented a rebirth. Myths that used the symbol of the labyrinth to mean the womb – where water resides to help bring about the new life. Where water might just have been seen as a symbol of spirit…
People in our day and age might describe my experience as – well as a resurrection.
