11/07/07:

"Tell Me a Story" - Susan Allen

WELCOME TO COMMON PRAYER

The other day, I bumped into a church acquaintance and I complimented him on his bowtie. It was the loveliest shade of yellow. Thank you, he said. “It’s part of my fall collection.” I loved that! Picking out clothes for the day, for me, is the first and maybe the worst of the day’s many tedious chores. Some days, it’s enough to keep me under the covers, longing for the years of school uniform and no decisions to be made. But, here was a man who knew there was a whole glorious creation out there, and himself part of it. Why settle for getting dressed, when you can be the auteur of your own seasonal collection?

I don’t know why I’m here on this earth. I doubt it is to make any fashion statements of my own. But I do enjoy standing aside from time to time to watch the story of my own life unfold in other ways and I absolutely love the fact that, as a writer and editor, I get to learn about, relay and celebrate the stories of others. Some of those stories have, in turn, shaped my own life. Some of them I heard in this very building. I am afraid I have acquired something of a reputation on campus as the woman who stalks Common Prayer presenters, asking for their notes so she can find ways to share them with others in college publications.

I’m not going to ask you for your life story right now, although I am always hungry for stories and I do encourage you to drop by my office anytime you feel chatty! But if the spirit moves you this morning to doodle, design your own fall collection, start a timeline or begin your autobiography, please feel comfortable using the space on the back of your bulletin as you take part in this service.

REFLECTION

I)

When I think of the gospels, I find I think first of the miracles, because they make such great copy, and of the parables. I saw a catalog of some 60 of these. Some are just a few words of analogy, some anecdotes, some, like the story of the Good Samaritan, fully developed and complete with beginning, middle and end. I think we remember them because they are stories, framed as something a little bit special, offered as something a little bit larger than life. Some of them are troubling, maybe morally awkward by our lights. The language can be harsh, the justice rough. If they were sweet and easy tales, we might not still be talking about them 2,000 years later.

I always thought that as writer, editor or teacher, my relish for casting life as story was some kind of professional quirk. In fact, when I started to tell people that I might talk at Common Prayer about this, I found that a lot of them already knew what I meant.

My colleague Drew told me about journeyline, a way of seeing and sharing the span of one’s life as a time line along which one maps the highpoints and the lowpoints. He showed me a painting he had done which represented the way something as strong and beautiful as a tree wherein a dove can nest emerges from a mess of roots and brambles. In the same way, the random decisions we make out of the confusion of our everyday lives, seen from a distance start to look like vocation.

It seems to me that, once you admit God into the picture, a great story is inevitable. He set the scene and he introduces the characters. In “Blue Like Jazz,” Donald Miller points out that our rebellious natures ensure the necessary dramatic conflict. As people of faith we make a climactic decision, and trust in a fine resolution to our story.

My mind cannot encompass the whole of God, but when I think about Him as author of creation, I think about J. K. Rowling, too. She has told how while she was writing one of the Harry Potter books, she came into the kitchen in tears because one of her characters had died. Her husband suggested she simply rewrite the plot if it was causing her so much distress. Of course she told him, you just don’t understand, that’s not the way it works.

II)

One of our interns last year was listening to us talk in the office. One of us alluded casually to a past incident, already familiar to the rest of the group. “You guys all have such great stories,” she said. She was right, we do. She herself was at one of those rare moments in life when absolutely nothing was decided. Looking beyond graduation, she didn’t know where she would be living, how she would pay the bills, what her career would look like, who she would spend her life with. No pattern was clear to her yet, while the adventures we had stumbled on in our own confusion were already acquiring a mythical quality.

In my years as a journalist I have found people are constantly surprised at the idea that their work, their point of view, their experience might be of interest to others.

Once a month I meet with a group of friends. We call ourselves Women of the World. We bring a dish to pass from our own country, and share stories on a common topic. One month, the hostess asked us to come ready to talk about a time when our own lives intersected with history itself. It sounded like quite a challenge, but I actually had an anecdote ready to hand. In 1965, I was present at the funeral of Sir Winston Churchill. What really impressed the magnitude of the occasion on my mind was that my father lifted me up and set me on his shoulders so I could see the cortege pass. I was a big girl, 10 years old! More than half my lifetime had elapsed since I last enjoyed that privileged vantage point. I felt that his action bestowed a great honour not only on Sir Winston, but on me myself.

When I got to the meeting, though, I discovered that my little piece of history paled in comparison to my friends’. But as we heard their  amazing adventures, each one would say “That’s all I’ve got. Is that the kind of thing you’re looking for?”

One woman had been present at an assassination. She was at the airport when Philippines President Aquino was shot. Another told about arriving home from grade school in Communist Moscow after Yuri Gagarin returned safely to earth from the first manned space flight. Masha relayed what her teacher had said - “Now we know for sure there is no heaven, because Gagarin went up there and looked around. And saw nothing.” And she remembered her grandmother’s sharp intake of breath and furtive sign of the cross.

Another Menasha neighbour had served as translator for the Russian Olympic hockey team that met defeat at the hands of the US in what came to be known as the Miracle on Ice. She offered her disclaimer. “I don’t follow sports,” she said. “But people seem to think this is a big deal.” Another remembered escaping from the rear windows of her aunt’s house in Belfast as petrol bombs were lobbed through the front windows. “Is that of any interest?”

I think that the Good Samaritan would have more to contribute to a gathering like this one than would the Priest or the Levite. I think his evident willingness to meet life in the here and now, to embrace creation, to interrupt his own history with that of a poor fellow traveler, couldn’t help but give him a great fund of stories to draw on.

III)

I got to tell my Winston Churchill story to Don Salmon when I came to St. Norbert to interview for my job as college editor. Don has a great admiration for Churchill, and I have sometimes wondered if it was that story that got me my job. Anyway, soon after I started working here, I had to interview Father Jim Baraniak for an article. We chatted a little afterwards. “Oh my goodness, Susan,” he said. “You have such a vocation to be a magazine editor.” I was honored, if a little daunted, by such a sanctification of what I did nine to five. It was only later, after I got more used to St. Norbert and its ways, that I realized he probably said something like that to all the girls.

But I thought about that conversation again a year or two later, when my sister called me with a question. She was thinking about a career change, and had been advised that remembering things she liked doing as a child might suggest the kind of work she would enjoy. I started to think about my own pastimes. Ohmigosh, I thought, it’s true. I am meant to be an editor. When I was small I spent a lot of time quietly salvaging things that would otherwise have gone unnoticed, and making something new from discarded treasures. I tore stamps from envelopes and made them into a collection. I wasn’t interested in buying pre-packaged sets. What was important was rescuing these miniature works of art that would otherwise be thrown away. I begged scraps of fabric from my mother’s sewing friends and made patchwork quilts. Clearly, I was always intended for a nerdy profession like editing. Now, I rescue stories instead and share them in magazines and the like.

My mind still back in childhood days, I remembered my two favorite hymns from “mixed infants” which is what we called first grade. It was a little uncanny, given that the theme for this service was already beginning to form in my mind. “Tell Me the Stories of Jesus,” was one.

Tell me the stories of Jesus, I love to hear,
Things I would ask him to tell me, if he were near;
Scenes by the wayside, tales of the sea,
Stories of Jesus, tell them to me.

So it seems to me that we are what we are and what we once loved, we will always love. No wonder a pattern emerges and our lives tell such great stories. If we develop the talents we are born with and hold to the values we cherish, we can trust that the decisions we make at each random turn in the road will make a discernible pattern.  

The other hymn I loved also drew on the stuff of story. Very English,  it began “When a knight won his spurs, in the stories of old, he was gentle and good, he was gallant and bold.” More about stories, and great stuff. So I looked up the rest of the words and it dawned on me that the verses actually reflect what we are about at St. Norbert, knights green or not, and that I would never have a better opportunity than this Common Prayer to sing again this childhood favorite. So, please indulge me, and enjoy.

Hymn – When a knight won his spurs

When a knight won his spurs, in the stories of old,
He was gentle and brave, he was gallant and bold;
With a shield on his arm and a lance in his hand
For God and for valour he rode through the land.
No charger have I, and no sword by my side,
Yet still to adventure and battle I ride,
Though back into storyland giants have fled,
And the knights are no more and the dragons are dead.
Let faith be my shield and let joy be my steed
'Gainst the dragons of anger, the ogres of greed;
And let me set free, with the sword of my youth,
From the castle of darkness the power of the truth.

Prayer for dreamers (Susan)

We pray for the dreamers of this life, O God,
for those persons who imagine new possibilities,
who long for what others cannot perceive,
who spin dreams of wonder and majesty in their minds.
Defend them from self-doubt and lack of faith in their dreams,
and from abandonment of this call to make things new.
Grant that from their dreams
may come forth blessings for humankind
to enrich the quality of life
and the wonderment of us all.


Disturb us, Lord, when We are too well pleased with ourselves,
When our dreams have come true
Because we have dreamed too little,
When we arrived safely
Because we sailed too close to the shore.

Disturb us, Lord, when
With the abundance of things we possess
We have lost our thirst
For the waters of life;
Having fallen in love with life,
We have ceased to dream of eternity
And in our efforts to build a new earth,
We have allowed our vision
Of the new Heaven to dim.

Disturb us, Lord, to dare more boldly,
To venture on wider seas
Where storms will show your mastery;
Where losing sight of land,
We shall find the stars.
We ask You to push back
The horizons of our hopes;
And to push into the future
In strength, courage, hope, and love.