Friday was about bread baking and podcasts while Plum played on the kitchen floor. Plum was happy, the bread was to share with new friends, and the podcast was CBC’s q with Shadrach Kabango and Margaret Atwood. Pretty gold for a Friday after the first week of school.
Over the past dozen years, Margaret Atwood has written four dystopian novels – weird, funny, frighteningly current interpretations of a future which feels just around the bend. All of which prompted Shad’s question about her own sense of fear. She answered:
“People of my age don’t have as much fear as I think younger people do partly because we know the plot of ourselves. We know how our story has gone.”
I suppose Margaret Atwood feels like her own story is more or less written and, chronologically, perhaps she’s right. When there is more time ahead, it feels like there is more at risk. Later in the podcast, she returned to the idea of ‘knowing the plot’ when she mused about the role that writers and storytellers can play in understanding and constructing of the future. They are the ones who can imagine new possibilities, new ways of seeing and new ways forward.
“First thing the US military did after 9/11 was they brought in a lot of Hollywood scriptwriters because they know the plots.”
A lovely twist, there, and a vote of confidence for lateral thinkers.
I don’t know if she was being deliberate in her repetition of “knowing the plot” but it struck me that these are two quite different ideas. The first is knowledge by experience and the second is knowledge based on imagination. By returning to the phrase, she created an interesting link between the two which had me wondering all the way through my bread kneading. Where is the space between experience and imagination? What is the overlap?
Then, in the lectionary today, I found another collision between those two concepts.
In Mark 10, the rich young man knew all the rules and yet for some unspoken reason, he had found them lacking. That was his experience; his story needed more. So he turned to Jesus, the storyteller, who gave him a new shape for his story. An almost impossibly difficult one to imagine.
Take everything you have, everything you are, take your privilege, your status, your identity and give it away. You are rich, so give away your money. You are young, so give away your planned future, your security, your expected outcomes, and come follow me.
Let the plot twist. Make space for that to happen.
Sometimes the church seems to brays that she knows the plot. Perhaps because she’s been around long enough to see it all or that she’s had time to polish her theology to perfection. The story is in the bag and the church has the answers. But that isn’t faith, is it? It’s smug optimism. Sure, we’d like to preach optimism, but our experience shows that we need something more. I think faith is far more often the muscled movement forward into places that we can’t yet imagine. It is to follow a calling to make space for change. That is hard and hopeful. Faith holds hands, helps out, tears up and cries in loud lament. It laughs and rejoices and is surprised by love yet again. It doesn’t know what happens next, just who to follow. You might say that faith is the work of living through stories instead by of rules. Rules set the standard for expected results. In a story, anything might happen.
This week’s lectionary from Mark 10 is full of good story words. The young man runs up and kneels before Jesus. Jesus looks at him and loves him. The man goes away grieving. The disciples are astounded. Each of these words is full of emotion and effort. Each asks us to imagine more. These words work on us and in us, engaging us in the work of the story.
All of this makes me wonder again about Margaret Atwood’s claim that when you get to her age, knowing the plot means that you live with less fear. I can’t say that I know the plot of myself, even just up to now – at least not credibly. Is that going to change and settle as I get older? Right now, I feel that plot twists are possible at any stage, and also that new understandings can change how I remember older experiences. I am learning from the past as I step into the future. Change seems to happen everywhere. And how does fear play into this? How does that work as we age, as our children and siblings and parents age? I’d love to sit around that table with a good gang of folk – older folk, younger folk, kids, too – and ask those questions. Maybe slice up that loaf of bread, pass around the coffee cups, tell a few stories and wonder this one through together.
