Comments on: The Stories We Tell…

By: Mark Basnage

Mark Basnage — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 00:12:31 +0000

Terrific piece. Among its other strengths, it helps illuminate why teachers, as storytellers and people of character, matter.

By: Telling stories – Unstuck-Ed

Telling stories – Unstuck-Ed — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 00:05:01 +0000

[...] is point of a nice little essay by Richard Gamble over at the Front Porch Republic. He quotes Wendell Berry’s character Hannah [...]

By: Richard Gamble

Richard Gamble — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 21:00:31 +0000

When I speculated about a “story too big to belong to,” I thought immediately about Redemption and the Church as the biggest story of all, embracing a community across thousands of years and many nations and peoples. That is certainly a story that is not to big to belong to. But I also thought about the language the New Testament uses to explain to us this way of “belonging.” It uses the small-scale language of father, and family, and brother and sister. True, it also speaks of a Kingdom, but even there we are pictured as members of the King’s household, as heirs of the kingdom. There is certainly nothing abstract in the language of this big story. National stories, of course, also use the language of community, but I would say that they co-opted that language from the Church, especially in the nineteenth century when nation-states transformed themselves into gods and ersatz religions.

By: Alethea

Alethea — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 23:31:35 +0000

“A story that’s too large might inhibit the formation of membership and community. The scale of a family story or a neighborhood story might be just the right size for real people, while a national story, and certainly a grand imperial epic, might be too big for ordinary folk and suited only to aggregates and abstractions. I’m not sure.”

There is the story of Easter Morning, which has formed a community that stretches around the globe and across two millennia. This story, of course, is not merely human. All merely human stories are limited by human limitations (i.e., having bodies and capable of being in only one place at a time).

Thank you for this thoughtful piece! It has challenged me as a teacher, since I am teaching Eastern Hemisphere history to my sister mostly out of Worldbook articles. I will have to think about that.

By: John Paris

John Paris — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 18:10:32 +0000

As a story type itself, this essay is wonder-filled!
There is great value of “telling the right story the right way” and of “the picture which fires the imagination, the example that strengthens the will”.
One can draw many comparisons with Eric Voegelin’s carefull analysis of myth. Although technical in nature Voegelin’s explication of Myth(or here story)presents it as one of three paths to what is in fact real.
A quote from Glenn Arthur Hughes’, “Mystery and myth in the philosophy of Eric Voegelin”——-> Myth,Voegelin argues, is the precise symbolic instrument for the articulation of transcendent meaning, since (1) the myth does not claim to be definitive–it is a likely story that (as an appropriate myth) accords with accurate knowledge about reality–and so doesn’t violate our awareness of the limitations of human perspective, and (2) the myth tells a story that makes sense, in a context of ultimate meaning, of our experiences of purpose and struggle, risk and failure, desire and achievement.

Thank you for your work!

By: Telling the Right Story v. Telling the Story Right « The Confessional Outhouse

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 12:28:09 +0000

[...] only can those with a patriotism of affirmation and a patriotism of dissent take a few lessons here (especially the former as it has a tendency to question the fundamental patriotism of the latter), [...]

By: Albert

Albert — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 15:37:25 +0000

Thanks for this essay. Only this past weekend, I was conversing with friends about the way in which language and naming conventions contribute to binding together a nation. We talked about shared loves as well, but I should have mentioned a shared story.

As you point out, we’ve always argued about what that shared story is, yet still remained united, though to a lesser extent than if we agreed on the story. The sad thing, then, about cynicism is that it represents the loss of hope that the true story exists or can be shared at all.

By: Bob Cheeks

Bob Cheeks — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 12:13:43 +0000

As important as your thesis is, when an author, even a favorite author, brings up Hannah Coulter my wandering, quixotic mind latches onto this wonderful lady and obstinately refuses to let go.
Over the years I have grown very fond of her, taking time every now and then to pull down her book and spend an evening with her and her friends and family in Port William. Wendell would have us believe that she’s a fictional character, much as Port William is a fictional village, but we know better.
I think through the right telling of stories and through other, often transcendent, ways we are seeking to recover Port William and become in some manner human beings who love God.

By: John Willson

John Willson — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 12:04:08 +0000

What a wise, measured, generous essay. The only thing I can think of to add is what Bishop Sheen always cautioned: You must tell a story where you come out second best. The only stories that will “improve the minds and hearts” of both young and older citizens are those of which you are not the center. There is something bigger: God, family, neighbors, hanging on, doing your duty.