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Sometimes you find yourself singing to song or album, belting out the words as your hands drum away to the tempo.  Every word comes naturally.  You seem to feel the lyrics; this isn’t mere recitation.  You are living the song.

The song, la canción, provides a vivid example where the printed word becomes alive, where the distance between the present, past, and future is collapsed into a single tale.  It is an example of us finding ourselves in narrative, in stories, some of which I’ve mentioned in previous blog posts.  I think there are many examples in our daily lives where this is true, and I’d like to highlight a few of them, specifically history, fiction, and of course, songs.

First, there is history.  History can be quite fascinating, as many of us have found out (I’m looking especially at you, Zach McKay).  The stories we hear tell us of where we came from, or of the reasons why society looks the way it does today.  But more than that, stories invite us in, beckoning for us to step into the frame and experience the lives of others in worlds often far-removed from our own.  We may read figurally, seeing ourselves in the stories and seeing the stories in us.  Time collapses until we see Abraham Lincoln––or is it ourselves?––giving the Gettysburg Address.  And many of us derive some of our purpose from a sense of history.

The second is fiction.  Fiction is, by definition, not factually true.  But isn’t it interesting that some of the most riveting movers and shapers of culture and society have not attempted to give reportage?  Take Uncle Tom’s Cabin, for example: obviously a fictitious piece that nevertheless was true in some sense, it incensed people enough to push for abolition.  Isn’t even Lincoln alleged to have said to Harriet Beecher Stowe, “So you’re the little woman who wrote the book that made this great war”?  On a more mundane level, how many of us dove into the worlds of Harry Potter and Percy Jackson, loathing the final page turn that signaled a wrenching return to reality?  Undoubtedly our views of life and relationships have been shaped by those experiences, consciously or not.

The final example I wish to give is that of song.  I still yearn for the days in which my workload permitted me to sing in concert and chamber choirs, when I could feel my entire mind, body, and soul moving in unison with “Lux Arumque” or “How Can I Keep from Singing my Song”.  Perhaps a familiar example, though, is a love ballad.  For those of us who have been in dating relationships, didn’t we hear our lovers being serenaded in scores of tunes, from “Treasure” to “I Wanna Dance with Somebody”?  Or when we suffered through breakups, wasn’t there that album or two that took us through the darkness?  We gained expression for our convoluted emotions, articulating what defied definition.

These examples, some small, some larger, all serve to show that we have an inherent longing for a narrative.  Without a story in which to belong, we fall too easily into the gray and lose the way out––and this is especially true for those who travel often through the gray.

May we pray that our stories will lead us true.