This is what I wrote yesterday, before the Archbishop's installation.
I spoke last week about wanting to write a conflict-free story, one that doesn't have the traditional conflict climax arc-cum-denouement. But it has been an intense week in my own story (and the world's too) and the best I could manage yesterday was a few travel stories from earlier in my life.
Yet I woke up this morning realizing that in a way, these travel stories are examples of exactly what I am talking about! Somehow, even thirty, forty or fifty years ago, I knew I wanted beautiful, positive travel adventures, and when I was free enough, that was what I managed to create. I have to laugh! If Hollywood were to commit these adventures to film, they would be considered far too boring as is! Up on the big screen, the Scottish ferry would have sunk, I would have been attacked by both people and chickens on the train to Madrid, my northbound English train would have smashed into another train, and my car would have broken down on a lonely stretch of North Dakota highway in the middle of the night. My life story would have to be dramatized, sexed-up, violenced-up, and the final scenes would only have been satisfying because I survived one near-disaster after another -- not because I had had a beautiful, conflict-free trip.
It may be unfair of me, but I keep going back to how my brothers told me I had done nothing worthwhile with my life. At the time, it hurt, of course, but ultimately that's the message I got all along from our now-dissolving, out-of-balance construct. What was "worthwhile" was the macho struggle, the "fighting the dragon", the "killing the dragon", reaching the top, and having it all. Goodness, aren't we seeing this paradigm in its most grotesque manifestation in our outer world right now?
Yet I believe our emerging paradigm will be all about journeys -- story arcs, if you will -- that are only about going from point A to point B as peacefully and lovingly as possible. Only about encountering the best of humanity and nature, and embracing the privilege of being alive. Yes, a lot of my journeys required courage, but not a "gird your loins and get ready to fight" courage. More the courage to face the echoes of other peoples' fears, other peoples' judgments, and the courage of living every day, knowing I might have to face an unexpected accident or even death all alone. I've needed that courage every day of my life, as all of us do.
Where I tried to enter the male construct, and operate within it or by it, and where I tried to embody its expectations, yes, it's been a constant struggle, and I have "achieved" little that is considered lasting, worthwhile, or concrete. Heck, most people consider me an abject failure. But perhaps as a model for a new kind of story, a new kind of journey, it's all been quietly worthwhile after all. What if all of us dropped violence from our personal stories altogether? What if we were to discontinue consuming stories of conflict, in all forms? The world might change overnight.
