Abstract
‘More than just stories’ was the tag line beneath a set of photos of heroes from stories such as The Lord of the Rings, Sherlock Holmes, Dr Who.
But is a story ever ‘just a story’? Perhaps, in using ‘story’ to refer to a tall tale, a fabrication, a lie, we have disrespected ‘story’ to our own detriment. Stories move, they mean and make meaning, they have and give life—stories breathe. Stories are part of the fibre of our human being. Communities of faith are all about stories, the sacred stories we receive from our spiritual ancestors, the precious stories we live.
Stories move
Stories move us as they contain, convey and evoke emotion. Stories make us feel, and what we feel, we believe more strongly than what we think.
Through emotion, we remember times we have known similar emotion; we connect with others gathered to hear the same story, the characters of the story, people to whom the story points.
In initiatives such as ‘Love Makes a Way’ and ‘Welcome to Australia’ in my home country, I see humans moved to compassionate action by stories of survivors of sea voyages in search of asylum.
Stories mean
Stories reflect back to us our experiences of the world, and help us to make meaning of them. The teller of a story is nurtured by being heard. A hearer of another’s story may be encouraged, challenged or offered hope.
Shared stories tell the identity of a group. Practitioners of fresh expressions of church have observed the importance of regularly telling the story of a newly established community of faith, to invite the members to know the story, own the story, and continue to grow and live the story together.
Stories live
That stories have life is especially evident hearing a story told live, but we experience a story as a living being through film and books as well. Stories we love and encounter again and again become like old friends, well known, yet somehow different with each encounter.
Stories breathe
Stories breathe into their receivers the very breath of life. As they make us move, help us to understand, come to life before us and in our imaginations, stories nurture our being, strike the rhythm of our heart’s beating, evoke the deep breathing sigh of gratitude.
Stories are never just anything. Stories are, and have their worth simply and profoundly for being stories. Imagine what a difference it might make to pastoral encounters, reading the Bible aloud or preaching, to approach personal and biblical stories attentive to their inherent life?
Rev Sarah Agnew is a storyteller, poet and minister in the Uniting Church in Australia, undertaking a PhD at New College, Edinburgh. Sarah blogs at sarahtellsstories.blogspot.com