PBP: Week 23- Lore

I might well be a Lore-aholic. It's more than just liking lore, enjoying stories about the things I am interested in, or seeking out tales my ancestors used to explain the world. Lore opens doors that let me really get into the heart of things. It's like the difference between peering in the windows of someone's house and being invited in...somethings are hard to see from the outside.

I think that lore is often undervalued. In many cultures, there is no definitive lore. We humans have been around and been telling stories for so long that things have changed. Considering some of these stories have been around since before writing, it is no surprise that many of them have changed a lot. Play one round of telephone (where everyone sits in a circle and one person whispers something to the next person, and the message gets passed around until the last person says it out loud....it is always turned into something crazy), and you will know how quickly a story can devolve.

These changes are often argued over vehemently. The details of the story are inspected for validity, bias and author influence. Stories from different cultures about the same event or person are determined to be more or less 'accurate' depending on the origin of the subject of the tale.

I think there is some benefit to all this examination and debate...if you are a scholar (or are interested in scholarly validation). But in my daily practice, it doesn't amount to much at all. What lore gives me is substance. If I read about a deity, and get a comprehensive list of the things that deity is associated with, what people have worked with them about, or what they are supposed to do...it's like reading a grocery list of ingredients. I may be able to work out what someone might cook from the ingredients, but it will be nothing like actually sitting down and eating the meal.

Lore fleshes out the facts. Lore makes people more understandable (whether we like them or not). Lore creates connections between things that on the surface might look very different. The story form of lore also helps with retention: it is much easier to remember a good story than it is to remember a list of things.

Nothing in life is simple. All things have many facets, and when you add people into it, then there are a million ways to experience something. Lore from different cultures doesn't need to be the same, because they are flavored by the culture they grew in. Consider a pivotal battle between two peoples. One side wins and becomes ruler of all. Both people write tales about the battle, but the tales will tell very different stories, and yet both will be 'true' from the eyes of the people who wrote them. If you only read one, you will have a one-sided view of what happened. If there was a third culture who was there, observing, but not involved, you would have a third view that many would think to be unbiased, but often that outsider view is just that: an outsider. They may be more objective on the facts (though of course if they have feelings towards either culture that could impact their view), but they would be missing the emotional connection that the participants had.

I don't think there is one way to approach things. We have personal relationships with deities, just as we have personal relationships with the people in our life. I love both my mother and my father, but I relate to them in different ways. My husband has a completely different relationship with my parents than I do, and likewise, my interactions with his parents is different from his own. None of the people involved change, and yet the way we all interact is very different. I see this in the way we interact with deities. My relationship with a particular deity might be very different from someone else's. This doesn't make either of us wrong, nor does it mean we aren't working with the same deity, just that as we are different people, we interact differently.

The same thing could be said for correspondences. I may have different reactions to certain herbs than other people. Many cultures see the very same item in very different ways. Color comes immediately to mind. Black is the color we wear in America at funerals to represent mourning. In Chinese culture, white is worn for the same reason. Depending on how you were brought up, where you lived, and what influences you had, you may have very different associations than I do.

I think that Lore helps us understand those that are different from us. When we read (or listen to) a story about a different culture, we may not agree with the things they believe or do, but often we connect with the characters and we can understand why they do the things they do. A good story teller can help us to empathize with people we might struggle ordinarily to work with.