Rev. Joseph Boyd
Once Upon a Time – what a potent phrase. It reminds me of fairy tales – dragons, poison apples, castles, special powers, and lands far, far away. Once upon a time is a phrase that relaxes the mind just enough to entertain imagination, wonder, and daring. The rules we follow need not apply in this story, and there is no limit to what a character can become in this kind of story. It is usually better for the dramatic arch if there is a villain or some threat to goodness. Our modern sensibilities really like the interweaving of what is villainous and what is good – we have grown disinterested with complete and utter goodness, and complete and under villains. Our modern day superheroes are both. We like brave heroes who are also flawed, prideful, short- sighted, but nonetheless daring and always seeking the good.

I like stories told out of sequential order, when you have to figure out and piece together the story line as you go. In these kinds of stories you are left with what is sensory, and in the confusion, and no way to make clear sense of what is happening, you are left with your senses – feelings, impressions, ambiance, looking for clues in body language, tone of voice, looking for clues about what is going on.

I know many people love mysteries. There is something very satisfying with following a story that bit by bit gives you a fuller picture of what is happening until you reach a climax when clarity arrives. Some stories follow the opposite trajectory. They begin with what seems to be clarity and normalcy, even bored predictability and evolve into further and further complexity and disorientation.

There are also the great stories that we return to again and again. The ones where we know the entire plot, we know how it ends, and we immerse ourselves in it anyway. There is a certain kind of stability and continuity in these stories: we change, but the story remains the same. There is a comfort in giving ourselves over to a rich and familiar narrative.

You may think that what I’m talking about this morning are stories found in books, literature, theatre, film, television, opera and music. There are indeed great stories found in all these mediums, but I’d like to go a bit further this morning. What I’m really curious and enamored with is your story, my story, our story. I’m becoming increasingly convinced that each of us is living a story, multiple stories most likely, all at once. I’m hesitant to say which stories are true and which are false, because I think a great story transcends the notion of true or false. I think we love stories not because they are true factually, but because they seem true to life. I really want to emphasize that word seem. Our stories seem true, and paradoxically become more powerful than anything in life itself. So I’m not as interested in discerning what is true or false, but as a minister I’ve grown more pragmatic about the stories we tell about who we are and what our life is about. A story can dictate the mood, feeling, and experience of our life. This I know for sure. A story can imprison us and make us feel trapped; a great story can liberate us and help us open to possibility. A great story held on too tightly can also change from a liberating story into a story that traps us, if we forget it’s a story. We believe our own stories more than anyone else.

Religion like any art form is a collection of stories passed down through generations of people who practice living in that particular story. Even in our faith, Unitarian Universalism, our story world is a world of innumerable stories: stories from every religious tradition, science, poetry, direct experience. Our opportunity and hardship is to pick some stories for ourselves, a combination of ones we craft ourselves and great stories that resonate and lift our spirits toward what is possible. I think in our modern day it is easy to see stories for most of us as a spectator experience – we read, watch, take in stories. But the kind of stories I’m most interested in are the stories we choose to actively participate in.

I can see why it would be tempting to think that if stories are not true or false in and of themselves, and a story is inherently created either by ourselves or another person, that perhaps it is most wise to choose to live without stories. Often in Buddhist meditation this is one of the instructions of meditation – to be aware of our stories and let them go. I think this is very wise, and yet there are Buddhists practicing this who are still Buddhists: those who have chosen to live according to a story of an awakened human being in India, and the story of a commitment to save all sentient beings from suffering. It’s one of the best stories I’ve ever heard. It’s one of my favorites. It’s a story I find life giving and meaningful, even though I know it’s a story.

I’ve been re-reading Victor Frankl’s book on a person’s search for meaning, and there are a couple things Frankl mentions that I had forgotten about or never noticed before. In the 1992 edition I have, there is a foreword where Frankl reflects on journalists who congratulate him on selling millions of copies of his book: “Man’s Search for Meaning,” about his quest for meaning as a Jewish prisoner at Auschwitz. Frankl responds to the journalist that he is somewhat saddened and disturbed that his book has sold millions of copies, because it shows the great lack of meaning that exists among our population – all these millions of people anxious to read something that will give life meaning based on the promise of the title.

Another section I forgot or never noticed is when Frankl describes his discovery that being loved and loving in return could see him through anything. Frankl is nearly starved and working past the point of fatigue, and he thinks of his wife whom he hasn’t seen for months, and he is filled with love. He then wonders if she is still alive or perhaps not, and how he has no way of knowing since she is another camp. And he comes to the startling conclusion: his love is real whether she’s alive or not, and that is something no one can take away. He chose consciously to live in the story of love with his wife, and that story was not dependent on anything in this world – it was true, true for him, no matter what.

I’ve come to the conclusion that as humans we are not flesh and bone alone. We are stories, living stories, and those stories are what make us human. All kinds of stories. Stories of struggle, betrayal, perseverance.

I don’t think it’s an accident that the great stories are always about love, the loss and return of love. The greatest stories turn loss, sorrow, tragedy into something poignant, tender, and fleeting, something that is sad but deeply satisfying. I do believe that 90% of us may be water, but 100% of us are stories, maybe even 110%. Our stories perhaps exceed even our lived time on this earth, passed down, and spread evenly among the whole earth.

There seems to be a direct experience of life. But the response to that experience, the way we process, make sense of, and integrate that experience into our life seems to be the primary decider of how we experience being alive. All of us have habits of mind and body: some of us are naturally more optimistic, some more pessimistic, some of us have high anxiety and high excitement and energy, other of us have a more plodding, even energy. And every variant in between.  I’ve come to respect that I think it best not to battle our habits of mind, but to be kind to them, and respect them. But I think once we see we have certain habits, they are still there, but they don’t have as much power as when we assume those habits are an ultimate view of what is real.

I have definitely found the great benefit of this. I had a mentor who gave me some helpful advice: to focus on taking one step, even a half step toward a direction that feels life giving, and that this is almost always possible. Just a half step. I needed to hear that. It’s not about heroics. It’s not about writing ourselves a whole new story from scratch. It might be that, but it doesn’t have to be. Just a half step toward some other truth, some other reality, that is more than enough. I remember one time I was really sick, and I was really pitying myself for how sick I was feeling. I felt horrible. I couldn’t shake feeling horrible and pitying myself. Then I remembered taking a half step, a small gesture toward something good. I reached for a glass of water, drank it, and it was very satisfying. I still felt horrible, but now there was also something small, something satisfying that partnered with my feeling horrible. It didn’t do away with my experience, but it widened it slightly, and I was ok to be in my life for that moment. It was ok to feel horrible, because I knew now from direct experience there is always more to the story – a small glass of water, very satisfying.

In this moment, we are discovering the power of collective storytelling. A Hopi Native American proverb says that those who tell the stories rule the world. And we are seeing a shift in whose stories are being heard and respected, even if we are still in the middle of trying to integrate them into the stories that once ruled the world. We are hearing the stories that have been kept alive for generations, stories that contradict in a good way, how we think the world works and who it works for. We are realizing what we’ve taken for granted as reality is just a story, and like any story, has its limitations and blind spots. We see more clearly now how all of us have been living in a limited story, a story we took for granted, a story that never really served all of us. I am talking about story in the largest sense of that word. Our economic policies in this country tell a story, our neighborhoods and access to fresh food or lack thereof tell a story, our treatment of workers tell a story. The wonderful thing about all these stories is once we recognize them not as truth but as stories, we lose the sense of fatalism. We lose the fear that our life and the life of everyone we know needs to be predetermined. We get a choice, and I’m seeking numerous brave souls, including members of this congregation who are living into that sense of choice. And it usually doesn’t look dramatic and sweeping.   The most powerful stories being told collectively are a half step, something so subtle you might miss it, but when you really pay attention, you see that these small deviations, these small daring half steps into another storyline have created a movement, and movements create great stories. But even those stories need to be engaged with our lives. We are not spectators, we are participants. Even our lack of participation is a kind of participation. We are all participants, all storytellers, and it begins with our heart and mind. Your heart and mind, your imagination and compassion are the most powerful storytelling tools you have. Believe that. Even if you are bed bound, and you cannot leave your house, even if you have no internet and cannot zoom with anyone, your heart and mind, your imagination and compassion can shift the storyline of the entire world. Your small half step in your mind toward compassion for one individual – just a thought, just a word, just a half smile – even if you think no one will see it or notice it – the entire world, the entire story will shift. You are a very powerful person.  I mean that in the literal sense. All of you, each of you, have more power than you can imagine. Your power is your authorship, how you tell a story, how you live a story, how your life manifests a story that transcends yourself. All our stories transcend ourselves: all our stories do. Tell a story of how we overcame. Tell a story about a beautiful, fertile earth and all the creatures that belonged to it. Tell a story that includes struggle, the struggle of all our inherited stories that each of us lives out for ourselves, but don’t end with struggle. Find some meaning in it. Even if your meaning is a glass of water that will sustain you as you struggle. Tell a story that is truer than life itself.