Collaboration for Sunday May 21-06

Inventory: The Stuff We Choose to Keep

Consider the power of a symbol. It’s a small thing taken to represent very large concepts. Consider the American Flag. What it means depends on who’s eyes you use. What does it mean to an American? What does it mean to a Canadian? What does it mean to a Palestinian? It’s a pattern of stars and stripes in three colors that move some to tears of patriotic pride, and others to tears of rage… All from a shape… A pattern.

Now consider where the power of a symbol comes from: us. We build our symbols by the way we tell our stories and the way we organize our experiences. We infuse them with meaning, and then we are impacted by them, in turn. It’s like a feedback loop. WE make the first noise (we infuse it with meaning), then the symbol sends it back to us, amplified. Which adds to the “noise” and starts the process again all over again, confirming what we were looking for in the first place. Maybe racism is a feedback loop. Maybe an unhealthy faith is, too...

Here’s another way to think about it. Our days are really a process of wandering around having experiences, from which we draw conclusions. We project those conclusions forward into expectations into which we then jam our experiences, which further deepens our conclusions. And on and on it goes...

So our lives are deeply impacted by the way we tell our stories. After all, we don’t tell the whole thing. We edit it down to those important parts (the symbols). Our lives are shaped by the things we choose to keep and the things we choose to release. So what are your symbols?

What we really need is something to break the “feedback loop”, an interruption, a correction, an infusion of truth.

How does this stuff intersect with ordinary life?

What comes to mind as you read it?

What should we do about it?

Why should your average person really care?

I’d love to know your thoughts.