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the story you're telling matters

Nov 16, 2024

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Lights dim to black as the audience’s chattering hushes. The lights come up again on a stage, dressed with a door, a kitchen table, a chess board, a couch. An old man sits alone at the table, deep in concentration, moves a pawn. A young woman enters the space, all in white. She walks through the room, fingers lightly brushing the furniture, as if trying to make a memory. As she exits, massive blue monsters creep in the doors and windows, slip in through the walls. They are mischievous, they are looking for something. The old man senses their presence but cannot see them, understands the warning, picks up his daughter’s sweater that’s been knocked to the floor. He exits.

And with that short two minutes, the play has begun. No words have been spoken, and yet we’ve been transported. We believe what’s happening, even when the blue monsters are made of cardboard and ribbon, operated by middle schoolers in black. We believe the young woman and the old man, even though both actors are fourteen years old. The question is: why do we believe it?

This was the opening scene to the play I just directed, written by and starring a group of 12-to-14-year-olds. It detailed the life of a lonely old man whose daughter died in a sailing accident years prior to the events in the play. He’s haunted by monsters who represent the 5 stages of grief, and are ushered into his home by memories of his daughter, who he refuses to let go of (he even continues making her dinner and playing countless games of chess.) We don’t realize his daughter is only in his mind until the last moments of the story, when a kindly neighbor asks him who he’s talking to. His friendships and the small kindnesses shown to him convince him that it’ll be okay to let his daughter go, and the monsters and his daughter leave together.

Teaching this age is such a tremendous honor, because it gives such an insight to the questions our young people are asking. It opens up the door of the soul, asks what is rumbling around in there, gently invites a few threads of ideas to enter into the world. We had story pitches about feuds, about star-crossed love, about fear, about nightmares and dreams, about school dances, about grief. We tell the kids: this is your chance to get on the stage, tell a story that matters to you and have people actually listen. What story do you want to tell?

As the lights come up on a new season of our lives, in our country, in our cities, in our world, in our families, in our souls, what story do you want to tell?

Stories are important because people listen in a different way. Something about telling a story grabs us deep in our gut, lodges in like a rough stone. At the start of class, I always ask my students, What makes a story different than an article or a report?

Stories have power. Stories cultivate empathy. Stories allow you to practice living your life with more courage than most of us can imagine. Stories rehearse anger, sadness, forgiveness, resolve. If we tell them right, people believe a good story more than they believe a report. If we believe what we’re telling, so will the people we’re telling it to.

After a particularly bad run through, I told my students, none of you are believing a word coming out of your mouth. Our story has monsters. If you don’t believe the monsters are real, neither will we. But if you believe with every fiber of your being that your cast mate is a monster, then we will too.

As we thread together the stories of our lives, the way we craft them matters. Storytelling is a power we all have, the ability to weave realities and truths by a simple telling, by simply believing the words coming out of our mouths, by acting with conviction and intention.

This is a power we can wield, and have seen wielded, for both good and evil in our world. We have seen empires rise and fall on the ability to craft a story that captures attention and belief. We have seen people throw away their senses and follow a well made story to the grave while the powerful people behind the curtain rub their greedy hands together and take whatever they want from whomever they want.

This is not an unfamiliar tale, but does this mean that we should stop telling stories altogether?

Of course not. Because on the other side of dishonesty, on the other side of greed, on the other side of abuse and manipulation, there is beauty. There is truth. There are twelve year olds in monster costumes making a room full of adults teary-eyed as they remember what it feels like to lose a piece of one’s heart.

For as many grimy, hateful, evil stories as I have seen, I have also seen and experienced stories that soften my heart, widen my perspective, give words to feelings I needed to express. I have seen people come to plays and leave in tears because the journey of the character allowed them to practice forgiveness for others and themselves, because something in the story struck a chord and helped them feel less alone, helped them understand someone they previously could not. I have seen people literally change their lives after hearing stories of hope.

I believe that the world’s first fissure came from a story that was far too convincing—a crafty lie of inadequacy in the eyes of God, of ignorance, of shame, in the shape of that infamous fruit—but I also believe that the answer to the brokenness is in the very first words at the very beginning of everything:

In the beginning, God made the heavens and the earth. The earth was formless and empty, and darkness covered the deep waters. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the surface of the waters.

Then God said, let there be light. And there was light. And God saw that the light was good.

Then God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light ‘day,’ and the darkness, ‘night.’

And evening passed, and morning came, marking the first day.

What good news, that there is light and that it is not complicated or difficult. That God separated the light from the darkness, and will continue to do so, even when this thick darkness feels long and complicated and impossible.

And then, the hope, right there in the fourth line:

the evening passed, and the morning came. What is hope, if not that?

While emailing a client about a website this week, I wrote a sentence, then paused as the truth of the words sunk in:

You get one round of revisions before we hand it off to you, so let me know what you’d like to see changed.

The funny thing is, I’m always saying that I wish God would just send me an email about what to do with my life. And it was as if, with my own email, God did.

Only with God, (thank God) I’m not on a contract and I’m not limited to one round of revisions.

It was as if God was saying to me, look up, look around you. There is light in this darkness yet. I’m handing off your little piece of the world to you, but I’m not leaving you. We’ll keep revising together. Don’t stop telling me what you’d like to see changed, and don’t stop looking because things seem bleak or broken. Imagine what a beautiful, kingdom of heaven world looks like, and then go tell that story.

It is so easy for us to repeat the fear, the anxiety, the worry about what could happen, the anger, the hurt, the hatred. To regurgitate what we’re being fed. And don’t get me wrong, there is a place for grief and lament and moving slowly through tragedy and pain.

Joan Didion once wrote,

I myself have always found that if I examine something, it's less scary. I grew up in the West, and we always had this theory that if you saw - if you kept the snake in you eye line, the snake wasn't going to bite you. And that's kind of way I feel about confronting pain. I want to know where it is.

We must get up close to the pain, to the hurt, to the lies, and examine them. Then, once we’re finished, we must, we must, believe the truest, beautiful thing, and tell about that, because other people believe it if we believe it. That is simply the nature of story.

We must look past our apathy, past the twelve year olds in cardboard and ribbons, and believe that a magical being has come to remind us how to feel.

My life has been changed, is changing, because I started believing a new story, that the whole of my identity is in being loved and delighted in by a good God, whether I succeed, or fail, or do nothing at all. This is freedom. That my actions flow out of my belovedness, not toward it. I can love other people since I am loved, not so I will be loved.

Of course, this takes work, and of course, we will never be perfect straight away. On a long telephone walk with my best friend today, I told her that I will probably never get this down pat, probably will never bat 100. I’d settle for 80%.

We must change the way we think about the way we think, because being human is an incredible gift and a grave responsibility. We’ve been given the ability to tell stories, to destroy the garden or bring heaven to earth, and it’s up to us which story we’re going to choose.

What story is changing your life right now, for good? I’d love to know. Tell me in the comments.

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the story you're telling matters

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