The Long Flowing River: New Travels Through Old Stories

Copyright © 2010 by Case Stromenberg

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ISBN: 978-1-4502-4026-0 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4502-4028-4 (ebook)

ISBN: 978-1-4502-4027-7 (dj)

Printed in the United States of America

iUniverse rev. date: 10/1/2010

© 2010 by Case Stromenberg, Alvinston, Ontario, Canada

This book is an extensively revised version of A Kingdom for the Heart, published in 2009 by iUniverse.

For Deborah, Mark, and Anna

Contents

Preface

Chapter One

The world of the epic

The epic begun

Chapter Two

A unique quest

Chapter Three

Themes and struggles

Chapter Four

The rough life-raft

The epic faltering

Chapter Five

Many repetitions

Chapter Six

A house divided

Chapter Seven

Prostitutes and prophets

The epic reshaped

Chapter Eight

What’s past is prologue

Chapter Nine

Brother against brother

Chapter Ten

Much reconsidering

The epic ends

Chapter Eleven

Off the life-raft

Chapter Twelve

The struggle to be

Chapter Thirteen

A re-directed quest

Chapter Fourteen

The world after the epic

Conclusion

About the author

Notes

Preface

THERE’S AN OLD saying, It is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. Well, maybe so, but the pain of having lost is never quite balanced out by the memory of a brief season of love. Besides, far more people go seeking something they have lost or have once glimpsed than those who only seek out of curiosity, and maybe the world has lost something that once existed here, sometime, somewhere.

I prefer Neil Young’s well-known phrase, I’ve been searching for a heart of gold, and I’m getting old. His lyric describes pretty much what this book is about. In my life personally as well as in contemporary events, there was a treasure of the heart that seemed to have come and gone. As painful as the hardships of the circumstances I now found myself in, was the knowledge that there existed a far better way of living whose access now seemed impossible. Though very disillusioned, I had to find it again or at least discover the hard truth about its absence.

So how would I go about the search? I decided early on that I wouldn’t be poring over my own biography. Looking within was fine but it had to be balanced with looking elsewhere, at somewhere less subjective and much broader in scope. The lost heart was not just a private matter, and there were some major issues involved.

I thought of someone who wanted to look into a new book about the movies, only to find that it was just pages and pages of technical facts: all about the inventions that made motion pictures possible, stuff about camera work, set-ups for sound and lighting, and all the latest advances in digital imaging. The newfound book did a great job of presenting the technology and technique of film, but it missed a really important item — the story. Absent from that volume of cinematic techniques were the actual movies and why they were made, artistic trends and genres as these developed, together with the most influential productions and people.

Our advanced technological age has tended to reduce much of life to matters of technique and formula, things that are more easily manipulated for the sake of the vast commercial interests of our times, though there are other reasons for this reduction. Now certainly techniques and formulas are great tools, and there is often a sense of improvement or accomplishment for those who use them. In fact, we like our more impressive products so much that we quickly fall into the belief that we can’t have a good life without them. But when they are applied crassly, without much personal concern, inspiration, or ethics, the inventions soon show their limits. They distract us from listening to our deepest desires, feelings and intuitive knowledge, so that we lose something of what it means to be fulfilled human beings. Our tools and techniques can never replace our hearts.

Sensing that there must be something more fulfilling to life, many people go searching for their own soul, for an empowerment that can help them from within. Such a search is commonly called a spiritual journey. I’ve noticed, however, that many of the options placed before today’s spiritual searcher very much involve the use of …techniques. Contemporary spiritual conversation is often about how to do things in a particular way in order to get a certain benefit for oneself. The idea is that the more you do things as instructed, the better off you’ll be. The steps-to, the how-to, the rules-for, the seven-secrets-of — all such phrases suggest techniques, whether for home repair, business success, weight loss, stress management, personal relationships, or living with God. Sure, there are benefits to be gotten from techniques but in the end, they are just tools.

Life isn’t as straightforward as the promoters of technique imply. I’ve even found that doing things right can lead to trouble and pain, and not to the better life, while doing it wrong can at least attract some friends who also have done it wrong. Moreover, at times I just wasn’t able to do the right thing even when I wanted to or when I was all geared up to do so. Therefore the story of life had to go deeper, and it was just too ironic to be focusing on a spiritual how-to when searching for something more profoundly meaningful than a technique-filled world.

IN ADDITION TO an emphasis on technique, there has been in our times a widespread mystical interest and expression, sometimes called new age spirituality, though something like it exists within the older religions as well. It’s a kind of natural thirst to be in touch with something greater than ourselves and higher than the mundane things of daily existence. There has also been a lot of interest in the last days, a sense that the end of the world is at hand, whether that involved environmental concerns or fear of nuclear war, a final spiritual warfare or speculations on ancient signs of catastrophe. Yet in spite of these trends I stumbled into searching for the story of life, for a better sense of what is going on with us humans.

One of my preferred writers, C.S. Lewis, and also my son’s favorite author, J.R.R. Tolkien, both communicated to millions all over the globe something about interesting journeys through realms of technique and ancient knowledge. They did so through their very creative minds, producing among other things wonderful fictional stories that overlapped old beliefs and legends with the mood of Medieval European cultures. How entertaining and instructive these tales proved to be, and how many of us have long enjoyed them!

The following quotation taken from the film script of Tolkien’s book The Lord of the Rings shows something of the flavor of searching for the story of life:

History became legend,

legend became myth,

and some things that should not have been forgotten

were lost.

Like Tolkien and Lewis, I set out to seek what got lost in life, not as an attempt to equal the marvelous work of these authors, but simply for my own therapy. I was hoping to see if the understanding I needed most was really there.

My search centered on sets of ancient documents belonging to the so-called Abrahamic traditions (Judaism and Christianity, and Islam’s revised version of these). I had grown increasingly dismayed with the religions that use these documents, but I wasn’t ready to dismiss the whole Abrahamic tradition. I thought I shouldn’t be throwing out the baby with the bath water, as the adage goes. Probably somewhere along the way something had gone very wrong with the good spirituality of long, long ago. I hoped that there still existed a precious core of it, a heart of gold — largely lost, but waiting for someone to find it.

It seemed a good idea to have a fresh look at the various ancient sources in order to discern the thread in them that forms the main epic story. This had apparently become hidden behind millions of inane squabbles, theological inventions, power trips, narrow agendas, many strange interpretations, and even harmful applications. Maybe it was still possible to take the sources seriously, to enjoy their epic tale without getting caught up in either religious dogma or modern disdain. Was there truly a great and sound story here like that of a Lewis or a Tolkien, full of wonder and suspense, and could it provide a deeply worthwhile understanding of life without a reliance on techniques, religious or otherwise?

To me, this would be all about self-therapy, enjoyment, and discovering why that largest group of world religions, being those that claim their origin in the man called Abraham, doesn’t seem to be working very well. My project would not be about my personal spiritual experiences, and I certainly could not set out to indoctrinate or convert anyone to my vague hope of a heart of gold. Instead, I would begin to explore the story in the ancient sources and let the long flowing river of its epic take me where it will.

AS FOR PERSONAL beliefs, I had heard it said, Religion is for those who want to escape hell, but spirituality is for those who have been there. Well, the difference between religion and spirituality wasn’t always clear, but I sensed that there existed a powerful kernel of truth in that saying. Those who look for real redemption and recovery can never for long be satisfied with merely taking part in religion but will instead seek newness from the inside out.

Now that’s not to say that organized religion doesn’t have some useful part to play. In the larger scope of history it appears to have been a necessary feature, at least a kind of halfway house between crass selfishness and compassionate relationship, or between deadening materialism and life-affirming inner peace. It does appear that religion has often introduced people to personal spirituality, even though it is certainly distinct from that.

So in order to keep from getting bogged down in many religious questions, I needed to go back over the old documents to get a fresh view of the whole forest, as it were, without pausing to investigate every tree or without having to locate every footpath on someone’s idea of an authorized roadmap. Or (changing the metaphor), my work would be to follow the fascinating flow of life as the ancients began to notice it, the strong current of insight among numerous confusing eddies, chaotic whirl-pools, and stagnant inlets.

In order to trace that long flowing river, I had to let the story tell itself and just go with it for now. The challenge would be to relax, to go around my defensive emotions, and to avoid stopping too often for analysis and speculation. I also had to set aside the tedious and endless arguments of scholars about who wrote what document and when, how, or why. It was the big picture I was after. All I needed to do was to focus on the overall subject matter and see if there still was a heart of gold there.

I was uneasy rather than excited as I started my search, wondering how I would be feeling during the course of it. Would I be thrilled to get close to a heart of gold, or only mildly encouraged, or even cynical, maybe devastated, or would I in the end still be left wondering? The answers to those questions unfold in this book.

If there were others who were ready to move beyond mystic hunches or how-to spirituality, I didn’t seek them out just yet. My job was to do a lot of reading for myself and record the results. The manuscript of this work had taken general shape by 2006, and three years later a tentative edition was published for review purposes. The present volume is a much improved and somewhat expanded version of that earlier effort.

To seekers of any kind who are about to start this book, I suggest that you do as I had to: work a little at relaxing, at being at peace with the epic story long enough to just enjoy it. Take it in, keep on reading, past any troubling portions or unclear details, until you flow past enough of the scenery to begin seeing the great forest in spite of the many trees — that is, until the wide panorama and full sweep of the epic opens up and stays with you.

Case Stromenberg

Alvinston, Ontario, December 2009

Chapter One

The world of the epic

1. The plan

MAPPING OUT A general plan to seek the epic and its heart, I picked up my equipment and began. I carried along with me a moderate acquaintance with the ancient languages of many of the old documents, and in my backpack was the study and work I had done previously in teaching history and theology. Besides these items, I brought to the search my strong dismay about religion and also a personal knowledge of religion’s weaknesses. I would need them in order not to get side-tracked from my aim to find the epic and enjoy it. Perhaps in this way I could rediscover a genuine Abrahamic spirituality, if there was one.

The first challenge to face me on this journey was the task of removing the mental filters through which the stories of Earth’s origins had been sifted, and I mean the modern filters, not the ancient ones. This was not easy. All my life, it seems, I heard at schools, colleges and elsewhere the criticizing ridicule that the old stories are not scientific. I always found these attacks kind of silly and a little too arrogant: imagine writing off thousands of years of the development of humankind and civilization just because the old way that people expressed things doesn’t meet with modern approval! And then too, I had often heard the debate from the other side, namely, the adamant but often poorly designed efforts of Creation Science people to say that the old sources contain verifiable information about the physical origins of the universe.

Well, maybe each side had some of the truth but I found it very unfortunate that both sides have been using or abusing the old sources in this science controversy instead of letting the documents be quietly absorbed by thoughtful readers. The Genesis accounts of origins are not about the modern creation-versus-evolution issue at all. Rather, they form part of an introduction to the epic story of Abraham and his descendants. Though I could see some evolution and some intelligent design, I wondered why they always had to be presented in such a mutually-exclusive way. In any case, I had to make sure to get into the story rather than the science debate. The documents were primarily the Abraham epic, and that’s the direction in which I needed to head.

I had to find and then retell something of the great significance that the Genesis accounts must have had, not for us in the twenty-first century but for Abraham’s family of four millennia past. These stories had an importance beyond myth or religious allegory. They were something legendary, influencing the family’s beliefs and ways of living life. To uncover this and put it in modern words was a tall order, but it was the necessary start in the search for Abraham’s kind of spirituality.

Aside from any issue of doctrine, the ancient authors and editors seem to have known a deep meaning and sense of home within themselves, though the things they hoped for in life always lay outside, above, and in front. Though the story was indeed about things out there in the real world, its benefit was clearly personal, in the heart and mind. Though that sounds like a contradiction, it’s an insight that allowed people to respond well to great changes. By grasping this truth, some were able to turn away from their ever-moving mirage and disappointing dream of a present paradise and still not give up their deeper hopes. They could leave the outer illusion without becoming disillusioned within. They learned well the lessons of change.

2. First steps

MY FIRST STEPS in the journey of discovery were actually away from the book of Genesis. There was a different very ancient account about intelligent life in the universe long before it appeared on our world, and it spoke of a time when some of that life reached the planet unwillingly. This account looked far back to an enormous event that took place when an earlier Earth looked nothing like what it is now — back to an unknown distant era when the Highest Power in the universe was challenged by the hostility of a great subordinate.

That lesser force, whatever it precisely was, apparently lost sight of its purpose and belonging, becoming obsessed with its own great potential. The subordinate became the Rival of the High Power as it hungered for more fame, for more fortune, and especially for dominance. A hateful frustration possessed it as it sought, but did not achieve, the ultimate supremacy that it craved. Many creatures under its influence also darkened their thoughts to dwell on similar ambitions and they looked to the Rival, also called the Adversary, to pave the way to their goal.

According to that fascinating tradition, a minority of all the creatures in the distant universe joined the Rival in its bitter rebellion. Then two opposing sides faced each other, two armies of a kind never seen by people on Earth. A great war followed, and it boggles the mind to imagine what sorts of battles and types of arms and what kinds of beings all this involved. However the scenes were played out, the majority forces loyal to the