I’m telling a story about you

The search for identity

Today is a big day for me. I get to teach the book of  Ecclesiastes for the first time in our Certificate IV class.

I have two weeks with the students to take the journey of a book which asks the fundamental question of life: “What is the purpose of our existence”?

What I love about the book is the way it challenges a settled view of reality.

If you are comfortable with how you see the world then don’t read Ecclesiastes as you will find the very foundations of your picture of the world affronted.

I like that about the book.

One of the things that I have found useful to contemplate up front is the role the Megilloth played in Jewish culture and identity.

The Megilloth are the books of the bible that were read in association with particular feasts. They were the stories that the nation told itself over and over again.

As I have become older I have seen that there is more and more truth to the statement “We are a product of the stories we tell about ourselves”.

Have you ever stopped to consider the foundations of what you believe?

It is interesting to look at any family and see the stories they repeat over and over: the family ‘myths’.

Carl Jung said:

“The most important question you can ask is: what is the myth [story] by which you live your life?”

While it may have taken a 20th century therapist to put it a succinctly as that, it’s fairly clear that God knows how we work, and he instituted a series of festivals that would remind His people of the central truths of their faith.

With those festivals there were stories that would reinforce the meaning of the festivals, much the way the story of Simpson and his donkey reinforces the significance of Anzac Day for Australians.

There were five books in the Megilloth:

So at the end of a yearly cycle, the Jewish people would be reminded that:

It is little wonder that the Jewish nation has survived as long as it has, through all that it has. It had the stories to sustain itself.

I am left challenged to think about the “myths” or stories I tell: about myself, my family, the mob I work with and my God.

Have you noticed how easy it is to slip into telling destructive stories? Repeating over and over the stories that rob people of hope?

A while ago I wrote a post called “The movement I can believe in” (Click on the name to go to it) that told the story of Pixar entertainment and how they have discovered the importance of telling stories. It seems the latest business thinking is finally catching up with the bible!

Stories are powerful things!