The Prodigal Son and Pinocchio by Rev. Emily Jane Lemole
Quick! Bring the best robe and put it on him. Put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. Bring the fattened calf and kill it. Let’s have a feast and celebrate. For this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.” (Luke 15:22-23)
Our inner struggles are fought over whether our good traits will have control over our bad ones, or the other way around. The bad traits that want to get control of us are in our outer, material self, while the good ones are in our inner spiritual self. If our bad traits win, our material self will be in control of us. If the goods ones win, our spiritual self will be in control (p.71 from the New Jerusalem and its Heavenly Doctrines, as translated by Rev. Lee Woofenden in The Heavenly City, A Spiritual Guidebook.)
What does the story of the Prodigal Son, the tale of Pinocchio, and from the Writings of Swedenborg, the process of Regeneration have in common? How do they relate and how can we apply their messages to our lives?
Parables from the Word, and stories with deeper meaning, are a way of experiencing truth, or a perspective, that is often lost when the lesson is spelled out. Stories create an experience that one can feel as well as rationally understand. Jesus taught with parables. Buddhists and Sufis tell stories that obviously point to the spiritual life, as well. Great children’s stories that have universal and lasting appeal are ones with deep truths about our unseen or unconscious life, as well as the obvious context of the story.
In our stories today, both sons leave home. Both become distracted by the enticements of the natural world and temporarily forget where they came from and where they should be going. Both experience poverty, hopelessness and despair, temptation, and finally reconciliation. Since we are probably more familiar with the prodigal son’s story let’s take a closer look at Pinocchio.
Pinocchio
Pinocchio is an Italian fairy tale written in 1881. This tale of a stick of wood carved into a puppet, and his adventures to become a “real boy” met with great international success. The story has been adopted, rewritten and illustrated countless times since it began as a serial story in an Italian children’s magazine. Only the Koran and the Bible beat Pinocchio for the largest number of copies in print. As for movie versons, at least 18 have been produced since 1911, the best known of course, the one which we’re all familiar with, is the Walt Disney version made in 1940.
What is it about this particular story that gives it such a place? How does this disobedient puppet, his long suffering father, the Good Fairy, a talking cricket, and of course, the bad guys, the conniving fox and cat, relate to the deeper truth? What does it illustrate that may be useful in our lives?
The story of Pinocchio is an allegory of transition and transformation. A variety of themes weave through this tale: temptation, repentance, conscience, forgiveness, compassion, evil, falsity, cunning, betrayal, the power of angels, perseverance and finally, transformation, or in Swedenborg’s terminology, regeneration or re-birth.
A puppet, or one controlled by the natural world is transformed into a “real boy”, a spiritual person free in the real sense of choosing and doing what is good and true, with a compassionate heart no longer at risk or “prone to evils of every kind.”
From Secrets of Heaven 977:
With the regenerate person there is conscience of good and truth; from conscience one does what is good, and from conscience one thinks what is true.
Pinocchio’s conscience, represented by the Talking Cricket apparently dies early in the story – actually squashed by a shoe thrown by Pinocchio to stop the cricket’s correction of him. (We can also squash or silence our own conscience when we don’t want to hear what it has to say). But the cricket later revives, to Pinocchio’s relief, delight and salvation.
Pinocchio and the Prodigal Son
The Pinocchio story also reflects the lessons of the Prodigal Son’s leaving and returning to his Father. Both leave a generous Father’s house. Prodigal means wasteful – wasteful of the life given to us with all its blessing and opportunities. Seen in our own lives, this would be doing what we want; being self-centered rather than God-centered. We squander our wealth – the blessings and gifts and opportunities – what we know to be of value. In Pinocchio’s case this was the coat, the spelling book and the gold coins. The Prodigal Son spent all of his inheritance, as well. Both became distracted and enthralled by the enticements of natural delights devoid of spiritual meaning. Although Pinocchio and the Prodigal Son felt they were free to do what they wanted, they ended up as slaves. To quote Thomas Merton:
The slave, in the spiritual order, is the one whose choices have delivered him over, bound hand and foot, to his own compulsions, idiosyncrasies, and illusions so that he never does what he really wants…but only what he has to do.
The Lord gives us freely our inheritance. Even the Lord can see that his freedom of choice can take us to a “far away country,” far away from our spiritual home, the Lord allows it. It appears to be an essential part of reformation and regeneration, for it is only in spiriutal freedom that we can choose for good – choosing Heaven – or evil – choosing hell. With every choice we make, we experience heaven and hell right here, right now, not just in the afterlife. “The way to Heaven is Heaven,” said Teresa of Avila, and of course, the way to Hell is Hell.
The Prodigal Son lost everything, and Pinocchio lost everything. We have our losses, little ones and devastating ones, and sometimes we can choose bad places and bad company. There is a “dark night of the soul,” as St. John of the Cross describes, which comes to every one of us. We can feel alone, in despair and hopeless. A beautiful and reassuring thought is from True Christianity 126:
For in temptations, one is apparently left to oneself, although…God is then most present in one’s inmosts, and supports one; and therefore when anyone overcomes in temptation, one is in mostly conjoined with God.
Forgiveness
Essential to both these stories is forgiveness – a quality or state of mind and heart that does not come easily to any of us, even though we may say the Lord’s Prayer every night, when we assure the Lord that we will forgive those who trespass against us – then then grow furious when another driver cuts us off in traffic. Forgiveness must be an intention of the will and embraced by the understanding. And then practiced, and practiced, and practiced.
Witness Geppettos’ love and forgiveness for Pinocchio and the Father’s running out to welcome and forgive his son, joyously celebrating his return. All wrong-doing is forgotten and love restored.
The lesson here is for us as well. The Lord said forgive 7 times 70 times (in other words, without limit). How do we do that?
Clarissa Pinkola Estes writes, in Women Who Run with the Wolves:
The Four stages of forgiveness: 1. To forego – to leave it alone; 2. To forebear – to abstain from punishing; 3. To forget – to aver from memory, to refuse to dwell; 4. To forgive – to abandon the debt.
And the well-known surgeon Bernie Siegel writes, in Love, Medicine and Miracles:
Forgiveness does not mean ignoring what has been done or putting a false label on an evil act. It means, rather, that the evil act no longer remains as a barrier to the relationship.
Struggle and Choice
Our struggles, and these difficult adventures of the Prodigal Son and Pinocchio, are neither mistakes nor failures. They are the necessary growing up, going away, and finally returning that defines the spiritual experience. Essential to this process is making choices and asking: are they God centered? self-centered? world-centered? Consequences come from our choices, and through these experiences we learn.
Joan Borsenko describes what has been called spiritual optimism, “the point of view that different experiences provide an opportunity for soul growth and spiritual homecoming.” And from Heaven and Hell 546:
Unless one were between both (good and evil), one would not have any thought, nor any will, still less any freedom and any choice; for one has all these from the equilibrium between good and evil.
Reconciliation and Coming Home
Eventually we “come to our senses” as the prodigal son did when we wake up and no longer want to live a life feeding pigs and are longing for more than corn husks. We remember from our gift of Remains that beautiful memory of our Father’s house and long to return to Him.
This inborn homing system, or “implanted promise,” as Richard Rohr calls it, creates in us a longer for something deeper, for real meaning in our lives, and finally to return to God. St. Augustine said “God thou hast made us for thyself and we are restless until we rest in Thee.” When we make the effort for the journey home, as the Prodigal Son and Pinocchio did, the Lord knows our intentions from far off, and meets us with open arms. But we have to experience this leaving and wanting to return, in freedom.
This is how the story of the Prodigal Son ends – joyous reconciliation – but the story is not really over. The son’s spiritual life is restored, in which he will continue growing forever. But challenges will continue to enter his life. If you reader further in the story, there still is the elder son’s resentment and anger with which to deal. Our spiritual life evolves forever.
Father Richard Rohr describes our spiritual progression as 3 steps forward, 2 steps back. Also, we can think of it as a spiral – upward, we trust.
The Prodigal Son and Pinocchio illustrate for us the 3 Rs of the Spiritual Life: Repentance, Reformation, and Regeneration. First, we must repent: recognize that we are doing the wrong things, or going the wrong way, and ask for forgiveness, and then turn around – metanoia (meaning repentance, change one’s mind or turn around). Then reformation: do what is right even if our heart isn’t always in it. As taught in Secrets of Heaven 4353: “Act precedes, willing follows.” We actually can act our way into a new way of feeling. And finally, little by little, we start to love what is heavenly and love all those qualities that make up heaven, here and now: kindness, goodness, forgiveness.
How does the story of Pinocchio end? Pinocchio and the Talking Cricket and Geppetto are reunited. Pinocchio’s beautiful Blue Fairy kisses him and says, “Well done, Pinocchio. You are forgiven for all that’s in the past. You have a good heart. Boys who help other people so willingly and lovingly deserve praise and affection, even if they can’t always obey. Always listen to good counsel and you will be happy.”
Then the transformation occurred that had been taking place all along: Pinocchio turns into a real boy! “Tell me, Papa,” Pinocchio said as he hugs and kisses the Blue Fairy. “How could this have happened?”
“It’s all your doing, Pinocchio,” Geppetto said to his son. “Because when boys who have been bad turn over a new leaf and become good, they have the power to bring such happiness to their families.”
Here we can sense the same joy the father felt with his prodigal son’s return.
Our Stories
These stories are our stories. the tell of how we become real, how the natural becomes spiritual, how a new heart is given and how we leave and then return to God. Step by step, each moment of each day all our life, transformation from the lifeless to life, unreal to real.
Although Pinocchio and the Prodigal Son felt they were free to do what they wanted, they temporarily were slaves. This state is precisely described as follows:
We have:
The choice to lives with the pigs and starve,
OR
The choice to come home to our loving Father
The choice to stay changed into a donkey in Funville
OR
The choice to come home to our loving Father.
The choice – to stay asleep, bewitched by the world’s enticements and the tyranny of the ego,
OR
The choice to return to our loving Father.
The choice is always ours.
The name of this poem by Aldous Huxley is the same, “The Choice is Always Ours,”
Then, let me choose the longest art, the hard Promethean way
Cherishingly to tend and feed and fan that inward fire,
Whose small precarious flame,
Kindled or quenched, creates
The noble or ignoble ones we are
The worlds we live in and the very fates,
Our bright or muddy star.
Amen.
