[Oe List ...] Fw: [Dialogue] The New Global Myth and The Event and the Story

Fri May 6 17:45:35 CDT 2011

Randy,

Yes, I can see all three.  I'm not sure what a sectarian exclusivist is 
but I think we can escape it.

It is rather interesting where I saw the quote.  It was in a health 
related article, a quite long article, a reporting by a prestigious 
medical center testing diet habits that impair attempts to loose weight.

They tried all kinds of education to change the habits and finally 
said:  "If you want to change your life, change your story."  I have 
posted it on my monitor.

Definitely on the existential/ ontological pole

In the time since I did that I have struggled with the "How to change 
ones story"  I suppose it is stating the obvious to say that it is not 
an easy or obvious path.  Dare I say the Christ Word and Imaginal 
Education have something to say on the subject along with the fact that 
it is neigh onto impossible to do it on ones own power.

Len

On 5/6/2011 7:56 AM, R Williams wrote:
> Len,
> I saw that quote somewhere as well.  It's a good one.  For 
> me it appears that the story contains all 3 of Knox's 
> categories--history, ontology and myth.  Would you agree?  And can we 
> write/tell it without being sectarian exclusivists?
> Randy
>
> ----- Forwarded Message -----
> *From:* Len Hockley <lenh at efn.org>
> *To:* Order Ecumenical Community <oe at wedgeblade.net>
> *Cc:* Colleague Dialogue <dialogue at wedgeblade.net>
> *Sent:* Thursday, May 5, 2011 11:35 PM
> *Subject:* Re: [Dialogue] [Oe List ...] The New Global Myth and The 
> Event and the Story
> Thanks Randy,The importance of this for me is held in a quote I ran 
> across just the other day:"If you want to change your life, change 
> your story."LenOn 4/30/2011 8:10 AM, R Williams wrote:
>> Colleagues,
>> I've been stewing over the statement by Jack Gilles, that Michael May 
>> provided, called "The Ten Pillars of the New Global Myth."  I thank 
>> them both for the stimulation.  It led me to remember and search out 
>> (thanks to Wayne Nelson) a paper we used years ago in one of our 
>> seminars, a chapter from the book /On the Meaning of Christ/ by John 
>> Knox entitled "The Event and the Story."
>> I've been brooding for some time about the fact that our actions in 
>> the world are in fact an acting-out of our stories about reality and 
>> have therefore concluded that history is shaped by stories, and that 
>> there may be no more important work than to frame a story adequate fo 
>> hold and make sense of our experience in the 21st century.  When I 
>> started looking for the Knox paper I kept thinking the title was "The 
>> Story and the Event" because what I remembered from the paper, as it 
>> related to the "Christ story, was that something happened at a 
>> particular time in history to a community of people, and the 
>> community that experienced the happening at some point got around to 
>> writing a story about what had happened.  In relating their 
>> experience they included historical events as they recalled them 
>> (after some 90 years of oral transmission _without_ having committed 
>> anything to papyrus) but even more than the historical accounting, 
>> they included their understanding of the /meaning/ beneath and within 
>> what had happened.  When they wrote they used allegories and parables 
>> and other literary formsto freight not only what had happened, but 
>> also their understanding of its significance.  What I remembered Knox 
>> saying was that the writers were so effective that, when years later 
>> the stories were read, it was as if the event happened all over again 
>> for those who were reading them.  Hence, I remembered the sequence as 
>> "story and event" rather than the other way around.
>> When I asked around on the listserv for a copy of the Knox paper, 
>> John Epps wrote that he did not have a copy at hand, but suggested 
>> that I look at some of Joe Mathews' talks /in Bending History/ in 
>> which he talked about event and story.  The first talk I ran across 
>> when I went  to the book was Joe's RS-1 Christ lecture, which is 
>> framed precisely around Knox's categories of  (1) the historical 
>> event--that which was objectively witnessed by those who were there 
>> to hear what Jesus said and see what he did, (2) the ontological or 
>> faith statement--the community's grasp of the life meaning revealed 
>> by the event and (3) the mythological--the story the community, the 
>> church, told to preserve and convey both the historical and 
>> ontological dimensions.
>> I was surprised that I was surprised to find that the Knox paper 
>> had the framework as the Christ lecture, given the number of times I 
>> had not only heard it but delivered it in RS-1.  It is also worth 
>> noting that this exact construct is the same as that around which 
>> the "art form" or O-R-I-D process is built.
>> It is interesting that when Knox combines these three elements of the 
>> historical, ontological and mythological, he refers to 
>> them compositely, within the Christian context, as the "Christian 
>> experience."  He concludes with this statement which I find 
>> particularly profound:
>> /As members of  the historical community we have witnessed the event, 
>> Jesus Christ the Lord, and in faith we have received its meaning as 
>> the saving act of God, but when we try to express, or even grasp 
>> that meaning, neither philosophical nor historical terms will serve 
>> our purpose, and our thinking and speech...become inevitably 
>> mythological.  But the myth or story, in its own appropriate way, is 
>> as true as the history with which it is so intimately connected 
>> and as the faith which it was created to express./
>> Knox is adamant that all three of these elements be included.  He 
>> points out, for example, that the ontological and mythological absent 
>> the historical is _Gnosticism_; the historical and ontological 
>> without the mythological is _fundamentalism_; and the historical and 
>> mythological without the ontological is _modernism_ or what I would 
>> perhaps call _secularism_.
>> Knox further warns that we dare not forget that the story is a story, 
>> lest we "become rigid and harsh in our orthodoxy" and allow the story 
>> itself to become divisive.  From this I conclude that we are not 
>> talking about creating a new "orthodoxy."  One of the practical 
>> implications may be that the story, in whatever time, is always 
>> emerging and that there is no time in which it is ever really "old" 
>> or "new", but that it is ever-evolving.  In a sense, the moment the 
>> story is told and heard it is already obsolete, especially in times 
>> such as ours when time seems more related to /kairos/ than to /chronos./
>> So now I am wondering what all this has to do with the creation of a 
>> story that is adequate to plumb the depths of our 21st century 
>> experience, and it is at this point that I  invite dialogue.  Does 
>> Knox provide a legitimate framework with his "historical, 
>> ontological, mythological" categories and, if not, what should be the 
>> frame?  Does Jack's title of "New Global Mythology" hold it?  I had 
>> thought of something like "Our Emerging Universal Story" or maybe the 
>> title of the book by Thomas Berry and Brian Swimme, simply /U/niverse 
>> /Story /does it.  Again, I invite conversation and hope that many 
>> will want  to participate.  It is possible that, with our own 
>> history, ontology and story, we may have something meaningful to 
>> contribute to this emerging 21st century myth?
>> Randy
>>
>>
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