To appreciate storytelling as a way of communicating wisdom consider the stories about the Buddha and Mohammed and the parables of Jesus. Gabriel Marcel uses this approach as an introduction to philosophic reflection that can lead to wisdom.

Christiane evokes the following situation in Act I, Scene Four. We are fragmented and dispersed. We live superficially and try to lose ourselves in overworking, business, productivity, diversions. If asked who we are, or if we try to estimate our worth before others and even ourselves, we articulate our identity as a bundle of functions and roles. Yet in this we suffer a sense of metaphysical uneasiness. We have lost our center and feel alienated from ourselves, from others and from God.

Marcel’s philosophic reflection in "On the Ontological Mystery", opened a path for rediscovering the perspectives of wisdom. He distinguished between problems that are exterior to us and to be solved scientifically, and mysteries that include us vitally. The latter are part of our being, and can only be experienced and clarified if we accept their presence and reflectively clarify them as they affect our being. Marcel affirms that while certain issues are adequately dealt with by problem solving approaches, some realities can be studied adequately only through reflection on mystery.

For example, consider friendship: two persons meet and become friends. A problem approach takes into account economic, sociological and psychological factors and explains that these two individuals were in the same place at the same time, e.g. a health spa or a ski resort, because they come from the same socio-economic bracket and share the same illness or philosophic or sporting interest. Still an encounter, a meeting that has left a deep and lasting trace upon my life, requires another type of reflective analysis that draws on my recollecting the experience and clarifying how it affects me in my subjectivity or personhood and what conditions were required for this to happen. An encounter, and then a friendship, develops through a dialogue of freedoms involving an appeal, a response and, if freely affirmed, a gratuitous gift to be with and for one another. It is specifically in this manner that an I-Thou relation is constituted.

The first part of Marcel’s essay addresses the question: "Who am I?", which he asserts cannot be separated arbitrarily from its counterpart: "Is Being empty or full?" It reminds us that metaphysics is the logic of freedom. Varying attitudes and stances will produce different interpretations of the meaning of life and of human dignity, both individual and familial. So the attitude or mode of presence I freely adopt toward the world, will influence the response I evolve to the questions Who am I? Is Being empty or full?

Presence to the world in an attitude of "having" leaves one dissatisfied and uneasy. What one "has" remains always exterior to oneself, so one is never fulfilled interiorly or deeply satisfied by mere "having". Moreover, one is always covetous and threatened because one’s possessions can be stolen or overshadowed by someone else’s even greater collection. One has no true sense of self worth because worth is defined only exteriorly and precariously on the basis of quantifiable and horizontally comparable possession of things, prestige or power. By contrast, through the authentic attitude of "being" one is open and available to unite with realities encountered. One who is capable of admiration can be enriched and uplifted by the presence of excellence wherever it occurs. An attitude of "being" lets one participate in the enriching gift of presence -- of objects, of persons and of the Transcendent.

The second part of "The Ontological Mystery" establishes how each of us can illumine the mystery of who we are by reflectively clarifying our experience of being. As we saw earlier Marcel distinguishes between problem and mystery, and welcomes the presence of life-enhancing mysteries. Recollection enables one to gather within one’s reflective experience those things which are part of one’s life and which affect who one is. One can then discriminate what attitudes freely adopted allow one to participate in the life enhancing gift(s) offered by being. Recollection is an act whereby I gather myself and also that which is other and more than myself, yet this hold or grasp upon myself is also relaxation and abandon.

Marcel’s own answer to the questions "Who am I?" and "Is being empty or full?" comes in terms of fulfilling encounters one can have in the regions of objects, persons, and Transcendence. One can find fulfillment by participating in the material world as an extension or enrichment of one’s embodied subjectivity. One finds fulfillment in the gratuitous gifts of loving communion with family and friends, the enrichment of one’s subjectivity by the uplifting and life enhancing presence of another in a communion of love. Ultimate fulfillment can be found in experiencing that grounding and personalizing force of a Transcendent Absolute Thou or Sacred Other. Only the most patient probative searching unearths this dimension of reality as a trans-subjective source radiating a light of wisdom inseparable from love.

The third moment of his essay illumines who I am called to be if I strive authentically to fulfill my highest human possibilities as a person of hope. This means being available to, with and for others; it means welcoming life not as a series of events and objects to be possessed, but rather as a presence that reveals itself and invites me to become myself as gift. My response must be one of creative fidelity to an abiding, yet ever freshly renewed call, revealed to me through others. It is in such personalist terms that Marcel clarifies what it means to be in a free and authentic manner.

In a comedy, Colombyre or the Torch of Peace, Marcel portrays a peace commune gathered in the high Swiss alps in the summer of 1937. The pretention was to be a refuge of peace, yet there was so much selfishness and chauvinism that the so-called haven of peace became a hotbed of war. In the end the chalet explodes and the experiment fails utterly.

The play is a farcical satire, but it portrays the erroneous attitudes that doom the project from its outset. It raises the question of whether people of different nationalities, religions and cultures can ever live together in peace and harmony.

Marcel addressed those questions in an essay, "The Dangerous Situation of Ethical Values", stating that what is at stake is the survival of human life itself. Each of us is in danger of death because we are separated from other members of the human family; we are in danger of death also because we are uprooted from the natural foundations of wisdom and virtue.

If values are to survive it must be in the context of a community, a human family. With his friend, Max Scheler, he remarked poignantly that values are not mere concepts. they are real when carried on the backs of human actions. They then become the life-enhancing qualities of human relations.

Whereas the play characterizes attitudes that undermine and destroy community, philosophic reflection critically clarifies issues to be resolved and the requisite attitudes in order for any life with dignity to survive.

First, can we do anything to preserve and communicate values? He recognizes that it is divisive to separate those who believe in values and those who do not. He is aware that cooperating with groups that have different philosophies and purposes -- some selfish and limited, others focused on the sacred dignity of persons -- entails a danger of being compromised and exploited. Yet a failure to cooperate, i.e. not to promote values concretely and in cooperation with others, is to abandon the values we profess to cherish.

How can values be communicated and shared? To pretend that our knowledge should inform the ignorant, or to pretend that from our wealth we will remedy the other’s poverty, are erroneous and harmful approaches. Attitudes of the haves dealing with the have-nots only incite anti-religious resentment. Besides, faith, spirituality or values are not something we "have", they are genuine only on the condition these gifts radiate through us as grace.

We cannot provide for the survival and growth of values by instructing the ignorant, by doles to the "have-nots". Marcel suggests rather that we address the other person with deep respect and a love of his or her sacred uniqueness. Marcel goes so far as to say that we address that unique act of adoration which is owed to the divine reality to the particle of the divine that is this other person. In this manner one does not pretend to instruct or give to another; one merely awakens the other’s awareness of his or her divine filiation. This approach Marcel calls a kind of maieutic in that it brings to birth the other’s sense of their sacred dignity and worth.

With this model of how values may survive and grow, we can imagine a different development of the story of the international colony at Colombyre. Each one of us seeks, or at least needs to strengthen our grasp and deepen our rootedness in values. When others invite me to reflect on the values I cherish, and encourage me to share the ways in which these values are expressed in the particular cultural rituals or traditions with which I am familiar, I deepen and enrich my celebration of these values. As I recollect my values and my culture’s way of observing them, that in turn encourages and enables others reflectively to clarify their own experience of values and the cultural traditions they use to communicate them.

As we encourage one another to come more fully in touch with our true selves, and the values we personally love and want to live for, we can help one another to find new and fresh ways of incorporating our values and traditions into the changing circumstances of our lives. Marcel calls this effort to find fresh ways to carry forward our revered and cherished values creative fidelity.

For example, the growth in popularity of the martial arts T’ai Chi ch’uan, Aikido, Tae Kwon Do, and Karate, has done to lead new generations of young people into a disciplined, meditative and noble spiritual way of life. For example, the recent concern for physical fitness has done much to revive the ancient art of T’ai Chi Ch’un, introducing many to its graceful philosophy of life. Many Western young people have been drawn to the meditative techniques and the ways of wisdom of Zen, Buddhism, and Yoga. Children from ghettos and suburbs find discipline and dignity through such programs. Some of the traditions of Islam also have brought a renewal of respect for woman and family to many in the United States through Black Islam.

Marcel saw hope for the survival and growth of values as many small group communities emerge with humble beginnings and modest goals. The one-to-one relations of members of these communities are characterized by a spirit of light and love which comes to them from above. The spirit animating their community extends beyond their members and shines through their use of natural resources and of the physical things they own. Without the development of such small groups striving in creative fidelity to preserve and promote the spiritual values they cherish, the masses will fall into infra-human levels of behavior precipitating an apocalyptic destruction whose terrible first symptoms we are now witnessing. The key to the survival of values lies in the quality of interpersonal relations that characterize a community, viz., an attitude and regard of love, a profound respect that quickens the other’s sense of his or her own sacred dignity and worth.

Social transformation and/or cultural tradition always require personal conversion, an encounter with truth as a personal presence. One’s personal witness and interpersonal testimony is a requisite occasion for another’s personal discovery of, or growth in, wisdom. Individuals experience this when they are inclined to go beyond scientific knowledge of techniques to open onto the mysterious dimensions of life which can be enlightened by wisdom’s compassion and love. In turn, however, any introduction to wisdom’s truth as a personal presence must always be mediated by the witness or testimony of a loving mentor, teacher, friend or family member.

1. The Broken World, a Four Act Play by Gabriel Marcel, trans. by K.R. Hanley (Milwaukee, WI: Marquette University Press, 1998).

2. "Concrete Approaches to the Ontological Mystery", in Gabriel Marcel (Secaucus, NJ: Citadel Press, 1980), pp. 9-46.

See also: Two Play, by Gabriel Marcel: "The Lantern" and "The Torch of Peace" plus From Comic Theater to Musical Creation, a Previously Unpublished Essay, ed. Katharine Rose Hanley (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1988).

"The Dangerous Situation of Spiritual Values", in Home Viator, an Introduction to a Metaphysic of Hope (Glouster, MA: Peter Smith, 1978); Katharine Rose Hanley, Dramatic Approaches to Creative Fidelity: A Study in the Theater and Philosophy of Gabriel Marcel (1889-1973) (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1987), esp. ch. VII, "Colombyre or the Torch of Peace: The Role of Person-Communities in Living Creative Fidelity to Values", pp. 129-136.