“Story”

I’ve been revisiting Viktor Frankl’s writings on finding meaning in one’s circumstances, whatever those circumstances may be. As some of you may know, Frankl survivedAuschwitz during the Nazi regime, and reflected on what it meant to be truly human. Even before his imprisonment at Auschwitz, Frankl was exploring the import of finding meaning in one’s circumstances during his graduate studies in psychiatry, coming to believe that the primary motivation for human beings is the search for meaning. Other psychiatrists thought differently. Freud believed the primary motivation for being human was pleasure andAlfredAdler thought that the primary motivation for human beings was power. Frankl put forth that the search for meaning was actually what characterized being human, and this was completely dependent on our ability to choose our response in any given circumstance. Rabbi Harold Kushner stated that Frankl’s insights came out of a need to survive horror, but in doing so discovered something deeply true and profound.

I’ve been thinking about this in relation to our theme for May: Story. I think that the stories that we tell come out of our understanding of what it means to be human. If we think that the primary motivation for being human is seeking pleasure, we will write stories about this quest. If we think the primary motivation of being human is seeking power, we will write and tell stories about the gain and loss of power. If we see that human beings are meaning-makers, we will write and tell stories about this quest for meaning. At the heart of all this is the realization of free choice. We can choose to write stories from many different perspectives, about many different things. But I think it is good to pause and reflect on what kind of stories do we believe make us more human.

The word humane is very close to the word human. It is related to the etymology of the word humility and the latin humus, which is earth. In realizing awakening in the Buddhist tradition, the Buddha reached down to touch the earth as a demonstration of enlightenment. In the Jewish tradition, Moses takes his sandals off in a heightened awareness of being on holy ground, the earth. To recognize the earth, the ground we are on, as part of who we are in the deepest sense, is to find our humanity. Of course we are not only capable, but sometimes encouraged to act in ways that are the exact opposite of humane. We can be encouraged to lift ourselves above others, to look down on our fellow creatures and the earth. But to equalize ourselves in humility, to see that we are of this earth, is to find something beautiful and meaningful about being human.

If we are given a choice about how we are going to tell the story of our life, my hope is that each of us realize we have the power to choose beauty and meaning. Along with an honest account of our experience, including fear, harm, and horror, there is room for a response to our stories – if we can discover that freedom. That is part of the mission of our beloved church. We enable each other to become more truly human, and in doing so, discover our innate sense of freedom to respond to our circumstances. Doing this as a community offers us encouragement to find subtle and perhaps hidden reserves of beauty and meaning that lie at the heart of our experiences.

What does it mean to you to be human? What kind of human being do you wish to become? These are great questions to ask ourselves as we dig in to the richness of our theme for May: Story.