Margaret Atwood says that Feb-ruary brings pewter mornings and love will do us in. Dark thoughts for a still-dark month. I think I’ll hold instead to February’s lingering shadowed evenings because there is something about the shadows that helps stories to grow.
Maybe it’s that half-light creates liminal spaces where imagination opens more easily. Think romantic candle-lit dinners for two. Or the way your children’s faces change in the light of birthday candles. In those moments between light and dark, we can somehow see more clearly. Important things become visible.
At bedtime in our house, the nightlight is turned on along with a reading lamp for the storyteller, then the kids hunker down in their blankets. Usually, the Spouse reads and I cuddle with our two older kids, but sometimes our youngest child joins us as well, if he hasn’t already been settled off to sleep. This month we’re reading William Goldman’s The Princess Bride. If you have only seen the movie, it’s a treat of a book. It’s darker and scarier than the movie, but it’s also funnier and far more rewardingly ridiculous. Such a crazy swash-buckling romantic adventure. We are thoroughly loving reading it aloud together. And, in February, love stories are best considered seasonal.
We’re all falling a little in love with Wesley, the farm boy turned righteous pirate and protector of the princess. And because we have such a strong hero, it’s easy to expect a happy ending. That’s the way stories work, right?
But then the narrator interjects:
“This book says ‘life’s not fair’ and I’m telling you, one and all, you better believe it… there’s death coming up, and you better understand this: some of the wrong people die. Be ready for it.”
Are we? Ready? Ever? I don’t know. Probably not.
You might say that William Goldman is just dishing out a healthy dose of realism in the midst of what is otherwise a fantastic, though edgy, fairytale. But I think there is something else going on here.
This author’s interjection makes us aware of our own assumptions about story. We assume that good will win out. We assume there will be adventures and struggles, even suffering, but that happiness will prevail in the end. That’s how stories work. I might even go so far as to say that is why we read stories in the first place. They confirm our suspicion that there is pattern and purpose to life.
I’m not sure that this is a bad assumption. In fact, I think there’s something rather faith-filled going on here. But there’s also a brave honesty in Goldman’s assertion that life isn’t fair. Because it isn’t. Any of my kids could tell you that. Just like any other kids and the prophets and the rest of us. Life ain’t fair.
So what do we do with that? We take it to God. And God shapes and reshapes our imaginations, opening things up so we can grow into maturity and stretch out into a deeper, more richly imagined hope.
Over Christmas, we played a lot of story cubes at home. These are like dice, but with pictures instead of numbers, and they have proved really addictive in my family. You shake them up like fury then let them roll out of your hand and onto the table. You look. You wonder. Find connections. Tell a tale. It was mesmerising to see how patterns—silly, courageous and beautiful—emerged as we dreamed up stories together.
Storytelling and storybuilding are not only about finding patterns and hope. They are also ways in which we build the world. The poet David Ignatow writes: “what imagination does with reality is the reality we live by.” Stories deepen us.
Sometimes, we talk about “the Christian story” as if there were only one. Neither our history nor our faith work like that. Stories are always plural, and the Bible itself is a library of stories. We have layer after layer of lived story there expressed as history, biography, poetry, song, fable and every other possible genre you can dream up. Except maybe science fiction, though I’m ready to discuss the possibility that Revelation might fit into that category for some people.
We are storied people and our lives have been shaped by countless stories and retellings of stories. Not just the big seasonal ones, but all the quiet anecdotes, too. Hearing others’ stories help us understand our own. Sharing our stories helps us to connect with others.
We light candles and, in the half-light, we listen to old stories, letting ourselves ask the wondering questions, making space to listen to the answers our children offer. Light changes as we live and grow, colours shift and we find new layers of meaning. Our own stories become fused with older stories, others’ stories, new and stranger stories. Patterns emerge. Perspectives shift and sometimes all that change brings about astounding beauty.
