Preaching and Buffy

I’m reading something in my preaching class about storytelling and how the myths and stories of cultures sustain them and give them identity.  

I tried to search for my stories, for that heritage.  I feel a bit like I don’t have any.  I am Christian, but I didn’t grow up Christian, so my religious tradition feels like my heritage and also not.

While my family likes to claim “Irish,” I know many people from Ireland and know that I have no Irish culture.  My family makes fun of each other a lot and eats a lot of potatoes?  I don’t know if that is culture.  

I want to claim Buffy.  Buffy is a story about a young girl who has a calling that she doesn’t want.  She wants to be “normal,” but finds that she can’t be.  She can’t be mean or judgmental and that means she can’t run in the “cool” crowd.  She starts to accept her calling as integral to who she is.  As a strong woman called to make a difference in the world, she stands up for the weak and fights against oppressive systems and shows people that a tiny girl can be the strongest person you’ve ever met— and while the reality is that in Buffy that strength has a very physical manifestation, it’s not the point.  In fact, by the end of the show, Buffy is not the strongest person in her circle, but she is the leader because of something inside of her— that calling— that makes her powerful in a way that other people with equal strength aren’t.  What Buffy does with her power, at the end of the day, is to share it.  She doesn’t hoard her power and use it to benefit herself.  She makes everyone around her as powerful as she is and asks them to stand up with her and make a difference.  Throughout this entire journey, she makes many mistakes, as do all of the other characters… but the point is the journey.  They journey to self-acceptance in a way that empowers them to live authentically, selflessly, and to cultivate their gifts.  Each of the characters brings whatever they have to the table and offers it up.  As a group, they become far more powerful than each of them is individually.  They love and forgive and try their hardest, no matter how impossible it seems to make progress.  

And for goodness’ sake, it’s a story I “tell” over and over again.  I started watching Buffy in 1998.  I taped it and watched it over and over.  I now have it on DVD and it’s on Netflix and I STILL watch it all the time.  It’s my story.  Buffy is a huge part of who I am.  That may sound ridiculous to some people, but it’s the truth.