Assumption ABBEY NEWSLETTER Volume 48, Number 4 Richardton, ND 58652 October, 2020 Your Own Story Every family has stories; some of them draw members together, some push members apart. My version of how the cake toppled at Paul and Sandra’s wedding will be different from Paul’s version of the very same story. We all know how an incident is remembered differently by various individuals, somewhat like the blind men and the elephant: they encounter the same animal, but when asked Brother Symeon Rubbelke in the Abbey cemetery. what the elephant is like, the answer depends entirely upon universe is too vast. But because we are, changing our personal who responds, on what part of stories are how we make sense stories can change our lives. the animal each man touched. of the world, then exactly how This can happen on an “The elephant is like a fat we tell our stories is how we individual as well as a collective snake” says the one who felt the come to see things. According level: a people “own” stories. trunk. “Oh no,” says another. to Lori Gottlieb, an American The Old Testament is a “The elephant is like a fan” writer and psychotherapist, the collection of stories owned, told because he had touched the ear. way we remember and narrate and retold by the Hebrew “Not at all,” says the third. “The our stories is ultimately the way people. The New Testament is elephant is like a tree trunk” we become; it’s what we are owned by Christians. because he had reached for one telling ourselves about our- A poignant example of a of the animal’s legs. “The selves. If we nourish grievances, story recalled by different elephant is like a wall,” says the for instance, we become people can be seen in a pair of fourth because he had placed resentful. If we look back with films directed and co-produced his hand on the animal’s side. pleasure and thankfulness we by Clint Eastwood. His “Flags “You are all wrong,” said the are likely to be grateful by habit. of Our Fathers” and “Letters fifth. “The elephant is like a “Only you can write your from Iwo Jima” are both about rope,” because he had grabbed stories,” Gottleib says. “The the battle of Iwo Jima, but one the animal’s tail. None of the story I tell is absolutely true . is told from the American point blind men were wrong; it’s just from my point of view. What we of view and the other is from that each of them was right tell is a story about ourselves, the Japanese perspective. In the according to his limited and there’s always another American version—“Flags of experience. version of that story.” (See Lori Our Fathers”—the Marines, Gottlieb on YouTube.) Being a after immense sacrifice and And everyone’s experience therapist, she looks to broaden heroic action, take the island is limited. No single individual and deepen a client’s stories, and raise the American flag on can encounter all of life. The because if we don’t like the way Mount Suribachi, as shown in the iconic photograph captured But too often, we allow by Joe Rosenthal of the others to tell the story for us. At Associated Press. In the times, when life is over- Japanese version of the battle— whelming, it can be easier to let “Letters from Iwo Jima”—the someone else explain what has island is overrun due to happened; we allow ourselves Japanese soldiers suffering to believe in the sensational from poor nutrition, unsanitary because difficult aspects of life conditions and having to follow seem to require big, overblown despotic orders in the line of reasons. The result can be duty. The two films serve as villages in time of war. Prince dangerous: for instance, ac- bookends for discussion about Maximilian simply assumed cepting a conspiracy theory that Iwo Jima. Neither story is that the people he reported lines up good guys against bad complete without the other. about were like every society he guys even while disseminating With some seventy-five years had known: the father or the libel, fanning hatred, all of it behind us, we have, perhaps, chief was head of the family based upon lies. We are fearful gained perspective and and descent was traced through and angry because we believe sympathy so that we can him, that women were only a stories that are unsubstantiated, understand World War II as a complement to men, and and, in many cases, baseless. far more complex story than subservient. (About this phenomenon see the one about good guys against lead article by Adrienne bad guys. It may not be enough to LaFrance in the June 2020 issue remind ourselves that of The Atlantic magazine.) If I’m Sometimes the story does Maximilian’s viewpoint was not careful about the stories I not seem complete because the incomplete. As human beings, listen to and begin to own, I individual telling it does not we all have to listen and learn. stand a good chance of have eyes for what is right in We look upon our existence in becoming an angry, vengeful front of him. When Maximilian the world as one big story to individual. zu Wied-Neuwied, a German tell, and it is: it’s a huge story to tell, much bigger than any one There are stories we should prince, traveled through what listen to and stories we should is now North Dakota in 1832, he story can contain, bigger than any origin story is able to not; stories based upon facts encountered the Mandan and that can be checked and cross- Hidatsa Native Americans. He convey, bigger than any scientific theory can formulate. checked, and stories based upon responded to them quite like rumor and lies. If I am not other white explorers before We have made stories: the creation account in Genesis, the careful, I can accept a story him, assuming that males ran based entirely upon nothing the show, that Mandan and “Big Bang” theory, Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of more than smoke, and in this Hidatsa societies were patri- age of political polarization, archal as European societies Species, to name a few. To suggest that any of these stand smoke is a bad way to go, were, and that women had very especially when each political little say, that women should alone as the only truth would be a failure to listen and to learn. side thinks that the other side is have very little say. However, misled. the Mandan and the Hidatsa— They are stories—extremely as we know now from valuable as such—and each anthropological studies—had a tells an aspect of the whole. The following is a true story. matriarchal society: a form of Back in 1918, during the anti- social organization in which Going back to Iwo Jima, if German hysteria of World War descent and relationships are any of us had been there during I, a man was reported to the reckoned through the female those days of battle, we’d come authorities for anti-American line and not the male line, away asking, “What hap- activity. His neighbors knew which made enormous sense, pened?” The need to tell a story him as the “Hun” because he given that so many Native men is a need to make sense of what spoke German, and therefore died while hunting dangerous would otherwise remain must be an alien from Germany. bison or while defending their senseless chaos. They reported that he had burned an American flag: a happened to Brother Frederick leaders deliberately deploy huge disgrace. They announced Schuchard who became a lay competing truths, or part of the that he also belonged to a secret brother at Assumption Abbey truth, to create an impression of pro-German party, along with after his wife died in 1947.) reality that they know is not several local German-speaking true. farmers who were also aliens. No doubt Frederick’s neigh- bors thought that they were They met in the secret of the Americans are free. We can night, to plot against the being responsible by reporting un-American activities. The say whatever we like. And so American government. The we can either tell the truth— Hun’s neighbors said that if the Marshal probably thought he was serving the law by insofar as we know it—to authorities did not go after him, engage people and inspire good they would be forced to take discrimination based upon language. Americans were action, or we can deploy our matters into their own hands. version of the truth so that The Hun’s name was Frederick. frightened of Germans in 1918. Germans were frightened of people are deliberately misled. He was summoned by the “Truth comes in many forms, United States Marshal to appear Americans. But sometimes we tell stories to bring people and experienced commu- in court and explain himself. nicators can exploit its vari- The summons stated that he down. None of us is perfect; we say and do nasty things to each ability to shape our impression was suspected of being “not of reality,” says Macdonald. In entirely in sympathy with the other, and we spread rumors because it feels good to do so. our country, politicians seem to United States in its present war do well based upon how situation.” When I pass along scandal about someone else, it makes effectively they can spin the me feel better about myself truth, such that it creates a false because the focus is upon impression: it’s not a lie, Frederick did appear before someone else’s wrongdoing.