November 6, 2016 Spiritual Ponderings Power of Stories
I have a three step plan for world peace. Step one of my plan is for everyone to read Ernest Kurtz and Katherine Ketcham’s book called
The Spirituality of Imperfection: Storytelling and the Search for Meaning. In this book Ernest Kurtz and Katherine Ketcham provide a sort of spiritual history of Alcoholics Anonymous and by doing so elicit some from the experiences of those participating in Alcoholics Anonymous some powerful and literally life changing spiritual insights. The most important being the power of stories. Step two of my plan for world peace is for everyone to sit down and compose their own personal story about their lives. This needs to be done honestly accepting one’s past and embracing the possibility of change in the future and it has to be done by the individual and no one else. I cannot write your story and you cannot write mine. We can assist but we cannot be the primary author of someone else story. Finally step three, share our stories with one another. From there I believe human compassion and mercy would take over. We would see that there is more that unites us than divides us. We would see that we all desire the same thing: love. We would see that we all fear the same thing: being declared unlovable. Seeing the joy on the other’s face as they tell you their story and feeling the joy that builds up within you as you tell someone your story would bring joy to the world. “Listen! Listen to stories! For spirituality itself is conveyed by stories, which uses words in ways that go beyond words to speak the language of the heart. Especially in a spirituality of imperfection, a spirituality of not having all the answers, stories convey the mystery and the miracle—the adventure—of being alive.”
For the month of November I am going to share with you some stories that I have collected over the years and explore some of the spiritual insights that I have gained from these stories.
The King and His Dogs There was a king who had ten wild dogs. He used them to torture and kill any of his servants who made a mistake. One of the servants gave an opinion which was wrong, and the king didn’t like it at all. So he ordered that the servant be thrown to the dogs.
The servant said, “I served you for ten years, and you do this to me? Please give me ten days before throwing me to those dogs!”
The king agreed. In those ten days, the servant went to the guard who looks after the dogs and told him he would like to serve the dogs for the next ten days. The guard was baffled but agreed, and the servant started feeding the dogs, cleaning them, bathing them and providing all sorts of comfort for them.
When the ten days were over, the king ordered that the servant be thrown to the dogs for his punishment. When he was thrown in, all were amazed to see the ravenous dogs only licking the feet of the servant! The king, baffled at what he was seeing, said, “What has happened to my dogs?”
The servant replied, “I served the dogs for only ten days, and they didn’t forget my service. Yet I served you for a whole ten years and you forgot all, at my first mistake!” The king realized his mistake and ordered the servant to be set free.
Our world would be a more peaceful place, if we only learned to focus on the positive as much as we focus on the negative. Many of us are so slow in offering a compliment but at the same time we are quick to pounce on someone else’s mistakes. When I am honest with myself, I realize that most of the time, I am gossiping about another, it is because I want the attention to remain on them so that people do not start looking at me. My hope is that by highlighting other’s mistakes, people will not take the time to notice mine. Instead of focusing on other’s mistakes, I should be looking for ways to help them be reconciled with the community.
We are also not very good at accepting the fact that others make mistakes and therefore we assume that what they did was with malicious intent and in reality most of the time it was an accident or thoughtlessness that caused us to get hurt and not any well thought out plan on the part of the person who hurt us.