When I was very small, I remember begging my Dad to read me just one more story. He was good at making up stories. I especially remember one about a little black cat that was lost and a kind of spooky story about a green light. Makes me want to cry now because I can still hear his voice as he shared it. These were simple times before we knew any better that life had its share of sorrows as well as joys, and before we worried about the future. My Dad and Mom tried very hard to sew up a tight little circle of family. It was a place of security and we all drifted there in that safety net of our childhood years.

The 70’s, as I look back now were an incredibly innocent time. I remember on two occasions in our High School Assembly the song “Fairest Lord Jesus” was sung by two of my classmates, Patty Schaal and Connie Guntert. I don’t remember anyone jeering, or making noise, we just listened. Back then there was still a moral compass of some sort. Not all of the kids were church kids, but they had enough respect to listen, and applaud after. It was California, and we were in the height of the Jesus Revolution. Apparently enough of Jesus blew inland since our town was about two hours north of where that all started.

This morning I actually opened my actual Bible instead of the one on my phone App. I was surprised by the emotion that washed over me. I held it to my chest as I thought about all the times those living pages brought such comfort. Those words, those stories. As I closed my eyes, I heard the rustling of pages on a warm summer night in church. I heard my grandma’s rattling of Reeds candy cellophane and the embarrassed shushing my one of my aunt’s further down the pew. When you open a book, it comes alive. And we are all the embodiment of who went before us.

Sometimes I just sit quietly and think gratefully about those simpler times that wash over me like baptismal grace. I wonder where they went, and if I can have the fortitude to live them out and make them come alive again. Because you can tell a story, but it takes real courage to live a story in our actions, our thoughts, our lives.

I don’t think I will be using my phone App anymore, and I don’t know why I even started except laziness. I need to see the places I highlighted, and pages my Dad marked in his Book of Common Prayer. And remember how, when I moved from home the first time, how Mom cradled my old copy of The Way bible that I got back in those seemingly innocent times, tears streaming down her face. I didn’t know how much it meant to her back then. I do now Mom, I do now.

Our stories are who we are, and they are so important. Margaret Atwood says it like this, “In the end, we’ll all become stories.” And I found another quote that describes me perfectly, since I check out libraries in each town I travel through, “The only thing you absolutely have to know is the location of the library.” Albert Einstein

I asked God to read me a story and He said, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with me (God) and the Word was me (God). John 1:1