Inventing Truth

(c) Jill Ann Terwilliger 2007

You are locked in a life you have chosen to remember. - Susan Musgrave

Readings

From an interview with Margeret Atwood in the PBS series “Bill Moyers on Faith and Reason.”

BILL MOYERS asked Margaret Atwood: If you could design a new human being, improving on the present model, would you eliminate the hunger for God?

MARGARET ATWOOD replied: I could not eliminate the hunger for God without eliminating language. I might, however, eliminate the desire to use God as a weapon. In other words, if I could I would confine the hunger for God to the personal realm so that it would not become something that people use to bash other people with. …

… One of the characteristics of human beings, is they have very elaborate languages. And these languages all have grammars. And the grammars all contain past tenses and future tenses. Now dogs have languages, too. But we don't think that any dog has ever said to any other dog, "Where do dogs come from?" You know? What is the origin of dogs? And what about before that? What about before there were any dogs?

But because we have the kinds of languages we do, we go back in time as far as we can get in our imaginations. We want a beginning of the story. And we go as far ahead in the future as we can. We want an end to the story. And that's not going to be just us getting born and us dying. We want to be able to place ourselves within a larger story. Here's where we came from. Here's where we're going in some version or another. And when you die, this is what happens. And some of those stories are happier than other of those stories. But there's always more. There's always and then. And then what happened? … … And then and then and then.

Once we have that kind of language, we're going to have to postulate either a God entity or an unknown. Even, for instance, a physicist, will say: Okay, instead of "Let there be light", there was the Big Bang, which must have been actually quite brilliant visually. And then you say to them, "But what about before that? What happened before that?" And they will say, "Well there was a singularity." And you will say- … "What is a singularity?" And they will say, "We don't know." So at some point in the story, there's going to be "We don't know." Okay, so think of it as a stage like this. And in the wings, there is "We don't know."

Let me put it another way. A book came out called THE LIFE OF PI, by a guy called Yann Martel. And it begins by saying, "I'm going to tell you a story that's going to make you believe in God." Then he goes off on this completely seaman's yarn about getting lost in a life boat with a tiger and so on and so forth. And many strange and wonderful things happen to him until he pitches up on the shore of … South America …. Where upon, according to him, the tiger jumps off the boat and runs off into the woods. And he's found starving on the shore, and he's put in the hospital. And then these three Japanese insurance inspectors turn up to find out what happened to the boat that blew up at the beginning of the story.

Then he tells them this whole story. And they confer it among themselves and they say, "We think that maybe your story isn't true. And that there was no tiger." And you know he says, "Well that may be so, but tell me this, which story do you like better? The story with the tiger or the story without the tiger." And the other men confer amongst themselves and they say, "Well actually we like the story with the tiger better." And our narrator starts to cry and he says, "thank you."

So we like the story with the tiger better. We like the story with God in it better then we like the story without God in it. Because it's more like us, it's more understandable, it's more human.


from The History of Love by Nicole Krauss

I remember the first time I realized I could make myself see something that wasn’t there. I was ten years old, walking home from school. Some boys from my class ran by shouting and laughing. I wanted to be like them. And yet. I didn’t know how. I’d always felt different from the others, and the difference hurt. And then I turned the corner and saw it. A huge elephant, standing alone in the square. I knew I was imagining it. And yet. I wanted to believe.
So I tried.
And I found I could. …
After that day when I saw the elephant, I let myself see more and believe more. It was a game I played with myself. When I told Alma the things I saw she would laugh and tell me she loved my imagination. For her I changed pebbles into diamonds, shoes into mirrors, I changed glass into water, I gave her wings and pulled birds from her ears and in her pockets she found the feathers, I asked a pear to become a pineapple, a pineapple to become a lightbulb, a lightbulb to become the moon, and the moon to become a coin I flipped for her love, both sides were heads: I knew I couldn’t lose.
And now, at the end of my life, I can barely tell the difference between what is real and what I believe. For example, this letter in my hand – I can feel it between my fingers. The paper is smooth, except in the creases. I can unfold it, and fold it again. As certain as I am sitting here now, this letter exists.
And yet.
In my heart, I know my hand is empty.

Sermon Inventing Truth
Rev. Jill Terwilliger, Minister

Like a great many Unitarian Universalists, I hmm and hawww a lot about God: about God’s existence, God’s character, God’s power, the usefulness of a concept of God. Nearly any mention I make of God includes some kind of equivocation, some modifying statement that says: Yes, I know this isn’t entirely rational, but just remember, I don’t mean the guy up there with a long white beard and flowing robes sitting on a throne.” That’s not what I mean at all.

Lately, though, I have become so bored with my own waffling that I decided to simply stop. I would use he word when it communicated what I wanted to say. I would let the hearer interpret. And I wouldn’t worry about the possibility – even the probability – of being misunderstood. I would accept God as a symbolic reality. Translation: I am officially standing on the fence, balancing between symbol and reality, choosing not to choose sides.

As it turns out, putting aside the God question is easier said than done. One interesting comment by one insightful author and I’m back to the God subject. It’s time for me to admit and to accept that anything different would be contrary to my nature. God has captured my attention for the long haul.

“The story with God is more human.” That’s the statement that drew me back into the fray. “The story with God is more human.” It is more human with God, Atwood says,
because the story without God is about atoms. It’s not about somebody we can talk with in theory, or that has any interest in us. So that the universe without an intelligence in it has got nothing to say to us. Where as the universe, with an intelligence in it, has got something to say to us because it’s a mirror of who we are.

So here are our themes for today, drawn from two novels and illuminated by Margaret Attwood:
§ the need to be seen and understood
§ loneliness
§ the hunger for something intangible: for love, for wholeness, for God
§ answering the hunger with stories that may or may not be factually true, stories we invent or choose ourselves
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We all believe in things that are impossible to prove: impossible to see or touch or measure or test. And yet. We build our lives upon them, these things impossible to see. We build our lives upon love, that’s an obvious one. As much as we enjoy, even need, the tangible symbols of love – be it romantic love or familial love or friendship love – the attentive listening, the grazing of shoulders while you sit in church, the car washed and gas tank filled, creating and holding memories together, the laughter, the tears, the comfortable, comforting quiet of sitting together. As much as we enjoy these tangible things, they are not the love itself; they are the results. And yet. How much of your life have you spent in pursuit of, or in the passionate throws of, or enjoying the durability of, or worried about the loosing of, or healing from, or yearning for more LOVE? The story with love is a better story, a more human one.
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So let me tell you the story of The History of Love, or at least a bit of the story of the central character – Leopold Gursky – whom you already know can make himself see things that aren’t there. The History of Love is a book where what you learn at the end almost requires that you go back and read the whole thing again. And I’m going to tell you two of those things, but I don’t think will spoil the book if you decide to read it, only save you from having to read it twice (though reading it twice was no hardship at all).

So, Leo. Leo is an old man who lives in New York City, an immigrant from Poland after World War II, who earned his living as a lock smith. He survived the Holocaust because his mother sent him out of the house to hide in the forest, saying she and his brother would meet him the next day. But they never came. Leo heard the dogs and the rifles and the deafening silence that followed, and he never went back. He lived and hid in the forest for three years until the war ended.

But before that, he fell in love. He fell in love with a girl named Alma. It was the one, the only, the all-consuming love of his life. He promised he would never love another and he didn’t, not because he didn’t feel free to, but because his heart was never free from Alma. As life in Poland deteriorated for the Jewish people, those with the means began to emigrate. Alma was sent away to safety in New York. Leo was poor and stayed behind in Slonim. For so long Alma heard nothing of Leo, no replies to her letters, no sightings by others from their town. The only thing she had of him was the child she carried across the sea in her belly, Leo’s child, a son she named Isaac. She married a kind man who raised Isaac as his own and gave him a brother.

How did Leo survive the years of the war? You can imagine the unimaginable of the how. The real question is why? Where did the drive to live come from? And the answer: Alma. Only the truth of that love kept him alive. When he arrived, finally, in New York he found Alma, appeared on her door step, learned of his son and her marriage, and asked her to come to him, to leave her home for the home of their love. But she could not.

Desolate, Leopold wandered and streets and moved through his days. Except for the uncle who had taught him the locksmithing, he was alone. Until one day, he heard a familiar voice. It was the sound of an old friend, a voice from his village. He stopped and listened. Yes, he knew the voice. In the hubbub of the busy street he picked it out. He turned, almost afraid of what he wouldn’t see, and there was his childhood friend Bruno. He had survived. And he was there.

Bruno and Leo grew old together. They lived in the same apartment building. They came and went from each other’s rooms. They heckled each other in the merciless but loving way that only those who are well, well known to each other can do. They checked in with each other at night through the radiators. Three raps on the pipe was the question “Are you alive?” Two bangs in reply meant yes. One bang meant no. Leo had some other odd habits. He had an almost desperate need to be seen and noticed. If he ordered coffee he would make it complicated, change his mind, drop something, spill the cream, anything to draw attention. He even sat once for a life drawing class. It would be a terrible thing, he thought, to die on a day no one had noticed him, to simply disappear as though he had never been.

But here are two things you learn at the end of the book that change everything, that require the re-reading.
1) Leo says: The truth is that she told me she couldn’t love me. [Alma said that.] When she said goodbye, she was saying goodbye forever. And yet. I made myself forget. I don’t know why. I keep asking myself. But I did. (p. 226)

2) And here is the other thing. Leo reveals it in a conversation with a teenage girl whose story I can’t even begin to tell this morning.
Who is Bruno? [the girl] asked.
I studied her face. I tried to think of the answer.
Talk about invisible, I said.
To her expression of fright and surprise was now added confusion.
But who is he?
He’s the friend I didn’t have.
She looked at me, waiting.
He’s the greatest character I ever wrote.
She said nothing. I was afraid she was going to get up and leave me. I couldn’t think of anything else to say. So I told her the truth.
He’s dead.
It hurt to say it. And yet. There was so much more.
He died on a July day in 1941. (p. 249)

I remember the first time I realized I could make myself see something that wasn’t there. … And now, at the end of my life, I can barely tell the difference between what is real and what I believe. He invented it all. The love that was his life. The friend that accompanied him everywhere. He’d invented it all. He’d written a better story for his life. Because the aloneness of it was intolerable. Life without even one friendship has no intelligence in it, has got nothing to say to us, fails to provide a mirror to who we are.
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It has been said that we are all ultimately alone in this world, on a solitary journey from birth to death. Our lives intersect with others. We may even feel that at times we travel with a true companion. And yet. Ultimately we are alone.

As I was writing, I got stuck here. What does one say after saying “ultimately, we are alone”? It sounds like such a bleak view of life. And particularly ironic when uttered in a sanctuary full of people – a religious community that prides itself on being “community.”

I want, on one hand, to explain: Yes, I have good friendships and people I share the depths of my heart with. And yet … none of them know all the dark regions of my heart, or all the light and joyful ones, or all the ideas and ponderings. They each know a piece and there are other pieces that no one knows but me. And I know, too, that I only know pieces of my friends, I only know pieces of you. How could it be any other way? Not all things can be communicated. And this is OK. It doesn’t, in fact, feel bleak to me. There is joy and intimacy and love without full and total knowing.

On the other hand: When I said “ultimately we are alone” I would have been thrilled if one of you had jumped up and cried out “NO, It isn’t so. It doesn’t have to be that way!” And maybe you would have continued: If you just keep practicing, and with the right person, you’ll discover it, too. The oneness, the union, the merging of selves. It is possible. You do not have to be alone.”

And that is the hunger – the other hand that wonders, even hopes, if the impossible is possible – the hunger for God; the longing for love, the thirst for an intelligent universe, a mirror to our souls, a better story.

Which takes us back to Life of Pi. Pi actually told those Japanese insurance inspectors two stories of the ship wreck and of his time in the life boat. In the first story, Pi is accompanied in the life-boat by a hyena, an orangutan, a wounded zebra and a 450-pound Bengal tiger. (The reason for all the animals being on the ship in the first place is Pi’s family was moving their family and zoo from India to North America on a Japanese cargo ship, but the ship sank). The tiger soon takes care of the other animals leaving only he and Pi in the life-boat. Then, as Atwood says “many strange and wonderful things happen” and 227 days later they make land, the tiger runs off, and the insurance agents are mighty suspicious of the story. It’s simply impossible, they say, how could it ever have happened? Why should we believe you?

So Pi offers a different story, a more plausible one. Stranded in the little life boat were Pi, his mother, a wounded sailor and the cook. One brutal event follows the next as the cook amputates the sailor’s broken leg to use for fishing bait. When the sailor dies the Cook makes use of every part of the body, cures and eats the flesh. Next, the cook kills Pi’s mother and soon after, Pi kills the cook and takes his flesh into his own. Then, he says “solitude began, I turned to God, I survived.”

“So tell me,” Pi challenges the inspectors, “since it makes no factual difference to you [in your investigation of how the ship sank] and you can’t prove the question either way, which story do you prefer? Which is the better story, the story with animals or the story without animals?
“The story with the animals,” says one.
“Yes [the other consents] the story with the animals is the better story.”
“Thank you,” say Pi, with tears in his eyes. “And so it goes with God.” (p. 317)

The story with the animals is the better story. And so it goes with God.

It was God that drew me into this pondering today, but it is us – we “human merely beings”, we mortals, that I learned about. Again, I should get used to this pattern. What is it I learned?
§ That to be totally alone in the universe is utterly unbearable to us.
§ That we are hungry, hungry for a mirror to our lives, whether it be friend, tiger, or God.
§ That we have an immense capacity for telling stories; and we have the will and willingness to believe them.
§ That we prefer stories that have some nobility and self-respect to them over the stories of cold and brutal fact.
§ That it is the existence of relationship that gives a story that nobility

In the end, all the characters in the History of Love eventually realize their imagined lives pale when compared with the possibility of actual human companionship, however imperfect it may be. And so I learned, finally, that although we are born alone and die alone, and in between we can never be fully known by another (except possibly by God) the partial and imperfect nature of reality – the wobbly carnival mirror that reflects back to us both truth and distortion - is still more satisfying than the perfection of the imagination. And that is the best story that I can tell on this day.