Story, Value, and Becoming More Real
Image (c) Lancia E. Smith
share post

The stories are true!

September 9, 2017

K.C. Ireton

I stood in church, my brothers and sisters standing, too, all of us singing our praises. One song ended, another began, a song I have loved since we first started singing it three years.

Come broken and weary
Come battered and bruised
My Jesus makes all things new
All things new

The words washed over me as I sang, and toward the end, these words struck with particular force:

O hold on to the promise – The stories are true.

And then—the flash.

That’s what Emily Starr called it, those momentary partings of the veil between heaven and earth. Madeleine L’Engle called it kairos, when chronological time seems to stop and we glimpse eternity, when we see with a sense that is not physical and know with a knowing that transcends mere knowledge.

That morning in church, the world fell away, and I stood as if on a promontory. In the far distance, a fair city gleamed through mist. The land between that city and me lay fertile and green, a patchwork land of counterpane, and all the patches were stories, and every story pointed the way to the fair city. A whole, shimmering Reality unfolded before my gaze—and yet surrounded me, too—and I knew it was…Real.

I saw—truly saw—not just believed or surmised or accepted, but saw—that the stories were true. All the stories that have most shaped me, the writers whose words have mattered most in my life—L.M. Montgomery and Jane Austen, C.S. Lewis and Elizabeth Goudge, George Eliot and the poet-king David, Asaph and the sons of Korah, Saints John and Luke and the Apostle Paul, Charles Sheldon and Sheldon Vanauken and Madeleine L’Engle, and so many others too numerous to count—I saw them all in one shining moment, saw them whole and alive and true—and I saw how much they matter. How much they signify. They exist to point to God, to show us how to live, to reveal us to ourselves, and help us see that we are not alone.

And with that last gift of (in)sight, I suddenly knew, too, that I was not the outsider I had always felt myself to be, that my particular way of being in the world is not wholly new and therefore has been charted before. There are maps, blessed be God, and I don’t have to blunder through the wilderness of my being as if it were all new, uncharted territory. I have compatriots and kindred spirits to light my way and companion me through the dark places.

The Stories are true!

They surrounded me. Even as I stood above them, looking out from my mountaintop vista, they were beside me, even within me. I was not alone! The glorious company of the saints—real saints and fictional ones—marched before me through that land of counterpane, each of them bearing her own story to the fair city, a story that mattered beyond her story, that touched thousands of other stories beside and before and behind her. The stories were knit together, a patchwork of such beauty that tears swam in my eyes.

I stood, singing the words—hold on, rise up, awake!—and weeping for joy. The stories were real. They were true. I didn’t simply believe it. I knew it.

It was a strong knowing—a deep and abiding sense that the stories mattered, and that they mattered deeply, because we needed them desperately. We were starving in a paradise of plenty, dying of thirst in the midst of a freshwater sea, lost in a land that was charted and known.

In the silence after the song I almost shouted aloud, “The stories are true! They’re true! Oh, friends, they’re true! For the love of God, take up and read!”

I didn’t, of course, because I’m a good Presbyterian, and we do things decently and in order. But sometimes, I wish I had.

I think people need to know. They need to know they’re not alone. They need to know the road they’re traveling has been traveled before. They need to know there are signposts to show the way, and inns where you can stop for a pint and a good night’s sleep, and friends for the journey. And that no matter how alone you feel, someone, somewhere, has felt that way before. And they’ve written a book about it.

The stories are true. Oh, friends, thanks be to God, they’re true!

What are you waiting for? Take up and read!

 



 

K.C. Ireton‘s beautiful piece especially speaks to me and encourages me to remember all the truth I came to know first through story before I met it in sound doctrine and good theology.  Andrew Peterson speaks about this here – He Gave Us Stories

* “All Things New” lyrics by Andrew Peterson; music by Andrew Peterson, Andy Gullahorn, and Ben Shive. Andrew Peterson – All Things New 

The opening image is one I shot at C.S. Lewis’s home called The Kilns in Oxford. The image for “This great Story” was shot at Taylor University in their amazing Center for the Study of C.S. Lewis and Friends.

This particular book is Joy Davidman’s personal copy of Mere Christianity given to her by C.S. Lewis before they were married. It contains her pencilled in notes about the text. 

Many blessings to you, friend, and happy reading! 



 

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

  1. Simcha Scribe says:

    “It was a strong knowing—a deep and abiding sense that the stories mattered, and that they mattered deeply, because we needed them desperately. We were starving in a paradise of plenty, dying of thirst in the midst of a freshwater sea, lost in a land that was charted and known.”

    Lancia, this is powerful!

  2. Amy Baik Lee says:

    These words are so lovely and true, K.C.; this morning I feel as though I’ve drunk deeply from a much-needed well before continuing on. You’ve made me recall other moments of kairos, and suddenly the stacks of unread books around me (and the drafts of things yet to be!) bear the look of old friends. My thanks to both you and Lancia for sharing this piece! I’m printing it out to put in my files.

  3. Lancia Smith says:

    Simcha, thank you so much. K.C. is such a fine writer and I found this very same passage especially moving. So much so I made an image of it for the post and the gallery. I needed this truth again to be told to me just the way K.C. has told it and it lingered with me since I first read it.

  4. K. C. Ireton says:

    Oh, thank you, Amy. I’m so glad these words resonated with you and brought to mind your own moments of transcendent knowing. Sometimes those stacks of unread books feel like they’re mocking me, but you’re absolutely right: they’re old friends we haven’t met yet. May we both have time this month to meet a few old friends!

  5. K. C. Ireton says:

    Simcha and Lancia, bless you both. Those words you called out are, I think, the closest I was able to get to conveying both the vision and its imperative. I’m glad and grateful that they resonated with you.

  6. Tammy Waldrop says:

    These words are exactly what I needed right now. Thank you.

  7. Lancia Smith says:

    You are so welcome, Tammy. They are the very words I need to hear right now, also.

  8. Lancia Smith says:

    Amy, I am so glad that you and Kimberlee have the touchstone of common ground of kairos experiences as well as being word shepherds. I hope someday that we can do a writer’s workshop retreat for Cultivating writers and we all get to meet face to face. Your comment about printing it out for your files makes me long for the day when we can in fact create a book from our contributions! Wouldn’t that be lovely?!

  9. Denise Armstrong says:

    Dear Lovers of Beauty & its Lord,
    Thank you for how you are partnering with Him to water souls with beauty and truth. Kimberlee, I am so glad that being a ‘good presbyterian’ has not stopped you from shouting with your pen! On my way to dust off and pick up where I left off with some of those friends you mentioned. Thank you both. Denise

  10. Amy Baik Lee says:

    Those would be high honors, indeed. 🙂

  11. K. C. Ireton says:

    Dearest Denise, I’m glad you are shouting with your pen, too, and wielding it to point out the Beautiful and point back to our Lord. So grateful to be a co-creator with you, my friend!

  12. […] a revised version of my essay “The Stories Are True” has been published at The Cultivati…. I have wrestled with this essay for three years, and I am still not happy with it; it does not […]

  13. Lori Tischler says:

    Yes! Beauty and truth. SEEing is believing.
    And thrilled you mention Elizabeth Goudge—very few include her among the greats. In fact, I just read a piece commenting that only people who are simple and dowdy like her work. Once I got over being offended—ha—I thought, “Yes exactly. That’s what makes her great.”
    The first shall be last. When we are weak we are strong.

  14. K.C. Ireton says:

    Absolutely! Here’s to simple and dowdy! And awash with wonder, and alight with the joy of little things…

A Field Guide to Cultivating ~ Essentials to Cultivating a Whole Life, Rooted in Christ, and Flourishing in Fellowship

Enjoy our gift to you as our Welcome to Cultivating! Discover the purpose of The Cultivating Project, and how you might find a "What, you too?" experience here with this fellowship of makers!

Receive your complimentary e-book

Explore the

Editions Archive

i

organized for ease by author and category.

View Our Editions Archive