"In Stories of Faith, John Shea talks about revelatory encounters with mystery as an ordinary and unavoidable human process. He finds in these experiences five elements that one can analyze, even though the people involved may never articulate these elements to themselves. Shea describes these elements as follows:
"1. There is a relationship to the mystery of life.
"2. This mystery communicates meanings about the nature of the relationship.
"3. This meaning is initially formulated and then pondered, acted on, rephrased, repondered, reacted on, and so on.
"4. The meaning that is received is related to the conflicts, questions, and needs of the people involved.
"5. Although there is an enshrined religious vocabulary to talk about the felt perception of these experiences, it is seldom used. This last element is a special characteristic of contemporary revelation-faith experiences.
"Shea aptly describes some narrative features of these encounters with mystery and how people appropriate the meanings disclosed in the experiences. First of all, each experience Shea describes finds its way into a storytelling situation. A salesman tries to tell another about something that 'struck' him when out with a friend they both knew. In another, a college girl tells her family how she felt upon hearing Mother Teresa speak. In a third, a man in his mid-forties tells the rest of his family what he spontaneously said to his dying father. In each instance, the person who has encountered the mystery dimension of life struggles to articulate something about the experience to another person.
"People often tell such stories several times so that they can adequately grasp and formulate the meaning of an experience. Once they can articulate the value or truth through these multiple tellings, a meaning emerges that may become a touchstone for the future. The kind of truth found in these 'faith formulations,' however, may seem quite arbitrary if separated from the unique events that generated it; we need to keep in mind the provisional kind of truth that arises in a life story. Every such meaning is liable to revision on the basis of a new experience of relationship with Mystery."
