Parable become a common tool used by Jesus to help all of us look again and look more closely at who we are. Again from "The Enneagram" by Richard Rohr.
I suspect Jesus was pointing to the same transformation in seeing and hearing when he said that it took "parables" to subvert our unconscious worldview - and thereby expose its illusions, even to us. Parables should make us a bit uncomfortable if we are really "hearing" them. If we fit them nicely into our business-as-usual world, parables have not served their purpose. A parable is supposed to change our operative worldview and unlock it from the inside - so that we can see and hear reality correctly. New and full context allows us to read text truthfully. All religions have tried to do the same thing with riddles and koans and mythic stories. Our whole universe has to be arranged truthfully before individual teachings can be heard correctly. What we have done for centuries in the West is to give people new moral and doctrinal teaching without rearranging their mythic worldview. It does not work. It leads nowhere new - or nowhere truly old for that matter. It creates legalists, ritualists, minimalists, and literalists, who always kill the spirit of a thing. The Enneagram I would like to suggest, is a parabolic form of teaching. It subverts our unconscious and truly "mythical" worldview so that God can get in . That was the precise function of most of Jesus' parables.
When was the last time you heard a parable and you saw something new about the world...about you...about life? Well, it may mean we need to hear more parable...more stories and images that peel back our skin a bit and cause us to look at what is right beneath the surface of the day-to-day actions and movements that attempt to define us. When I read the words "legalists, ritualists, minimalists, and literalists" I saw a box. If I'm honest with myself, I'm in those boxes at various times of my life. I think we all are. It is an easy place to make home. It appears secure and final and settled and right. And yet, we need stories and people and images that keep holding up a mirror that helps us see ourselves more honestly. Then again, we need to look more deeply than our superficial lives. We need an instrument or a community that is willing to take us deeper and look at that which tries to control us and rule us without letting us experience the fullness of life that comes to us when we step outside these boxes.
Connection: When we look truthfully at ourselves, it may be painful. But that really is the beginning of transformation...it really is. We need not fear that.
Lord, teach us to rejoice and sing even when we must face ourselves and the dark side of our lives. For as we face our whole lives, we begin to walk within the domain of your grace and it is there that we will be made whole even as we appear to be breaking apart. Praise the Lord of Life. Amen.
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