Alternative Narratives

Author Ursula K. Le Guin in Steering the Craft includes a paragraph about story-writing that offers insight into our world and culture today:

"Modernist manuals of writing often conflate story with conflict. This reductionism reflects a culture that inflates aggression and competition while cultivating ignorance of other behavioral options. No narrative of any complexity can be built on or reduced to a single element. Conflict is one kind of behavior. There are others, equally important in any human life, such as relating, finding, losing, bearing, discovering, parting, changing."

While I think conflict usually is to be found in the seven other kinds of behavior Le Guin mentions (I suspect she'd agree), her thought that story-telling and life-living must always center on aggression and competition often seems at the heart of our personal lives and of each day's headlines.  Can we begin to consider other narratives for everything from family relationships to international politics? Dare we afford not to?

Prophets' Sestina

Aspiring to faithful adventures,

those who embrace the good risk

direct their worn boots

toward arenas where success

is less likely than failure;

they are seized by justice’s challenge.

Not a fantasy challenge

(pixelated virtual adventures,

bold graphically-portrayed failure

requiring no personal cost or risk).

Not for showy display of success,

for fancy, shiny, dress-up boots…

“Thank you. I prefer clean boots.

I will not let the grit of challenge

offered without guarantee of success

set the course of my ventures–

No dusty path that might ask I risk

embarrassment, shame, self, failure.”

But those brave who court failure

(weight of its mud on their boots)

to serve earth’s despised, at risk,

poor, beaten down by challenges

(whose small hopes are painful adventure)–

those brave for the meek’s success

detour their chances of success

to walk with repeated failure;

to hold close the poor through lonely adventures,

to lift the beaten with straps of their own boots.

They accept the challenge

of failing to avoid risk.

Justice-rolling takes long, long risk;

right and good stream toward success.

Justice-doing is a daily challenge

for love and kindness (which never fail).

Walking humbly in righteous boots–

doing what’s required–faith-filled adventure!

Prophets challenge our cheap successes:

“Matters not the risk of failure,

when boots wear thin in just adventure.”