Human beings are storytellers. We create and tell stories--both, to each other and to ourselves--each and every day. There isn't a moment that goes by when we're not telling stories. Stories tell us what we value, what we long for, and what we fear. They can serve to bring us closer together, or they can split us or keep us apart. In a biological sense, stories serve to wire and rewire our neurological systems, from the moment we are born, perhaps until the moment that we die.
Thus stories create us as much as we create them. We are our stories and our stories are us.
I don't know exactly how it happens, but often we mistake the old stories--those we have been told by our families, churches, friends, or schools, and that we've been repeating to ourselves for generations--for fact.
When this happens, our particular "reading" of a story becomes a lens through which we view the rest of life. But most of us aren't aware of the lenses we wear.
Most readings of the Bible are read through old lenses. For instance, most Christian interpretations of the story of Adam and Eve see it as a story of sin and disobedience, or as the beginning of shame. The old reading of this story also tells us that we are given dominion over the earth--an interpretation we human beings have taken to the extreme.
More progressive readings see this story as the development of consciousness.
It doesn't matter if religious authorities are no longer involved in the telling of the stories we hear or read. Most of the lenses we wear have been given to us at birth because--although we often fool ourselves, religion and culture are kissing cousins. Like religion, culture is mainly invested in perpetuating itself. Thus, not only a religious reading, but even historical, psychological or sociological readings of this story have led us only into more exile and alienation--from our own natures and from nature itself.
Reading a story like Genesis only through old lenses can hold us captive in an old paradigm that no longer serves life. Why? Because the natural flow of life is halted. This happens when we resist change that threatens our old programs for safety and happiness.
For thousands of years now we have been leading a culture-created life rather than a nature-created one. And our brains have been wired by that culture to believe the stories we've been told. Fear, the primary cultural and religious weapon, catches us clinging to our old stories, no matter how progressive we may seem to be.
Is there a way to read our foundational stories without using the same old cultural and religious lenses? Can they be read through the lens of a contemplative, evolutionary, or planetarecological system? Can Genesis be read anew?
This is what we have been trying to do in our Woodstock Bible study meetings this year. All the lenses that we bring to those meetings are welcomed--the old and the new. But first we wipe them thoroughly with silent meditation. Then we delve into the depths of the stories themselves, often remaining with one single chapter for weeks and weeks at a time. We wrestle earnestly with the text, each person bringing whatever they have to offer. In the process we allow our old lenses to get clear of old debris. And sometimes we find new lenses. And we see what there is to see.
