Once Upon a Story
Last month I served as a “theologian-in-residence” at the Princeton Youth Ministry Forum, a biannual event that feels like home to me. If Princeton Theological Seminary was a gym class and captains stood up to select teams, I’d be in front yelling “Oo-oo-pick me! Pick me!” Yep, that pretty-much sums up how much I love it. Plus, you can’t beat Princeton NJ in April. Stunning old architecture, blooming trees, birdsong, Nassau Street…don’t get me started.
Anyway, I had the great fun of leading an extended seminar entitled “Once Upon a Story: Narrative, Poetry, and the Youth Pastor as Bard.” Twenty-three (or so) of us gathered every morning to explore how stories are events that happen to us, like births, tragedies, illnesses, and milestones. Stories have the power to transform, to push us in new directions, shift our perspective, launch us on new adventures. And not just metaphorically: many of us have really, truly been changed by a story. And of course the church tells and lives the best of all stories.
The funny thing is, we don’t teach our youth that way. We use stories–including Bible stories–as mere illustrations, as if the REAL point is something else. But what if the story IS the point? What if we dared to be bards like Jesus, who trusted the Holy Spirit to work through the imaginations of his hearers without having to explain every parable away?
We spent some time with the book of Job, considering not what we could do with it (i.e., use it on a youth retreat to illustrate some other point about theodicy or suffering) but what it could do with us. We also spent some time with poetry and explored our roles as bards within faith communities that have almost forgotten the beauty of words well said. You can’t beat spoken-word poet Sarah Kay for reminding us that poetry, at its best, (including–or possibly even especially–liturgy) is performative and therefore communal; it can be free of irony without being humorless; and it can be well-crafted without being self-obsessed. This is liturgy: spoken-word performance by the people of God who know the power of words and yet hold them loosely, with joyful, open hands. (To watch Sarah Kay in action, see my previous post “A Bardic Moment.”)
Our final activity was a creative writing exercise that I’ve used in the past as an artist-in-residence with youth at the Duke Youth Academy for Christian Formation. We spent a few minutes on our own in silence simply observing a work of art (in this case participants chose an online image from the St. Johns Bible or from Makoto Fujimura’s illustrations of the Gospels–both of which were featured at the forum) and then wrote our reflections in any genre that seemed to fit the piece or the moment. Our time was limited, but I was amazed by what the participants came up with. Bards abound in the church, praise God!
I promised my seminar participants that I would post my humble little haiku (not the traditional 5,7,5) , which I wrote in haste as a kind of mental discipline. The work of art was Psalm 1 from the St. John’s Bible, which depicts–in bright primary colors–something like five scrolls (for the five books of Torah?) with seven flames above them and dust or chaff blowing off the sides. The effect is that of a menorah caught in a gust of wind.
psalm 1: a haiku
seven points of light
bent in a mighty wind:
chaff blows away
–Sarah Arthur, 4/26/12
