Transformation Through Story, Song and Verse

Although information can be conveyed by various means, wisdom tends to be passed along mostly by story, song and verse. Mere knowledge is one thing, but wisdom requires that we make a shift and transform the way we look at things. It requires that we go deeper than normal language and thinking allow us to go.

Stories, songs and poems bring us to a place where we can make a leap toward something new—or at least toward some new way of looking at things that we thought that we already knew. Creative expression—and attention to creative expression—opens us up to ideas in a way that rote learning cannot do.

Metaphor is at the heart of almost every creative endeavor. Wisdom stories are extended metaphors that give insights about the nature of the universe and the workings of the human mind.

Songs and poems combine metaphors—both small and large—with tone, rhythm, rhyme, and many other elements to create a structure that points both to itself and to something beyond self. And—to the extent that stories, songs and poems are universal—they point beyond both self and other as they break down that somewhat arbitrary distinction.

One of the most bothersome things in the world to me is the way in which scripture is so often taken only literally—by both believers and non-believers. What a waste to regard such great works of imagination as signifying nothing beyond the shallowest interpretation of them.

When we want to speak wisdom, when we want to communicate to and from the deepest part of our being, we need these stories, songs and poems.

Joan Chittister tells a wonderful story about a Hindu spiritual leader:

Once upon a time, as the Master lay dying, the disciples begged him, for their sakes, not to go.

"But if I do not go," the Master said, "how will you ever see?"

"But what are we not seeing now that we will see when you are gone?" the disciples pressed him.

And the spiritual Master said, "All I ever did was sit on the river bank handing out river water. After I'm gone, I trust you will notice the river."

This story says something important point about religious transformation: we can point to the river, we can even give out handfuls of water, but what's needed is to see the river, to feel it, to play in it and drink from it and be made new in it.