“Myth is much more important and true than history.

History is just journalism and you know how reliable that is.”

― Joseph Campbell

The last time I was in church was for my Dad’s funeral in June.

The time before that escapes memory. Suffice it to say, it’s been awhile.

But on my recent trip to Kitchener-Waterloo, Ontario (to experience cycling in Mennonite country for an assignment with Adventure Cyclist magazine) I decided that to fully immerse myself in the whole Menno experience, I would attend church…St. Jacob’s Mennonite Church to be exact.

When I arrived, I stood on the steps and watched the people smiling and greeting each other.  Compared to the Old Order Mennonites and Amish that were in the area, this was a fairly mainstream church. No buggies, no black outfits, just regular good Mennonite folks like the kind I grew up with. The air smelled fresh, a warmer fall breeze than the days before. I started to feel a little twinge of what I might be missing…that sense of community, a time to reflect, of knowing you’ll see your friends every week without ever having to do much to set it up, almost like the beauty of the best bits of school days.

Kind-faced people welcomed me, made sure I was actually meeting someone (I was) and then moved on.

The first hymn was lovely. Harmonious voices raised from plain pews, lyrics that spoke of shining our little lanterns, slowly changing the world by our example, all good and nourishing things.

I started musing about where I might find a church back in Vancouver…

And then, the sermon started.

I am paraphrasing here, but it basically went like this:

God saw that his creation of the world and all the people in it had turned evil.  He decided to wipe them out with a flood. He chose Noah and his family as the only people worth saving. The family, and of course all the animals of the world, would be saved by inhabiting an ark. Two-by-two they marched into a rather large ship. Forty days and then the rainbow appeared, God’s promise that He’d never wipe them out gain. 

These were the literal translations I’d grown up with. But surely we’d moved on? I was sure no one still actually believed there was a boat big enough for all the diversity of life contained on this earth? I kept waiting for the disclaimer that this was an origin-myth story; a legend that had eventually made it into print but served as a fable to advise us to live well or risk separation from our ultimate source, a story that could be interpreted many ways, but ultimately was a society’s way of warning to its people to stay on track, to be good, to conform to their culture, with the added bonus of being one more rainbow-explaining story.

 

 

“Every religion is true one way or another.

It is true when understood metaphorically.

But when it gets stuck in its own metaphors, interpreting them as facts, then you are in trouble.”

– Joseph Campbell

 

I realized my body language had suddenly shifted – arms tightly folded across chest, legs crossed. Then I started counting light fixtures, anything to escape this story and my growing tension. The memories were contained in my physical response. It all came back to me; the reasons I fought so hard against this black and white and literal view of the world. Arguing with Sunday school teachers as a child. Fighting with my Dad. The guilt of making my mother weep over my lost soul. Driving fast. Drinking faster. Remembering how hard they both tried to push me onto the one and only true path. How they used fear of hell and fire and damnation, the terrifying story of the Rapture, and the shame that can only come from knowing a wrathful and angry God was watching my every move.

It was only later in life, much later, when I realized how truths were embedded in fiction. Realized too, all that was lost by this literal view of the world, this uncompromising ideal that if it was in print, it had to be true.

That instead of the beautiful possibility of the power of metaphor and truth dressed in stories and love, we had to be scared and smited onto the straight and narrow.

I now believe that our experience in and of this world can be broken down into two camps: Love or Fear.

When I’m faced with any situation I ask myself…am I feeling love or fear?

Love is unconditional. Fear is conditional.

Love is honest. Fear lies.

Love is kind. Fear is angry.

Love heals. Fear hurts.

Love is the only answer I will accept.

If it doesn’t sound like love, look like love or feel like love…I am SO outta there.

 

 

Related Article:

Faith, Certainty and Travel

When You Don’t Choose Love You Choose Fear

 Love Versus Fear