When the Storyteller Loses His Tale

I can still feel the breeze tickling my face. My ears echo with the low, constant hum of the flat bottom rowboat cutting through the glass-like water. I can hear the metronomic rhythm of the oars breaking into and tearing through the water, so perfectly that an orchestra could keep time with their waving and beat. We are breaking the halfway point; the far side shore is now closer than the little gravel dock we used to launch the little, Army green vessel. The little trailer that has been our home for the past two nights now looks more like something from a Matchbox set than last night’s bed. From here the wildly verdant woodland, just inland from the small, sandy beach, looks tame, almost placid and inviting. But then, somewhere deep inside, I start to hear the beat. Boom…boom…boom-boom…boom…boom…boom-boom…boom…. The sounds of drums, of frenzied, native tribesmen begin to fill me ears. As the bushes move and branches shift, I try in vain to blame it on the brisk gusts of wind that just ushered in the ominous clouds overhead. I remember the stories he told me the night before, the “bedtime” tales around the campfire. “Do you think they see us?” His voice pierces the nervous silence and cinches the vice grips that are already locked onto my stomach. As the oars continue to turn, the little dinghy creeps closer to the sand and rocks. “Turn around! Don’t take us to the shore!” My voices cracks in desperation, knowing what lurks in the shadows on the land ahead. And he knows. He was the one who told me about the frenetic natives on this side of the lake. He thumped out their devilish drumbeat on the empty Maxwell House can. How can he not be afraid? How can he not be paralyzed by fear? But his arms keep rowing the oars with a methodical confidence. He rows with the confidence of one who knows that his imagination dictates our fate, that the final chapter of this saga is yet to be penned. He is the storyteller.

I can’t help but think about memories like these at this time of year. Today, November 1, would be my grandfather’s birthday. It was five years ago this Thanksgiving that, just a month after arriving in Michigan, Natalie and I headed to Wichita, Kansas, to say goodbye to my grandfather, the greatest storyteller I have known. But a long battle with Parkinson’s and dementia had taken a heavy toll on my grandfather, not to mention the chronic mouth pain the forced him to retire from the pulpit far too early and muted his stories when we were together at the holidays. As I sat alone watching him struggle toward eternal sleep in the hospice unit, I realized that after a life full of imagination the storyteller had lost his story.

There is something about knowing and telling a story that instills confidence and hope. As I sat in that dinghy with my grandfather, bewildered by the unknown on the other side of the lake, I was anxious, frightened. My grandfather was calm, cool, collected. As the storyteller, he knew what was ahead, what was waiting on the approaching shore. As I sat by his bed that November night, I realized that we had exchanged places. This faithful servant of God had lost his story, but he had helped teach it to me. I spent that night fumbling between prayer, reminiscence, and storytelling. As he lay unresponsive in bed I retold him story of God that he’d been faithful to live and proclaim to people for so many years. At that moment, I had to have confidence for him, trusting that his real story, which was really God’s unfolding story, was true and that together we could continue to row with a methodical confidence to the other shore.

The church is a story-formed people. We believe that we have been written into the unfolding story of God that began at creation and is moving toward new creation. That story must give shape to our lives, give us hope, instill courage, liberate us in the freedom of faith. Everything that we do, both in worship and in our lives in the world, must be a faithful reflection and embodiment of God’s story. Sometimes, though, when I listen to our conversations over pattern, form, and preference, I wonder if the church has lost her story, exchanged its adventure and engagement for a defensiveness that seeks to preserve past forms rather than the story that gives them meaning. For the church to row faithfully and confidently through the seas of our times, we must recapture the imagination of God’s story, moving steadily with the master storyteller as the final chapter of this saga is penned in and through us. May God give us the adventurous courage to jump into God’s boat.