Why tell a story?
The answer became clear to me once again this morning as
I read Frederick Buechner’s words: “My story is important not because it is
mine, . . . . but because if I tell it anything like right, the chances are you
will recognize that in many ways it is also yours.”
Yesterday in church a couple of people commented on
my recent essay published in Mennonite
World Review: “Christmas: Season of Courage.” When people like a piece of writing it is usually
because they identify with the stories in some way. Their circumstances may
have been quite different from mine, but the emotions are the same. And that is why they like the stories. Someone is telling their story. And they recognize it.
I treasured my father’s stories while growing
up. He told stories about his
experiences in World War I in the Russian medical corps. He knew the loneliness
of being away from home in the huge city of Moscow as a young army soldier for
the first time.
He also told about the deaths of his father,
grandparents and an uncle in two quick weeks because of typhus and famine. He learned of the inhumanity of man to man
when he was desperate for help to bury these four bodies.
I realize now he was trying to make sense of the
atrocities and absurdities of the horrible violence he had been witnessing
daily by talking about them.
I treasured each story not because I had experienced
war horrors but because I have experienced
the same emotions--the same aching emptiness after the death of a family member, the same desperate despair when the family purse kept
getting emptier and emptier, the same
strange exultant peace in the soul at arriving at a spiritual decision.
I think that is why I wait for a story, a personal
story, when I listen to a sermon—I am looking for inspiration, not just more
abstract terminology and vague generalities. I am waiting for the preacher to tell my story.
In story-telling the listener learns that hope is
always hope, forgiveness is always forgiveness, courage is always courage. And even if he or she can’t quite articulate
this vague understanding, identification takes place. “I am also that
person in the story.”
This Christmas interest will once again migrate to
new electronic equipment like smart phones,
computer software, digital cameras, bigger TVs and much
more. I find it hard to talk about such
items because I know too little about them. I feel like a rabbit in a fish pond. I don’t migrate
willingly to discussion about such items.
Since I live alone and don’t go out much anymore, I
spend much time thinking about the past – retrieving the stories of my
life. These elusive events flit back
into my mind like butterflies on the wing, begging to be remembered. Other times they’re like wild boars, grunting
“Remember me?” But they want to be brought to life, to be retrieved by someone. They are demanding to be told.
I like to tell stories about my life because that is
what I know best. I like to give away
my stories because then they become a shared experience.
What people my age have to offer in terms of wisdom,
experience, and stories seems almost quaint when compared to passing on
information about which is the best electronic game to buy.
In Michener’s
Hawaii, the native children memorized
their family tree, back eighty generations, and learned the stories of those
generations. It was the life-blood being passed down generation to generation. DNA, if you will.
I see stories as a way of
embracing another person or group – even a congregation. They tell the listener: “I trust you with
this story about my life.”
In this hug-happy society, I advocate we pass along
more stories. Hug someone with a real story today.
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