vitalwholeness

As far as books and movies go, I often do them in reverse order: I’ve missed the book, catch the movie based on the book, and then go back and pick up the book. Such was the case with The Life of Pi.

The movie is a masterpiece of fancy. Its cinematography is stunning. And the plot is as fascinating as that of the book. Speaking of the book, this gem by Yan Martel is so, well, pleasurable. If you have the slightest interest in things religious or philosophical it will slide on like an old shoe. And he writes in such a way that you want to turn to the next chapter; that’s how his plot pulls you along through its first person description of his life.

Time to share a golden nugget:

“Atheists are my brothers and sisters of a different faith, and every word they speak speaks of faith. Like me, they go as far as the legs of reason will carry them – and then they leap.

I’ll be honest about it. It is not atheists who get stuck in my craw, but agnostics. Doubt is useful for a while. We must all pass through the garden of Gethsemane. If Christ played with doubt, so must we. If Christ spent an anguished night in prayer, if He burst out from the cross, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’ then surely we are also permitted doubt. But we must move on. To choose doubt as a philosophy of life is akin to choosing immobility as a means of transportation.” (28)

For those of you who have read the book or seen the movie The Life of Pi you know that Pi is the nickname of the main character, a man from India who weaves a fantastic story of survival following the sinking of the cargo ship that was transporting him and his family to a new life.

Without spoiling the film for those who have yet to see it, the fantastic adventure is positioned at the blurry intersection of fantasy and reality, and in fact questions which is which. By the end of the narrative we are confronted with a decision about which of two stories is the real one. Or more carefully put, which we choose to be the real one.

That is a post-modern question, one that challenges the notion of absolute objectivity. All of life is interpreted through a subjective lens. We assign or attribute meaning to events. And that is often done by symbolizing them, mythologizing them.

Listen to the stories people weave to explain what has happened to them, what they have experienced. What we often hear is a combination of what we might call facts – events or occurrences that have multiple attestations, that several people might describe in the same way – and also an interpretation of what those facts mean. Sometimes the interpretation of the facts bears little resemblance to the original matter at hand. And some people are more imaginative and grandiose than others!

In addition, our memories are not absolute, tape recorders, a YouTube in the brain’s memory bank. We take the raw material and craft it into narratives that fit with our notion of the way life is, what we think we are. That is what is shared, often in an altered form, re-presenting reality.

For those who care about such things, the preaching of the New Testament is that way. There is what happened and then a proclamation of the meaning of what happened. It is theology more than history. Fact and interpretation are woven together in a patchwork often difficult to separate out, if you want to do that at all. And that’s how to understand, interpret the Christmas story as presented in the Gospels, the incredible birth narratives we sing and read and dramatize this time in the church year. They are presentations of the meaning of a God who infuses the world with a holy presence.

In the end, you may ask yourself which story is the real one. Is it the description of bare bones data, of this thing that really happened here in this way? Or is it the poetic rendering of truth, a narrative that catches the beauty, shares the wonder, and helps us transcend the ordinary to embrace the extraordinary? As with The Life of Pi you will have to choose. We know what the reductionistic mindset will do. But what about you?