The Power of books and stories
28 Jan 2009
(Photo from project by Mladen Penev.)
One of my best friends, has bought me a limited edition NIV bible for my 40th birthday. It’s the biggest, most luxurious bible I now have, that is so large I need two hands to hold it.
And as it has sat on my desk, imposing, and seemingly alive, breathing under it’s soft leather cover, it got me to thinking about the power of books and stories.
Books have always been a special part of my life. I remember how libraries have always seemed to be magical places, and my first library pass like a magic key.
I would spend hours browsing the stacks, taking books from all sections, and all subjects (from the adults library even though I was supposed to be using the kids library), only to have my mother laugh at me and ask how on earth could I read twenty books at a time, and to take them back.
Books were an escape for me, from the violence and destructive habitat of home.
I read the complete Famous Five from cover to cover, several times when I was around 7 years old, and immersed in a world that was brighter and happier, and where wrongs were righted.
Then I discovered the Chronicles of Narnia, and wished I could escape through the back of my wardrobe (During one particularly acute domestic altercation between my parents, I did hide in my wardrobe, wishing I could escape to Narnia).
Then I went onto The Hobbit, aged 10. I still remember the overwhelming feelings, the sheer wonderment as that book took me through a Christmas filled with the usual family strife, and into the new year and then into the world of the Lord of the Rings.
Then I moved on other series of books, wanting to explore the worlds and alternative realities created by Asimov, Bradbury, Stephen Donaldson, and in most recent years Ian M Banks, and Peter F Hamilton.
In fact to this day, I still love to find an author, who opens out stories of new worlds over several books.
In all those remembrances, I see that I was not just looking for escape but for a story, one that was bigger than the claustrophobic, violent, and anxiety producing world that bore down on me daily. A story I could escape into, inhabit, and live differently.
I wasn’t wanting a story of my making, I wanted a story that I could join myself to, be part of, that was epic, that I might become part of in it’s retelling.
And now as I think about it, and look at that huge new bible, there was a story looking for me.
The story of Jesus, found me, and I do get to go through the back of the wardrobe.
4 comments
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Comment by Alan Mann
7.33 pm on 28 Jan 2009
If I can be so crass, I thought this paragraph from my book Atonement For a ‘Sinless’ Society felt appropriate:
To live as a storied-self, in a sea of actual and potential stories, is to stir the imagination, which is the human capacity to depict, render, accept, and rehearse the world in an alternative way; to consider other possibilities to those currently on offer. To be a storied-self is to live life as an ‘open’ being. Until we succumb to the finality of death, our lives are functioning yet incomplete stories of who we are. Therefore, consciously or subconsciously, we are open to the possibility of change, even on a daily basis, as we encounter alternative and potential ways of narrating the self; of entering into a world which is not currently our own, or becoming someone other than who we are at this present moment in time. Narratives project possible worlds, alternatives we can consider. They allude to potential ways of living that may bring the ‘good-life’ we crave. Therefore, built into the narratives that invade our lives is an element of hope, that most wonderful of human incentives, which challenges us to assess our own, perhaps tired or imprisoning story, in the light of the new.
Comment by Jason
11.58 pm on 28 Jan 2009
very apposite, thanks mate
Comment by Fraser Brooks
4.23 pm on 30 Jan 2009
Love your description of the library! It’s just how I used to see it too. Bookshops are the same for me these days. I could spend hours lost among the shelves…
The creativity and imagination that goes into every one of these stories, whether they be the wildest sci-fi trilogy (like Peter F Hamilton’s Reality Dysfunction) or the most detailed reference work is amazing. Yet it still pales in comparison to the creativity and imagination our God shows us He is capable of if we just take a moment to look at the diversity of the world around us. He creates out of nothing, we can only create from what He’s given us.
Comment by matte
7.54 am on 31 Jan 2009
Thanks for so wonderfully expressing and explaining the fascination so many of us have with books and especially, with a good story. I was reading Merlin by Stephen R. Lawhead one summer and my husband came home from work to find me weeping in the spare bedroom, holding said book. He asked what was wrong and I replied, “This is my life!” I feel the same way often when I read stories from the Old Testament: “This is my life, this is my story,” and I am undone by the nearness of God to my story.
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