Quotes from Sarah Arthur

For the story that shapes a child's universe also shapes the child—and by the child, the man thereafter. The memory of a burning fairy tale can govern behavior as truly as remembered fire will caution against fire forever. —WALTER WANGERIN

Since all the world is but a story, it were well for thee to buy the more enduring story, rather than the story that is less enduring. —ATTRIBUTED TO COLUMBA OF IONA SIXTH CENTURY A

If imagination, as we've said, is the "region of discovery," story is the wardrobe door, sending our young people "further in" and "still further in" to possibilities and ideas they've never dreamed.

The Christian community first came up with theological abstractions because eventually we had to speak in shorthand about the complexity of God's story and character, or we'd never get anywhere in regular discourse with one another.

Are we genuinely prepared to say that working in an office building or shopping in a mall is real, while reading Tolstoy is not?

Somehow the church has forgotten what it knew for so long: story goes beyond simply illustrating some spiritual point or other; it gives form to content; it incarnates meaning.

Story has staying power. We remember the illustrations from Sunday's sermon for months afterward, but by coffee hour we're already struggling to recite the pastor's three main points, despite various acronyms meant to help us.

writes Madeleine L'Engle, "in kairos we are completely un-self-conscious and yet paradoxically far more real than we can ever be when we are constantly checking our watches for chronological time."10

Like fish, when metaphors get old, they go bad," writes Christian poet Jeanne Murray Walker,9 and nowhere is that more apparent than among Christians on a Sunday morning.

Youth in our Sunday school class can repeat almost verbatim some obscure parable we dramatized last year, and yet they forget the core doctrinal statement we taught last week. Why is this? Why does story stick with us for so long?

let's get our semantics straight. Story does not equal fiction, much less "lies." It's the world we Christians inhabit as "people of the Book." We are story people. All

C. S. Lewis said it this way: "In reading great literature I become a thousand men and yet remain myself. . . . I transcend myself; and am never more myself than when I do."12

Story affirms that not everything in the universe can or must be explained propositionally; the loose ends of story aren't always neatly tied together, because neither are the loose ends of our lives. "Life can bear only so much reality," says poet and pastor Calvin Miller.

Truth is the aim of story. And though we must take into account the human author's subjectivity and personal slant, the best authors are those who tap universal longings and make connections to our real, lived humanity.

Theologian Stephen Crites says sacred stories are like dwelling places—like booths or tabernacles. We don't tell these stories as much as we inhabit them.

How do I happen to believe in God? . . . Writing novels, I got into the habit of looking for plots. After awhile, I began to suspect that my own life had a plot. And after awhile more, I began to suspect that life itself has a plot. —FREDERICK BUECHNER

When was the last time you heard a long passage from a novel read aloud during Sunday school or worship? Or how about the last time a youth pastor subverted his or her "talk" through satire or parable rather than proof texting the six main points? Yet

From ancient times discipleship training has involved learning the biblical narrative and theological language of the Christian community:

The cure for competing narratives is nothing more or less than the Apostles' Creed. Yes, I'll say that again: the creed is our story, succinctly stated.

Instinctively and empirically we know that stories have the power and the potential to capture hearts and imaginations—we're just not sure how or why this is so.

Ministry with young people—in fact, ministry with anybody—intrinsically relies on imagination to vividly and compellingly invite others into God's presence.

Why does anybody tell a story? It does indeed have something to do with faith, faith that the universe has meaning, that our little human lives are not irrelevant, that what we choose or say or do matters, matters cosmically. —MADELEINE L'ENGLE It's

Luci (Shaw) captured it well when she wrote to Madeleine, in Friends for the Journey, "And you, on your part, can make radical theological statements with which I may disagree, but again, because of our bond of love we accept each other for who we are , flawed and failing, but always truth-seeking.

Story is the primary way we impart what really matters to the next generation.