Meaningful Stories
I recently watched this Ted Talk that I thought was very enlightening. Partly because I always knew this information but never actually pinpointed it from the perspective of the speaker. Emily Esfahani Smith, as a positivity psychologist breaks down what gives people meaning in life. She first started trying to find what makes people happy, only to discover that happiness is usually momentary and fleeting. People are feeling less happy today though the quality of life has risen by every standard. She realized its she should be studying what gives people meaning. She discovers that people who live with meaning “are more resilient, do better at school and work, and live longer.” She breaks down people who live with meaning into four pillars 1) Belonging 2) Purpose 3) Transcendence 4) Story telling. Here’s a brief summary of each pillar as she explains it: Belonging is showing that you are connected to people that value you. Having purpose is contributing to something that is meaningful to you, it’s seeing your gifts connecting to that purpose and feeling needed for your contribution. Transcendence is connecting your life to something greater than yourself. The fourth one really caught by attention, storytelling- really caught my attention- is the narrative you tell yourself about your identity and life.
As I was watching this Ted Talk, so saw every aspect of my relationship with God and the Church. There have been so many times in my life where the Church came to pick me up when I felt I couldn’t stand on my own. The Church family since I was young always provided a sense of belonging. My faith in God has always given my life purpose, even before I felt the called to ordained ministry. I always felt that God can and was using me for God’s purpose. Transcendence is seeing my life as part of God’s greater picture, the movement and path I believe God continues to unfold throughout the world. In storytelling, I see the scriptures (the Bible) telling the story about the meaning and purpose of life; a glimpse as to why there is life on this planet and nowhere else to be seen; no traces of life even in the 93 billion light years of diameter in the observable Universe or traces of life that might have passed. In the grand scheme of things Earth is a speck of dust in the Universe, but in that speck of dust are people able to love, sacrifice, create, design, and see beyond themselves in a way that no other life form imitates. Scriptures to me tells me that story, in the poetic observations of nature in the Psalms, to the historical books in the Old Testament that shows how God’s grace swoops in continually to those who are least deserving, and how in the New Testament God in the form of Jesus could alter how humanity began to see and understand themselves. I see my life in the story of Moses, when I feel like I might drown between the army at my back and the ocean in front of me. I see my spiritual blindness when I read about how Jesus cupped the face of the blind man and did not recoil at what his blindness might have represented but loved and healed him. I see my life in the resurrection of Christ, that shows me that though I may face hardship, may be even despair, and loss, but because of relationship with Christ, I believe as long as I breathe there will always be light at the end of the tomb, Christ beckoning me to himself.
Belonging, Purpose, Transcendence, Storytelling could be the pillars that hold up our understanding of God and how God reaches us. I think one of the reasons why COVID has been hard for me personally because it disrupts the belonging and the story we want to tell ourselves on why this is happening. I believe God is showing me why I’ve struggled and reminding me to look back at the scriptures and the stories and to be encouraged that our story, the story of our lives, and the story of our church is still being written.
