Drilling Through Fact to Fiction

...and discovering new ways to makegoodhappen.

My schooling taught me to value cold, hard facts above all things. I revered the scientists and philosophers of my Western heritage who gained their status by developing various methods for extracting propositional truths from the detritus of daily life. They worked tirelessly in laboratories and Ivory Towers to distill the residue of their experiments into simple assertions that persevere through cause and effect. The propositions that survived the process were deemed worthy of society’s trust. My classmates and I were trained to use them as a litmus test, to judge everyone who ever existed according to those dictates. When someone from the 1600s, for example, fails to live up to our standards, we feel justified in criticizing their achievements and dismissing their life.

Mary’s glass coffin in Agreda, Spain

These ingrained habits make my Substack writing project more challenging. I start where my training ends. Then I have to move in the opposite direction. For example, when researching the incredible story of a Spanish villager in Spain who had a direct influence upon the early missions of Southern California, I find a Wikipedia article stating these cold, hard facts: “Between 1620 and 1623, Mary of Jesus reported that she was often "transported by the aid of the angels" to settlements of a people called Jumanos.”¹ The article is cautious and almost defensive in tone. After all, we have no place for angels, much less stories of traveling with them. So the article works to find alternate explanations for these experiences. I begin with this information in my writing, but I have to drill through the substrata of cold, hard facts, break them into bits and pieces and then reanimate them through historical fiction.

For example, the article also states: “Accounts of Mary's mystical apparitions in the American Southwest…so stirred 17th- and 18th-century missionaries that they credited her in their own life's work, making her an integral part of the colonial history of the United States.” That’s interesting. But the story of the arrival of Junipero Serra, a 17th century missionary in Southern California, is much more inspiring. As an eyewitness wrote: “…the Venerable Father (Serra) ordered the mules to be unloaded and the bells hung from the branch of a tree. As soon as they could be rung, the servant of God began to sound them in a merry peal and to shout as if enraptured: ‘Come you pagans; come, come to the Holy Church; come, come to receive the Faith of Jesus Christ.’ One of the…Fathers…seeing this skeptically said to him: ‘Why do you tire yourself here if this is not to be the spot where the church is to be built? Nor is there a single pagan anywhere about. It is a waste of time to ring the bells.’ ‘Father,’ answered Fray Junipero, ‘allow my overflowing heart to express itself. Would that this bell were heard throughout the world, as the Venerable Mother Sister Mary of Agreda desired it, or at least, that it were heard by every pagan who inhabits this sierra.”² My education misses the obvious inspiration of the joy expressed in the story, focusing instead on criticizing the use of the word “pagan.” Suddenly Junipero Serra’s experience is reduced to another example of Western colonialism. But my calling is to write about Junipero Serra in a way that enables the reader to acknowledge his humanity, in both its strengths and weaknesses, while also accessing his obvious joy and considering how we might find that joy in our lives as well. This is one of the incredible strengths of Charles Dickens’ writing.

I’m continuing to read Dickens’ novels in the order they were written. I’ve completed The Pickwick Papers, Oliver Twist and Nicholas Nickleby. Now I am reading The Old Curiosity Shop. I’m convinced his fictional works, based on historical life in 19th century London but exaggerated for effect, have done more to help the poor and forgotten over the centuries than hundreds of academic studies and political speeches. Each book invites us into a story that inspires the reader to sympathize with the life experience of its characters, to follow eagerly the events of the tale he tells, and thereby grasp deeper wisdom for their everyday lives than propositional truth statements could ever convey.

So, with fresh conviction, I return to my writing, developing a story world which will make even clearer connections between Mary of Jesus, Junipero Serra, and today’s Angelenos who, like us, are on a journey with Jesus. I feel certain that when this story begins to be told on Substack later this year, we will find inspiration that creates new ways to makegoodhappen in our lives, relationships and community.

1. Wikipedia: Mary of Jesus of Agreda

2. Palou, F. (1955) Life of Fray Junipero Serra. Acadmeny of American Franciscan History. Documentary series, v.3. Washington: Acadmeny of American Franciscan History p. 110-111.