an - ec - dote: noun - a short account of a particular incident or event of an interesting or amusing nature, often biographical.
It occurred to me this week that we Westerners like to turn anecdotes into something they weren't meant to be. An anecdote is simply an account of something that happened. It's an incident. An episode. An occurrence.
We love to microwave them for 30 seconds and turn them into principles. This is probably the most offensive use of the anecdotes that make up 90% of the scriptures.
Let's appreciate that the power of an anecdote is in the telling, not in what principles and conclusions can be derived from it.
We mythics focus on the delivery over the derivatives. Truth is best left unarticulated, hidden between the lines of the stories we tell.
So now we have a choice. We can say, "God is all-powerful," or we can say, "The sun stood still."
The first statement is uttered after much deliberation, reckoning, information gathering, experimentation, comparing, and the inevitable conclusion. Ah, now we feel better, because now his strength is measurable. The scientific method brought to bear on our faith and reason.
The second leaves the mystery intact. And a mythic is happy wondering, "Hmmm, the sun stood still. How did He do that? What happened to the tides that day? Did the moon stop moving as well?" The effect of these kinds of mythic musings runs deep. In the end, the mythic simply sighs and says, "Father God, you amaze me. I love you."
These mythic musings change us in a way that knowledge never will.
I raise my glass to the humble anecdote.
