Stories We Tell Ourselves by Richard Holloway

A couple of years ago Richard Holloway offered what seemed as if it might be his final word. He called it

Bus. Happily no word has ever been final for him – there has always been a “but”. In any case, the bus hasn’t arrived. He is still waiting at the stop, or in the shelter which offers little protection from the winds of the world.

Holloway was the Bishop of Edinburgh in the Scottish Episcopal Church, an independent-minded one who lost, not quite his faith, but certainty, and confessed to agnosticism.

There are two kinds of agnostics: those who say “I don’t know and I don’t care” and those who don’t know but still care and search. Holloway is in the second group. He doesn’t know but he still searches. “There is more faith in honest doubt, / Believe me than in half the creeds.” Holloway might go further than Tennyson and say “in any creed”.

Nevertheless, he might add – for he is, in the Scottish style identified by Muriel Spark, a “nevertheless” man – all creeds have their origin in puzzlement and a sense of wonder, and seek to make a statement of truth. Such truths, though presented as undeniable, may more properly be understood as myths, explanations of the inexplicable. They are, as his title has it, the stories we tell ourselves. Sometimes the stories are harsh: the myths of “The Fall“and “original sin” for instance. Sometimes they are comforting: the promise of Paradise and the “band of angels… coming