During last week’s Payne Lecture, Dr. Brené Brown reminded the SSW community that the brain is hardwired for story—that it “wants and demands a story that has a beginning, a middle, and an end, regardless of whether the story is true…. It needs a story to be safe.”1
This observation reminded me of a man I recently read about in Joshua Foer’s book Moonwalking with Einstein. In the neuroscience literature the man is known as EP. Before he died in 2006, EP was one of a few people on the planet with a condition known as anterograde and retrograde amnesia, which means he could neither form new memories nor recall earlier ones. In 1992, a virus with freakish precision had eaten away his hippocampus, the region of the brain that makes memories “stick.” Although EP could feel emotions from moment to moment and had a working knowledge of the world, he constantly forgot whatever he just learned, including the fact that he had a memory problem. His wife wondered whether he knew, at some level, that something was wrong, but she could never be sure he did. He was unable to reflect on or share his feelings about his own condition with her.
After spending time with EP and his wife, Foer concluded that, “without the ability to compare today’s feelings to yesterday’s, EP cannot tell any cohesive narrative about himself, or about those around him, which makes him incapable of providing even the most basic psychological sustenance to his family and friends.”
Wow, I wrote in the margin. Without a cohesive narrative—without a story—we can’t feed others. We can’t nourish those we claim to love. A coherent story isn’t just as basic to humans as love; it makes love itself possible. No wonder we’re hardwired for it.
Of course, as Brené reminded us, the stories we tell aren’t always the ones that make us best able to love others or ourselves. Instead, they are often the ones that affirm our skewed view of things, the ones that justify our shame, guilt, anger, and selfish desires. I wonder whether these “crazy stories”—those I tell myself, but also the ones that fill the newsfeed—have room to grow like weeds in our society because we have lost a bigger story, a shared story, about who we are and why we are here.
As Christians, we do have a bigger story—one that many would say is better off lost. The way the story has been told has done damage over time. It has often been used to enslave the poor, protect the powerful, and pervert our image of God. When people become overcommitted to a story and use it to manipulate and oppress, it becomes another “crazy story.” It becomes food for neurosis, not nourishment. The Christian story has not been exempt from this fate.
Thankfully, there is another way to be a people of a story, and the man named EP helps us remember it. Although he lacked a story of his own, he belonged to a larger one. He was held within the story of his family’s love. They couldn’t make their story “stick” to EP, but he stuck to theirs. Their story was big enough to hold his storylessness.
In a similar way, being a people of the Christian story doesn’t mean possessing and promoting it, but belonging to it, being held by it. It means remembering that God’s story is always bigger than the one we think we know. Hardest of all, it means finding a place for our “crazy stories” within the larger one. Crazy stories grow out of pain, desperation, and brokenness—all key parts of the Christian story, the last time I checked. If we try holding those stories, listening to them, and paying attention to them—as Brené suggested—we might learn from them. They might lead us again and again back into the big story. They might nourish us and help us nourish others.
None of us knows the full story, after all. If we once did, we have forgotten it. But it might go something like this: we are loved and held, despite our amnesia.
After spending time with EP and his wife, Foer concluded that, “without the ability to compare today’s feelings to yesterday’s, EP cannot tell any cohesive narrative about himself, or about those around him, which makes him incapable of providing even the most basic psychological sustenance to his family and friends.”
Wow, I wrote in the margin. Without a cohesive narrative—without a story—we can’t feed others. We can’t nourish those we claim to love. A coherent story isn’t just as basic to humans as love; it makes love itself possible. No wonder we’re hardwired for it.
Of course, as Brené reminded us, the stories we tell aren’t always the ones that make us best able to love others or ourselves. Instead, they are often the ones that affirm our skewed view of things, the ones that justify our shame, guilt, anger, and selfish desires. I wonder whether these “crazy stories”—those I tell myself, but also the ones that fill the newsfeed—have room to grow like weeds in our society because we have lost a bigger story, a shared story, about who we are and why we are here.
As Christians, we do have a bigger story—one that many would say is better off lost. The way the story has been told has done damage over time. It has often been used to enslave the poor, protect the powerful, and pervert our image of God. When people become overcommitted to a story and use it to manipulate and oppress, it becomes another “crazy story.” It becomes food for neurosis, not nourishment. The Christian story has not been exempt from this fate.
Thankfully, there is another way to be a people of a story, and the man named EP helps us remember it. Although he lacked a story of his own, he belonged to a larger one. He was held within the story of his family’s love. They couldn’t make their story “stick” to EP, but he stuck to theirs. Their story was big enough to hold his storylessness.
In a similar way, being a people of the Christian story doesn’t mean possessing and promoting it, but belonging to it, being held by it. It means remembering that God’s story is always bigger than the one we think we know. Hardest of all, it means finding a place for our “crazy stories” within the larger one. Crazy stories grow out of pain, desperation, and brokenness—all key parts of the Christian story, the last time I checked. If we try holding those stories, listening to them, and paying attention to them—as Brené suggested—we might learn from them. They might lead us again and again back into the big story. They might nourish us and help us nourish others.
None of us knows the full story, after all. If we once did, we have forgotten it. But it might go something like this: we are loved and held, despite our amnesia.
What stories in your life need holding?
How do those stories fit into the larger story of God’s love?
1 Thanks to Lisa Brown for transcribing and sharing some of Brené’s talk with the community.
How do those stories fit into the larger story of God’s love?
1 Thanks to Lisa Brown for transcribing and sharing some of Brené’s talk with the community.
