“Lest he should lose command over the tales he loved, he
used to repeat them aloud when he thought no one was near, using the
gesticulations and the emphasis…..as if he were once again the center of a
fireside story-telling.” ~Alwin and Brinley Rees

 Stories. We are all made of stories. The stories of our
families. The stories of our nation. The stories of our ancestry. The stories
of the time in which we were born, our generational story. We are made of the
stories we create about who we want to be and those that point to the reality
of who we really are. There are stories in the freckles that powder our noses
and the scares we carry on our knees. The clothing we dress in each morning
carries the story of who we wish to portray to the world. Our stories are full
of hope and failure, of ‘what ifs?’ and ‘why nots?’ And most stories are
seasoned with a host of ‘maybes’.

 This Sunday if you happen into most Christian churches you
will hear one of the primary stories of the tradition: the story of the
prodigal son. I love this Sunday and hearing this story once again. I believe
that it holds so much of what it means to understand ourselves as a child of
God that, if we read this same scripture for a year of Sundays, we wouldn’t
mine all it has to offer us. This story of the young man who flees his boring,
regular old home for a life he believes to be better only to learn that,
perhaps, the grass is not always greener, is our story. At some point or
another of any given life, we have all been a prodigal.

 But the story is also about the faithful parent, the
forgiving father who rejoices at his child’s return. This parent who
undoubtedly spent many a waking hour, looking out the window, asking where he
went wrong, hoping and praying for the child’s return is also a story most
parents can relate to in some way. The connection of parent and child is one
that is complicated and full of leavings and returnings.

 And then there is the character of the older child, the one
who stayed at home to ‘do the right thing’ by his family. He was an obedient
child, a cooperative child, the loyal child, the one who didn’t give his
parents any trouble. One can only imagine the horror and the devastation of
this ‘good’ child when his wild younger brother returns and the faithful parent
throws a party in his honor. Or maybe you can imagine. Maybe you have lived it.

 Reading this story once again in preparation for Sunday, I
am reminded of all the stories that shape us. I am reminded of how important it
is to hear and to tell them over and over again. With each telling, if we are
lucky, we hear them in new ways. As we have changed with each passing day…..which
we do…..we are given the gift to experience the familiar in new ways. And so it
goes with each retelling.

 What stories have shaped you? What stories do you need to
hear once again because it is the right time? What stories are planted deep
within you that call to you asking to be told to a whole new generation, in a
whole new time?

 Tell me a story.