God is Story
- Paul Traynor
- Dec 27, 2018
- 7 min read
Updated: Jan 18, 2019
Life has its own inherent structure, its own unseen source and power. But life has no meaning-- and therefore no transcendence-- until we tell it as story.
The Only Story
There are an infinite number of variations, but only one story. This is it:
Beginning. Middle. End.
Try to think of a story that deviates from this pattern. You can’t. The Greeks had a fancy way to describe it, which I learned from a History of Dramatic Literature course in college:
Stasis. Intrusion. Stasis.
Things are a certain way. Something happens. Then things are different. Annnnd… Scene.
Jesus' life and resurrection has been called The Greatest Story Ever Told. At least, that was the name of a movie made about him back in the 1960's. It's a pretty ballsy title, when you think about it, even for a movie about God Incarnate in human flesh. I have no idea whether the movie delivers on the promise of its title or not, because I haven't seen it. Movies about Jesus tend to put me to sleep or give me a ginormous pain in my ass.
But I think the case can be made that the life of Jesus Christ is the greatest story ever told, simply from the standpoint of narrative structure. It boils down to the purest, most elemental version of Beginning, Middle, End possible. It's irreducible, a perfect trinity of narrative beats. It perfectly encapsulates all of life. Not just Jesus’ life, and not just our lives, but all of life.
Incarnation. Crucifixion. Resurrection.
This is the Beginning, Middle, End of life. This is how things work. Something is born. Something dies. Something new is born from it. Every season. Every relationship. Every process. It’s always happening. It never stops because it can’t stop. Life is always right now, this very second. There is no stasis in life. Only intrusion. The only constant is change.
Death is Life
Life perpetuates itself through the steady consumption of organic matter. In other words, life must die to sustain life. Death is the essential element of the life-giving process.
A plant is an incarnation of life. An animal eats the plant to live. The animal dies. Plants eat the animal to grow. The worms crawl in. The worms crawl out.
Death-- whether actual or merely represented by change-- is also the central dynamic at play in every human relationship, just as conflict is the central dynamic at play in every story. Things are a certain way. Something’s gotta change/end/die. Then something new will take its place.
Stasis. Intrusion. Stasis.
The crucifixion is a perfect metaphor for unavoidable change, because it holds the creative tension between the two opposite approaches to change; change either happens to us, or we seek it out and embrace it. From the human perspective Jesus' death is one of torture and degradation. It's a terrible thing that happens to him. From the divine perspective Jesus' death is one of faith and surrender. He embraces the change, so it happens for him.
The crucifixion is a paradox-- a transcendent expression of the “both-and" non-dualism espoused by most mystical traditions. This makes for an interesting and layered story.
“Put your character up in a tree, throw rocks at him, then get him back down.”
My History of Dramatic Literature had a pet phrase he liked to use to describe any tale one wished to tell: “Put your character up in a tree, throw rocks at him, then get him back down.” I am almost positive he was never thinking of Jesus when he said it, but it certainly fits. Although it might be a little on-the-nose.
The Perfect Hollywood Middle
One of the biggest Hollywood clichés is when a writer says they're having "Second Act problems"; the joke being that the Second Act is the actual meat of the story, the stretch where everything happens. If you don't have a Second Act you don't have a story.
When it comes to real life, the Second Act takes on even more significance. It's technically the Middle... but our lives are pretty much all Second Act. We’re born in Act One. We die in Act Three. Our Beginnings and Ends are shrouded in mystery. The Second Act is all we ever know. It's where everything happens.
Writing teachers call the Second Act the "rising and falling action" of a story. Each experience has its own arc. Each relationship, each triumph, each loss. We’re always in the middle of things, with old things dying and new things coming into being. Our lives are basically one long Second Act waltz:
Beginning, Middle, End.
Stasis, Intrusion, Stasis.
Framing any story as Incarnation, Crucifixion, Resurrection ups the stakes tremendously. It highlights the difficult nature of change, and ratchets up the conflict. Conflict is at the center of all good storytelling.
Crucifixion creates a powerful emotional response for the audience. It gets to the root of things in a way that, “...and then something happens in the middle,” never can. But beyond its efficacy as a narrative device, crucifixion is much closer to what actually happens in real life.
Incarnation. Crucifixion. Resurrection.
This is the greatest story ever told because it is every story ever told, dialed up the the highest setting. Every second of every life is lived in one or more of these phases.
But there’s a major surprise twist to the narrative when it comes to Jesus. Because this isn’t a story that begins with his birth in a manger in Bethlehem. It’s a story that begins in Genesis, that is prophesied and prepared for throughout the entire Old Testament. The history of God’s chosen people leads to the birth of God’s chosen one, the Messiah.
Which means the Incarnation isn’t the Beginning of the story. It’s the Middle. Things were a certain way, and then something happened. God happened. The ultimate Intrusion. Love and hope and joy were born into a world that had been waiting in expectation, craving its arrival. So, what does that mean to the structure of the story?
Well, if the Incarnation is the Middle, that means that Jesus’ death on the cross is the End. The innocent outcast, completely discarded and separated from society, is nailed to a tree to bleed and suffocate to death. It is The End writ large. All is despair. All is in darkness.
In the three Synoptic Gospels the sky itself goes black as Jesus dies on the cross. Darkness descends at noon, and lasts for three hours until the moment of death. In the two earliest Gospels-- Mark & Matthew-- the only words Jesus utters on the cross are, "My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?"
Luke and John add other details and interactions to bolster the case that Jesus was God. And many Biblical scholars seize on the fact that these final words are quoted directly from Psalm 22, to claim that Jesus was merely fulfilling prophesy by reciting them, since he knew definitively that his death was only the Middle. But in my mind these efforts weaken the story, and rob it of much of its power.
If Jesus is merely reciting Scripture at the end, with no doubt in his heart, then he is reduced to little more than a meat puppet in history's most grotesque pageant; God's masochistic display meant to punish us, and make us feel shame. And If Jesus is comforting his family, or soothing his fellow crucifix-ees with the assurance of immediate Paradise, then the stakes are reduced so drastically that his suffering becomes almost meaningless.
These details may have valid theological significance, but they dilute the wallop this story packs. They intend to bolster the case that the story is true, by robbing it of much of its Truth. Because the Truth is that Jesus represents all of us in our darkest hours, our worst crises, our own deaths. We feel powerless, abandoned, stuck in excruciating pain and utter despair. No hope, no faith, no understanding, no nada. We finally have to succumb, whether in humility or humiliation, with no guarantee that any of it matters. We hit rock bottom. The sky goes black.
Yet in reality we've only just arrived to the best part-- the surprise twist that makes it the greatest story every told. This life is done, over, dead, beyond hope. This incarnation, whatever it looked like, has gone away forever. All of that is True. That's how life is. But as much as it feels like it... it's not really the End. We've only finished the Middle of our story.
The End of the story, the Third Act, is resurrection. Jesus ascends to Heaven. He is alive. He is back among us. His family and friends don't recognize him... but they know him. For the rest of time, those that would follow his Way may not see or recognize him... but they come to know him, as well. He is always alive. He is always dead. He is always returning. The circle has been closed.
The End is the Beginning.
And this is the great Truth of the story. That unseen but deeply felt awareness that our entire lives-- everything we know, and love, and sacrifice, and remember-- doesn't begin or end in any meaningful way. Shrouded in the mists of time are our Beginnings, and our Endings. There is no Stasis in life-- not really. Life is all Intrusion, it is all change. The story keeps repeating, in ways big and small.
Incarnation. Crucifixion. Resurrection.
Middle. End. Beginning.
God In Our Hearts
This is the story that reveals itself to spiritual seekers, and to the poor in spirit. Every day. Every breath. Every season. Our story is not a straight line, or any sort of line at all. It never ends without beginning. It is a beautiful, infinite web of concentric circles that ripple out from the source in ever-changing and repeating patterns. This is the Truth that each of us carries deep inside, whether we're conscious of it or not. Our divine spark. Bodhisattva. The still small voice of Christ in-dwelling.
The famous psychologist Carl Jung was obsessed with drawing mandalas. He loved their intricate beauty and inner consistency, and thought they were the perfect metaphor for existence. Toward the end of his life Jung wrote, “There is no linear evolution; there is only a circumambulation of the self.” This is the inner Truth, the inner reality we all hope to come to know, deep within our bones. This is the real story. Everything else is just Second Act Problems.
Here at the end of 2018 another Christmas is in the books. Darkness is giving way to light, as the days begin to lengthen and brighten once more. The story continues. We look forward to next year, when we will gather together in expectation, waiting for the story to continue. Waiting for the story to begin again.
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