One Story Only

There is one story and one story only
That will prove worth your telling...

There were thousands of books at the Brazoria County Library book sale, last Saturday. To my credit, and my wife's visible relief, I came home with only four - a thin, popular theology book about comparative religion, by Timothy George, which I will probably give away; a history of Britain at the time of Shakespeare; a novel by Faulkner; and... a first edition of Robert Graves Poems 1938-1945. All for $3.75.



It took me a while to come across Graves the poet. I'd read several of his novels - I, Claudius, Claudius the God and Count Bellisarius. I'd also read his youthful autobiography Goodbye to All That, which I enjoyed. Then I encountered the schizophrenic poet. To be perfectly honest I'd never related well to Graves' poems. Some of them (his "left-handed" poems, he called them) are satirical. Satire doesn't age well, and I found them very dated. I also found them mean-spirited, but that didn't make them poor poems, just uninteresting.
Of more interest were his "right-handed" curative poems, which still seemed dense and arcane. The Greek mythological references were usually too obscure for me (that's what an English Comprehensive school education will do for you). More often than not, I'd no clue what they were supposed to be about. Then I read, somewhere, about Graves' fascination with pre-historical myth. Specifically, I learned that Graves' imagination was captured by the Goddess myth, which he attributed to the Pelasgians who apparently inhabited Greece about 3500 B.C.
According to this myth, it was a goddess who was the creator of all things. She arose out of the primordial chaos and danced wildly until her movements created a great wind. The wind somehow became a serpent, with which she danced, and by which she bore the Universal Egg, out of which all things came. Thereafter, the serpent tried to claim power for himself, but was banished to the caves beneath the earth.
Or of the undying snake from chaos hatched,
Whose coils contain the ocean...
All very interesting, I'm sure; yet out of this myth, Graves constructed his rationale. For him, the goddess became the muse that moved him. Her usurpation by the later Greeks explained the violence of a male-dominated world. Just as Zeus begat Alexander the Great, Jehovah begat Napoleon. Instead of being warm, affirming and peace-loving, as the goddess intended, the world descended into war-mongering, bellicose, male-dominated monotheism. The solution, for Graves, is for the world to return woman to her rightful place as the dominant sex!
The most famous poem in the slim volume I picked up is called To Juan at the Winter Solstice, from which I have already quoted. Without the context of Graves' goddess infatuation it remains obscure; but with it, things begin to fall into place. The one story that explains everything to Graves is the grand theme of man's birth from woman, and his love and death in her arms.
Water to water, ark again to ark,
From woman back to woman:
So each new victim treads unfalteringly.
In a way, I can understand. Graves endured the war to end all wars. He served with the Royal Welsh Fusiliers in World War I, and was so badly wounded that, at one time, he was presumed killed in action. He had seen the worst that men could throw at each other. He had witnessed a generation being sacrificed on the bloody altar of nationalism. No wonder he preferred the embrace of a woman.


Yet the mythology around which Graves based his creative or curative poetry, and which became the defining meta-narrative of his life, was really nothing more than a romantic notion. His goddess may not have started any wars, but neither had she built any hospitals. The longing for a "female sense of order", as opposed to a "restless and arbitrary male will" may be laudable, but can you really base your life upon a tale of an empty egg?
Critics will say that that is exactly what Christians do, but I'm not falling for it. Christians have a grand narrative, by which we understand ourselves and our place within the world. But ours is based on the reality of a man who actually lived. And the empty tomb is not just a metaphor for a broken egg. For Christians it means something to say "Christ has died. Christ is risen. Christ will come again."
I don't want to imply that this is an either/or situation, that we must choose the hard masculinity of Christ over the soft femininity of Graves' goddess. You don't need to be a sabre-rattler to be a follower of Christ; after all, don't we call Him the Prince of Peace? But I do think it matters what story you take as the meta-narrative of your life, the lens through which you understand the world and your place within it. It can't just be a story that resonates with you; you can't pick a world-view on the basis of what you happen to prefer. Truth has to be external. It has to grab you. You understand your life through the story not because it gives you the results you want, but because the story is true. As I look at it, Graves accepts the myth because it fits his experience. Isn't it better to understand your experience on the basis of the story? And what is that story? For me, it's the glorious narrative of salvation history, the love story of a Creator from whom we had been alienated by our own foolishness and pride, who sent His Son to redeem us and to bring us home.
There is one story and one story only
That will prove worth your telling...
And that is the story of Christ.