Fryeburg New Church Assembly

Fryeburg, Maine
August 18, 1994

Swedenborg interprets the Bible story as a three-level parable. The first level, which he calls the inner historical meaning, relates to the spiritual development of humankind from our early beginnings to the present and beyond. The second level, which he calls the spiritual meaning, relates to our own individual spiritual development throughout our lifetime. The third level, called the celestial or heavenly meaning, relates to the Lord--to his inner process while on earth, his union with the divine, and to his eternal qualities of love, understanding, and creative action.

When Swedenborg interprets the parables of Jesus in the New Testament, he usually deals with the inner historical and spiritual meanings. He relates them to the spiritual states of the people who lived in Palestine at the time of Jesus, and to individual men and women's spiritual growth then and now. Yet he does give us hints about the heavenly meaning--what is going on inside the Lord--as in this short passage from Arcana Coelestia #4637:

New Church people have grown accustomed to digging out the meanings of the Lord's parables as they apply to us. We are less accustomed to thinking of them as the Lord telling his own inner story. Yet thinking of them in this way opens a whole new realm of possibility in looking, not only at the stories the Lord tells, but at the stories we tell.

This summer, during my Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE) program, I sat by many hospital beds listening to the patients' stories. Some of these people's stories were upbeat--full of love and hope. Others were full of pain, despair, and sometimes violence. My job as a chaplain was to serve the spiritual needs of the people in the hospital. To help the chaplains in the CPE program do this, our supervisors showed us a video by Dr. John S. Savage called "Story Listening." Dr. Savage is a minister; the workshop he was presenting in the video was intended to help other ministers learn to hear the deeper meanings behind the stories their parishioners tell them.

I was struck by the parallel with Swedenborg's interpretation of scripture. If we take people's stories literally, Savage says, we miss most of their meaning. Within our stories there is what Savage calls a "metastory," which tells what is going on inside us emotionally and spiritually. This is exactly how Swedenborg treats the stories in the Bible, among which are the parables of Jesus.

We usually think of the Bible as having a deeper meaning because it is inspired by God. The Lord could tell parables with spiritual meanings because he understood spiritual life and laws was able to consciously express these things through correspondences (the living relationship between spirit and matter described by Swedenborg). Without taking away from this view, we can broaden our picture by saying that human stories also express deeper, correspondential meanings because they come from the human mind, which, like all of the universe, is created and acts through correspondences. Swedenborg says it this way in Arcana Coelestia #5377, where he is talking about correspondences and the Universal Human:

The question, then, is not whether the stories we tell have a deeper meaning. It would be impossible for them not to have a deeper meaning. The question is whether our stories have a deeper meaning that relates to our own inner states rather than just a general correspondence to something spiritual. I would like to go at this question from two different angles.

First, Swedenborg tells us in Heaven and Hell #302 that angels and spirits are present in all our thoughts and feelings--so much so that if angels and spirits weren't present with us, we could not think a single thought. Further, in #292 he tells us that when spirits are with us, they think, not from their own thoughts, but from ours. In the same number he says these spirits do not see us or the things around us in the material world. This means that the spirits with us perceive the spiritual side of our thoughts and feelings even when we are thinking and feeling on a material level. Yet the two levels of thought and feeling are connected--our material thoughts come from our spiritual thoughts. So the things we say and do come from the deeper spiritual part of us--and this general rule applies to the stories we tell, too.

Second is a point made by Dr. Savage. If I pull out a calculator and multiply my age in years by 365 days per year, I find I have lived over twelve thousand days so far. Subtracting a thousand some odd days to account for the first three years of my life--most of which I don't remember--leaves me with over eleven thousand days. That's a lot of days! Each of those days has at least one story. Many of them are packed with stories. But let's simplify things and say I have about eleven thousand stories to tell. Why do I pick this particular story to tell at this particular moment? Perhaps it was prompted by something someone else said. Even so, we have many stories on any particular theme. Why this story? Because from all the possible stories, my unconscious mind picks one that expresses what is going on inside of me right now.

How does this work out in our experience? To get at this question, I would like to go over with you some levels and types of stories presented by Dr. Savage, with a few examples from my CPE experience along the way. Dr. Savage identifies four levels of stories, and also five types of stories that can be told at any of these levels. These are not meant as an exhaustive classification method, but as helps to understand some of the themes and the significance of the stories we tell.

First, the levels. What distinguishes one level of story from another is how close it comes to the inner feelings and thoughts we are experiencing as we tell a story. The most distant level is a "data back then" story. In this type of story, we recount the events that happened to us or someone we know sometime in the past. Moving a little closer, there is the "feelings back then" story. This story is still in the past, but in addition to the events, it deals also with what we or the other people in the story were feeling at the time the events happened. The next step closer is the "feelings now" story. Here, the story moves to the present. We are expressing the feelings we have right now about what is or was going on. It is hard to miss when we or a friend of ours is telling a feelings now story, since it usually becomes physical--tears may form in our eyes, our hands may tremble, our face may become hot and flushed. With this type of story, we are coming close to the fourth level of story, which is the "self disclosure" or "moment of ah-hah!" story. This is where we become conscious of what is really going on inside us--the pain or the joy we are feeling, and the source of that pain or joy. At this point, the story may cease to be a story and be a direct expression of our present feelings and thoughts.

We have probably all seen and experienced these different levels of stories. During my CPE, I heard the whole range of them. One patient who had suffered a stroke told me all about the seven bypass heart surgery he had had some years back, and how he had flown to Milwaukee for the surgery since that was where the only doctor in the country who did that type of surgery lived and worked. This was a data back then story. He told me what had happened to him in the past. On the other end of the scale, a woman with terminal cancer cried and held my hand as she told me how she had a hard time keeping her faith through the ordeal, and how she could not tell her husband and family her real feelings because she didn't think they could handle it. This was self-disclosure. She was expressing her present pain and spiritual struggle.

Dr. Savage also presented five different types of stories. The first is a reinvestment story. A reinvestment story is about how a previous activity or relationship has now been replaced by something different. For example, we might say, "Yes, I did love my former wife (or husband), but it didn't work out. I've found another partner, and I'm much happier now." Within this story is the pain of separation, and an expression of how we are dealing with that pain.

Another common type is the rehearsal story. This involves going back to the past or to a different place to rehearse, or repeat, material that revolves around common themes that we are dealing with right now. One of the patients I visited during CPE was an 85 year old Jewish man. He told me many stories from the Bible, his own past, and current events in Palestine. Most of the Biblical stories were about brothers in conflict--Cain and Abel, Ishmael and Isaac, Jacob and Esau. From his past, he told about his own struggles with his hard-hearted parents-in-law after he was married and of people who had cheated him in business. And he told of the hatred and conflict between Arabs and Jews in Palestine. The themes were sibling rivalry, dishonesty, theft, and lack of respect. This man's stories all revolved around the issue he was facing in the present, but had a hard time facing: he was shaken and crushed that now when he was no longer able to take care of himself, his own two daughters seemed to care nothing for him; they were fighting bitterly over who would get his property and looking for ways to avoid spending it on his care. As they fought, they used trickery and heavy-handed techniques to get his property. His own present life was a battleground of sibling rivalry, cheating, and lack of respect. Practically all of his stories revolved around these themes.

A variation of the rehearsal story that is distinct enough to become its own type is the anniversary story. This is a story we tell on the anniversary of some critical event in our lives, such as our wedding anniversary or the anniversary of the death of a loved one. These stories contain both the joy of the relationship they refer to and, if separation or death has occurred, the pain of the separation.

Another kind of story is the "I know someone who" story. When we tell this type of story, we are telling about ourselves by telling about someone else. One cancer patient I visited had little confidence in the treatments she was getting. But she had a hard time saying that directly. Instead, she told stories of friends of hers who had gone through the whole treatment prescribed by their doctors and had died anyway. She was really talking about herself. She was afraid her treatment was going to fail, and she was going to die.

Finally, there is the transition story. This is a little like a reinvestment story, but it involves a transition going on in the present rather than one that happened in the past. It contains an ending, confusion, and a new beginning. Common phrases in this type of story are, "I'm in the process of. . ." and "I don't know what I should do. . ." An example might be the stories we tell when we have finished one job or career but are not sure yet just what to do next. When we are going through a transition, the cleaner we can make the ending, the more quickly we will be able to make the new beginning. Sometimes, just realizing we are in a transition helps; transition stories are one key to this realization.

How do we get at the meanings in our stories? By looking for and naming the metaphors--or correspondences--in them. Is the story about getting stuck somewhere with no way out? Maybe we're stuck on an emotional or spiritual level, and can't seem to get any farther. Is it a war story? Look for the war within. Is it a story of death? Look for something dying inside of us. Is it a story of family togetherness? Maybe we're feeling connected to our spiritual family and to God. By naming the metaphor we can bring the deeper issues to consciousness where we can see them. If we are involved in some sort of inner struggle, naming it helps us to see it clearly and work more consciously on a positive resolution. If we are feeling joy, making our joy conscious can increase our joy.

Why do we cloak our inner thoughts and feelings in stories instead of just saying them clearly? For the same reason Jesus cloaked the spiritual truth in parables; for the same reason the Bible is written in correspondences rather than always telling us plainly the path to God. In Matthew chapter 13, the disciples ask Jesus this same question. Jesus' answer is one of the difficult sayings of the New Testament:

If we are not spiritually prepared to receive the truth and make it a permanent part their lives, the "healing" that would take place by understanding and attempting to apply the truth would be temporary. Having known the truth and fallen away from it, we would be worse off than if we'd never known the truth in the first place. The Bible is written in parables both to protect the truth from us and to protect us from truth that we are not able to bear. We can delve into the deeper meanings of the Bible only so far as we are able to bring those meanings into our lives.

We hide our own deeper stories in the language of metaphor and correspondence for the same reason. We, and those around us, can only see as much of our inner selves as we are spiritually mature enough to bear. Yet as Dr. Savage says, we cannot not tell our story. It comes from our unconscious whether we intend to tell it or not. We can, however, cloak it in language that will hide it from people who are unable to handle what we are really saying, or who would misuse it if they knew. Telling our story in metaphors protects our truth from others and ourselves; it also protects from the truth those who cannot bear it. We usually don't do this consciously. It is just the way our minds and spirits work.

Because Swedenborg has taught us about correspondences, which are sometimes called "the key to the scriptures," we may think we can access the spiritual meaning of the Bible simply by applying correspondences to the Bible stories like a code. This does yield another meaning to scripture, but I doubt it is the spiritual meaning. The real spiritual meaning speaks very personally of our own inner process of growth or lack of growth. To get in touch with the spiritual meaning is to get in touch with our inner selves. We cannot do this unless we are growing spiritually and the Lord is flowing into us with the light of spiritual understanding.

Similarly, we can't see the meaning within our own or others' stories unless we have reached the level of spiritual growth that enables us to see and empathize with the deeper joy or pain contained in those stories. As Dr. Savage points out, Jesus' agony in Gethsemane provides a good illustration of this in metaphorical language. He was entering into the deepest, most severe struggle of his life. As he said at the time, "My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death" (Matthew 26:38). In the anguish of his prayer, his sweat was like drops of blood falling to the ground (Luke 22:44). He asked his disciples to stay and keep watch with him. What did they do? They fell asleep. Three times he went to them and found them asleep, unable to support him in his hour of greatest pain. They could not support him because his pain was far beyond their ability to bear. Because of this, he had to go through it alone.

We cannot be with others in their pain if we are not able to bear that pain ourselves. If deeper pain than we can bear comes out, we will change the subject or try to cover the pain by smoothing it over with false cheerfulness. One of the hardest things for me to watch while in the hospital was when a patient who was in great emotional distress was visited by family members who couldn't handle it. They would make jokes and try to stop the tears if they started flowing. Meanwhile, the patient would become even more alone in his or her pain. There were times when I could not deal with what the patient was saying. As I looked back on these times in our group sessions, I saw that my reaction was usually to change the subject.

By putting our inner thoughts and feelings into metaphorical stories, we hide them from people who could not understand or be with us in our feelings of pain and joy. Yet we still express what is inside of us for those who might be able to reach out to us. This is usually an unconscious process, but if we become conscious of how it works, we can gain insight into our own inner selves, and be there for our friends and family in new and deeper way.

However, we do need to approach other people's stories with caution. Unless we have built up a closeness and trust with someone, it would be intrusive and uncalled-for to start delving into his or her emotional states. We need to be sensitive to when it is appropriate to bring up with someone what could be painful issues.

In a house my family used to live in, there was a skylight that leaked. The guy who installed it was a friend of mine. He told me a story about how the owner of the house had been very worried that it would leak. He had assured her that none of the skylights he had installed leaked, so there would be no problem. Well . . . the skylight leaked! At that point, I don't think it would have been helpful for me to suggest that perhaps something was leaking out of his personal life at that time!

Another thing to be aware of is that we do not know for sure what is in another person's heart and mind. We may think we see something there, but we could be entirely wrong. It is best to make our observations with humility, asking whether the person has trouble with some particular issue we see, rather than making pronouncements about what is inside him or her. If the person trusts us enough, he or she will let us know if we have come close to what is going on inside.

If we do think it is appropriate to speak up, checking out or observations by asking the person is probably the best way to open the subject. If the person does not want to talk about it, he or she will tell us so, or perhaps will ask us what in the world we're talking about! On the other hand, our asking about it may give the person an insight he or she had not had before, and possibly open the way to talk about what is going on inside.

Like the correspondences of the Bible, the metaphors in our stories come from universal human patterns, from the customs of our culture, and from our own individual experiences. It is not a mechanical code, but a living language with a different dialect for each culture and each person. It is intensely personal.

Perhaps Jesus' stories were just as personal for him. Perhaps, like the deeper meanings in our stories, we can see in Jesus' parables the Lord reaching out to us, trying to reveal himself to us in an intensely personal way--showing us the great joy of his love for us, and his pain when we turn away from him. By seeing metaphor and correspondence as a living, human language, we can approach the depths of human understanding and emotion at the center of God and God's Word--and at our own center.

In Apocalypse Explained #778c, Swedenborg compares the Bible to a person wearing clothes, with only the face and hands showing. The Bible is in a clothed human form--both concealing and expressing God's truth and God's love for us; both concealing and expressing the Lord's joy and pain. Our own lives and stories are also in a clothed human form. They both conceal and express our inner emotional and spiritual experience. We need both correspondential tools and spiritual sensitivity to reach into the depths of the Biblical parables. We can use the same tools and the same sensitivity to reach into the depths of our own stories and the stories of the people we are close to. To do so is to open the Book of Life.

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Music: Dusk and Dawn on Skye � 1999 Bruce DeBoer

Bible Parables, Personal Parables

Lectures delivered at

Fryeburg New Church Assembly

Fryeburg, Maine August 18, 1994

Fryeburg, Maine
August 18, 1994