What Is The Story We Are Writing With Our Lives?

The musical “Hamilton” poses the question, “Who lives, who dies, who tells your story?”

There’s a beautiful lyric at the end of the musical Hamilton that forms the emotional crescendo of the play. The entire cast comes on stage and sings, “Who lives, who dies, who tells your story?”

That line came to mind during an online talk I attended this week, led by my friend Rev. Norma Roberts, on the power of story. Stories are as much a part of life as breathing. Even before we had language, we were telling each other stories in pictures scrawled on cave walls. We have been sharing our stories by various means ever since.

The historian Thomas Berry, a scholar of world religions, says we find it hard to cope when we feel we are “in between stories.” He writes, “The old story, the account of how we fit into it, is no longer effective. Yet we have not learned the new story.”

Berry wrote those words before the current pandemic, but they aptly describe the state we find ourselves in at this moment in history.

The drawings on cave walls of Lascaux in France are one of the earliest forms of storytelling.

I was intrigued by an article I read this past week on “pandemic fatigue.” Remember when we naively thought summer might bring us a reprieve from the virus? Who imagined back in March that six months later we’d be facing a worsening crisis and the disorder in our lives could continue into next year? Not I.

I’ve noticed that I tire more easily these days. It probably has less to do with my workload than the loss of control I feel and sense of powerlessness over the chaos we are experiencing on so many levels as a nation.

The author of the article on pandemic fatigue, a psychologist, suggests we limit the amount of time we spend watching or reading the news, checking our phones for the latest updates, or looking at what’s trending on Twitter.

Historian Thomas Berry says we have difficulty coping when we are “in between stories.”

But is something more, something deeper, at work here? What is the story we are writing?

I gained some insights from another talk I listened to this week, given by the Benedictine writer and former abbot, Jerome Kodell. The topic was discernment, which Abbot Jerome calls “the charioteer of all virtues.”

I’ve written many times in this space about the The Rule of St. Benedict and its timeless wisdom for living a values-driven life. Here too is where Father Jerome begins.

Discernment, he points out, proceeds from the Benedictine idea of moderation in all things, and to “prudence” and “discretion.” A more ancient meaning of prudence refers to “right action,” that is, acting with wisdom.

Former Abbot Jerome Kodell calls discernment the “charioteer of values.”

An older meaning of discreet connotes taking something apart — exploring its various parts to better discern the whole picture.

To discern wisely is to act responsibly — that is, to respond in a way that supports the common good. “Much of the chaos in society is caused by lack of responsibility, or an unwillingness to accept responsibility,” Abbot Jerome points out.

Need I mention the controversy over the wearing of masks?

And yet, conversely, we can suffer from over-responsibility, a compulsion to act that stems from the belief that we can — and must — control/change what we cannot do alone and sometimes cannot do at all.

Father Jerome calls this “the demon of misplaced responsibility”

“When we find ourselves wringing our hands over things we cannot change, we are seeing a symptom,” he adds. “Can any of you by worrying add an inch to your height?’”

Here is where patience enters the picture. The patience to let a story unfold. The patience to discern what it is that we can change, while having the courage to let go of the rest.

Sometimes, the changes we seek do become broad ripples that alter life far beyond our personal confines. Congressman John Lewis, who was laid to rest this week, was once a young man impatient for change. But as Jesuit Father James Martin observes in a recent online reflection, Lewis also trusted in the “slow work of God.”

Lewis understood that history unfolds. He didn’t set out to rewrite the history of racism in this country, but to write a new story of equality and inclusion, with own his life. He changed what he could, where he could. Ultimately, he and others as brave as him did end up changing our world.

Congressman John Lewis, who was buried this week, was impatient for change, but understood “the slow work of God,” says Jesuit writer James Martin.

In his talk on discernment, Abbot Jerome recalled how a fellow abbot once advised him: Pray as you can, not as you can’t. He adds, “Moderation rather than frantic attempts to do something heroic, or something that others tell you to do. (That is) the fruit of discernment.”

Perhaps patience, discernment — and discretion — are what we need right now . Do we have the courage to exercise patience as this moment in our history unfolds? Are we trying to see the whole picture? What is the story, years from now, we will want to tell?

As the Hamilton cast asks at the end of the play, “Who keeps your flame? Who tells your story?”