A few years ago, I wrote a monthly spirituality column for an online magazine. It was in this time when the power of story really began to hit home for me, and how important it is to remain childlike in the face of all the awfulness in the world, so we can continue to see all the goodness that there is. The column below resulted.

Telling Stories
July 11, 2003

A few days ago, I was in the van with Robbie and Becca and their cousins, Alex and David. Becca said, “Mommy, tell the story about how I used to ask you to write my name when I was a baby!” So I told the story about how little toddler Becca remembered the two Cs in her name, and would come up to Rob or me with paper and pencil and say to us, “CC me! CC me!” Then she laughed and said, “Mommy, tell the story about the time Robbie sang that song – you remember the one!” And I told the story about the time Robbie sang that song. Becca laughed and loved it. She loves stories, my girl does, positively eats them up. She loves stories in books, stories on television or in movies, stories in songs, stories on the computer. But best of all, she loves to sit with the family, with or without a photo album, and ask to hear all the stories about the people she loves most.

 

Christians do a lot of telling stories, too, as do our spiritual ancestors, the Hebrews. It is an ancient tradition, to go to worship and hear the stories of our ancestors in religion. We teach our young ones the stories in Sunday school, like Jonah and the whale or Daniel in the lion’s den, or Moses and the Ten Commandments. Story-telling was such an important part of the culture two thousand years ago that Jesus used stories, called parables, to teach his followers. We teach our young ones these stories, too: the good Samaritan, the prodigal son, the light of the world. But somewhere along the way, we get into the business of growing up, and we decide that we’ve become too mature for stories. Some people think they have to give up “make believe” and live only in the real world, where if it can’t be empirically proven, it doesn’t exist. There is no place for fantasy or imagination or even faith. It takes years before they discover the awful emptiness and sterility of the world of the empirically proven. It can take even more years to re-capture the truth of reality, the truth that children are born knowing: that stories are real… whether they actually happened or not.

 

One of the most powerful ways of encountering the bible is to read a story through, then go back and read it again, this time putting yourself into the story. You may have a speaking role, or you may be an observer on the sidelines; this doesn’t matter. The key is to try to engage all of your senses in living the story. What is around you? Is the son hot? Can you feel the sand beneath your feet? Do you smell sheep or camels? What do the voices of the other people sound like? When you can open your mind to this, you can interact with Abraham or Moses or David or Jesus; you can have a real experience that becomes part of you forever. You can become part of the stories that Christians have been telling for two thousand years, and our Jewish ancestors for thousands of years before that.

 

On Sundays, liturgical Christian churches tell stories in a few different ways. We sing hymns and psalms and other songs, and music is a powerful way to tell stories that you want people to remember. I never remember all the verses to it, but Rise and Shine is such a charming way of telling the Noah’s ark story that I love singing it when I get the chance. We also sit and hear scripture read, usually a story from the Old Testament before Jesus, part of a letter to early Christians from the New Testament after Jesus, and a story from the gospel, the good news about Jesus. I am blessed to be one of those who gets to read scripture in church, in the ancient tradition of the Jewish people, and it makes me feel wonderfully alive and connected to my Christian family.

Finally, we play-act. We act out the Last Supper of Jesus, where he shared the bread and wine with his closest followers, saying “This is my body; this is my blood.” As Christians, we believe that Jesus charged us to remember him whenever we share bread and wine, and we do this with special intention for Jesus at least once a week.

 

So to be a Christian and to be an adult does not mean that you have to give up stories or imagination or play-acting. Quite the contrary! In fact, to be a Christian means that you immerse yourself in story on a regular basis. You spend time every week with your Christian family, sitting in the pews, saying, “Tell the story about God parting the Red Sea!” and “Tell the one about the time Jesus was teaching the 5,000 on the hillside, and they didn’t have anything to eat!” and “Tell me the story about Jesus rising from the dead!”

 

I wish you grace and peace as you make your own story, as you tell stories to your friends and family, and as you experience the stories of the people of God. May the almighty and merciful God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, bless us and keep us. Amen.