Where would we be with out stories or the ones who share them with us?
A pale dismal place devoid of hope or dreams I should think.
Stories are the common thread through every human culture. Stories of hope, despair, valiant heroes and cunning villains can be found in every tribe and creed. But what is a story without someone to tell it.
"Australian Aborigines say that the big stories—the stories worth telling and retelling, the ones in which you may find the meaning of your life—are forever stalking the right teller, sniffing and tracking like predators hunting their prey in the bush."
~Robert Moss, Dreamgates
The story teller is a person who chronicles the history of a people. They capture the hopes and fears of their way of life, and embody them in fantastic tales. Sometimes they are colorful retellings of true events. For what story teller can resist making that one moment more dramatic or diabolical?
Other times the stories are complete fabrications of the storyteller's imagination. But in it's telling truths can be found that are more deep than any you'd find in a court of law. Like the stories Walter's uncles tell in "Secondhand Lions."
Sometimes, it's a fabrication of the truth. A clever disguise of real events told in a fictitious way. As in Hamlet's play revealing he knew the truth about his uncle.
Whether the story is factual or fictitious is irrelevant if a truth can be gleaned from it's depths.
Stories are meant to teach.
If we can learn to be compassionate from a tale about a talking bear, so be it. In growing up I heard stories from many places. Whether I believed they were stories of true events or not didn't matter. It was what those stories taught that was important.
While I hold the stories from the Bible to be true, and Aesop's Fables to be clever tales, the lessons I can take from each are as powerful. The Bible taught me not to kill or steal (and many other things) Aesop taught me things like using common sense and perseverance. Both helped me grow.
There are fundamental truths in these stories, and in others I've never read, that if we take the time to understand them, they help us grow into healthy adults. This is what Uncle Hub (from Secondhand Lions) tells Walt this after he was asked if any of the stories were true,
"Sometimes the things that may or may not be true are the things a man needs to believe in the most. That people are basically good; that honor, courage, and virtue mean everything; that power and money, money and power mean nothing; that good always triumphs over evil; and I want you to remember this, that love... true love never dies. You remember that, boy. You remember that. Doesn't matter if it's true or not. You see, a man should believe in those things, because those are the things worth believing in."
Stories are meant to entertain.
Ancient story tellers would gather their people around a fire in the dark of night and weave incredible tales of might and valor. Today we sit in darkened movie theaters. But the same story told over a fire and projected on a silver screen carries the same lessons, and adventures.
Books, movies, songs and poetry can take us, however briefly, from our daily life to another place. We can escape into an world so unlike our own and disappear for hours at a time. Richard Adams takes us down into the grass with the rabbits of Watership Down and leads us on an amazing journey full of outer trials and inner strength.
JRR Tolkien invents a whole other world and fills it with languages and people that have never been seen before. In this world of Middle Earth, we find that they too have stories of their own. Stories that make their story so much richer and vibrant because
If a story told in whatever form can remove us from a problem for a time, give our mind a chance to disconnect, we can approach it with a fresh innovation. Stories can make us laugh or cry, or they can strike a cord so deep that something will stay with us for ever.
"Lord! when you sell a man a book you don't sell just twelve ounces of paper and ink and glue - you sell him a whole new life. Love and friendship and humour and ships at sea by night - there's all heaven and earth in a book, a real book. ~Christopher Morley
Stories are meant to endure.
Some stories are so specific in time that they may not live out the decade. But real stories. Stories that inspire, teach and entertain last forever. Just look at works like the Iliad, the Odyssey, works of Shakespeare, Poe, and Dickenson. Some stories grow and add new chapters as time goes on, others stand strong on their own.
Some, like the Battle of Thermopylae, become huge retellings of ancient achievement, and modern retelling. Lord of the Rings, Star Wars and Narnia all continue to pull in young readers and minds, because they are so versatile in their craft. The stories told, while specific, are also universal. Selflessness, right and wrong, trust, friendships, the strength of family...
All these things are in stories. They are also in our everyday lives. Our lives are stories. Sometimes they are too big or close for us to realize what we are experiencing. So step back and listen to a story. If you can't listen to one, then tell one. For without stories we are nothing.
Stories are Powerful.
Nations rose out of stories. If our nation's stories are hopeful, we can be hopeful. If they are barbarous and depraved...we become likewise. If you need proof of that look at America. But that is a rant for another day.
A story told can not change a life. But what is gleaned or inspired by one can. Look at the greatest storyteller who ever lived. Jesus. He told complicated lessons about God, and life. His lessons weren't 3 point sermons with power point and video inserts. (not that there is anything wrong with that) but he told stories. And if he needed to he explained them.
So what greater thing could we aspire to than to be storytellers ourselves? If you are a follower of Christ, there should be no less than two stories always ready in your mind. His story, and yours.
“Miracles are a retelling in small letters of the very same story which is written across the whole world in letters too large for some of us to see.”
~CS Lewis
