Transcript

Well, it's a pleasure to be back. I'm grateful to the Dean, and to Mary Lou, and to Bob Winston. I remember he was in my class, and he was in my class, and he was in my class. But especially to Dr. Haesuk Lee, who's my student in Oklahoma and at Candler, and whom I visited in Korea for a while back years ago, and his generosity and concern, I'm in his debt. I always hated afternoon classes when I was here. Didn't care too much for morning classes. But the habits run deep, and here I am again. I remember the words of Walter Burghardt, the late, great Roman Catholic preacher. Always preached short sermons, and began his sermons by saying, as Henry VIII said to his wives, I'll not keep you long, storytelling in the pulpit. That topic is so broad, I took several starts at it, not really clear as to which direction to go, or in what context I would speak, new to this room. This is extraordinary. There are all kinds of ways to go. One is to know ahead of time the point you're trying to make with the story. What's the purpose? What's the role of the story in the sermon? For instance, when I was in seminary, the only purpose of a story in a sermon that was ever discussed is it was like recess. It gave them a break from the intensity of the sermon itself. Like in a geography book, and you're getting all the facts and figures of how many cows there are in Switzerland and everything, then there'll be a picture, and you welcome the picture, not for its value, it's just it takes up some of the space. And my professor preaching first year said, every seven minutes, let them come up for air by telling them a story. It doesn't have to connect anything, it's just what a relief. Now some of you may find that still to be an appropriate purpose, so don't put an ax over that. Another purpose to illustrate your point, a wide use and a worthy use of the story is to make the point come home with a concrete reality, an unfailing reality of what you've been talking about. It's for instance, for instance, I used to ask the students to write up on the top of the paper in one corner, right, for instance, what are you talking about, what's it like? And up in the other corner, so what? Is it important anyway? So a purpose could be to illustrate this message, or a third could be it's the message itself. As Mike pointed out, this was true of Jesus in telling parables. He wasn't illustrating something, he was saying something. That was it, that was the sermon, that was the message. And they were sometimes difficult to get, took a lot of work, a lot of attention, a lot of scratching of the head, because they were not frivolous, they were not shallow. And the disciples said to Jesus, what is the kingdom of God like? And Jesus said, there was a certain woman going home on a long journey carrying a jar of meal, the handle of the jar was broken, and along the way behind her she left a trail of meal, and when she arrived at her destination and set the jar on the table, it was totally empty. That was his answer to the question, what is the kingdom of God like? That was the message, tough as it is. The rabbi was teaching the class one day and he said, our lecture today is on charity. Before he could get started, the student raised the hand, rabbi said, what is it? He said, rabbi, what is charity? And the rabbi said, there was a certain man who on the eve of Passover every year sent a gift of money to his poor neighbor. On this particular year, he sent the gift of money to his poor neighbor by his son, the rabbi's son. He came back in a little while and put the money on the table and said, didn't you give him the money? No, I didn't give him the money. When I went in, he was opening a bottle of very fine wine. So I brought the money back. The father said, very fine wine, yes, very fine wine. Well, then he must be a man that was once accustomed to nice things. Remind me next year to increase my gift. Now, I'm not going to make anything out of that. That's what I have in common with Jesus. I just quit in the middle. So what is the role of the story in the sermon is something we could consider. It's a break in the action. It isn't concretizing of the message or it could be the message itself. We could, and I thought about this, helping you to identify sources of good stories. Everybody's always looking for a good story, already twisted the arm of our good brother, Mike, here. He's going to hand out a sheet of 100. Some of you will ask him, now, what pages are these on? Leave the man alone. He's just here for a few days. I've never been very good at providing good stories, although there are some writers that are very good. But it's like reading the Bible. If you read too much looking for what you're looking for, that's good. We could try to distinguish between a matter that has already come up and that is direct and indirect speech. Stories are indirect speech. They're not head on, hitchy between the eyes. The Apostle Paul did not tell stories. He tried to tell one to the church in Galatia about Mount Zion above and Mount Sinai on the earth and Sarah and Hagar, and this is an allegory and all like that, and he got so tangled up into that thing he just left it. It's the toughest part of Galatians is his effort to make it clear. He was not a storyteller. Is there room in the church for Jews and Gentiles? And he said, without a story, in Christ there's neither Jew nor Greek, male nor female, slave or free. Is that clear? Any more questions? That's direct. If you ask a gospel writer, is there room for a Gentile in the church? One day Jesus was going from Judea to Galatia, and he stopped in Samaria and a woman came out at noon. And after the story is over, if you get it, you get it. If you don't get it, you'll go to heaven anyway. There's a special door for people that can't think very well, and you'll be all right. The Gospels are the citadel of narrative material. The Christology in the Gospels is called narrative Christology. You figure out who Jesus is, not by a pronouncement of titles, but by where he went, what he did with whom he spoke, and how he gave his life. And you reach a conclusion from the narrative. With Paul it's very direct. Christ died for our sins according to the scripture, was buried, third day raised according to the scriptures, and was seen by, that's it, very punctilious. No story. In the Gospels, lengthy stories. They're talking about the same person, but in different ways. Now it is not important that you prefer one to the other. There are times when you want to be very direct. There'll be time due to the nature of the audience, the subject matter, or the general confusion that has been left over some matter, and you just want to be direct. Other times you can be indirect. It's by doing one that the other is vital. It's by doing the other that the first one is vital. Don't settle in on one. That's the wisdom of electionary. You've got Paul, you have the Gospels, you have other texts. Paul can be made into a narrative very easily. Just take any one of his statements and start thinking about it, and stories will come to mind. Just think about it. What in the world does that mean? And stories will come to mind. But basically narrative is the indirect speech of the Gospels, not the direct speech of the apostle. We could probably should spend some time talking about whether or not storytelling is effective anymore in a time when there is a lot of words speaking and a lot of communication, but it's done so fast. There's I noticed a commercial last night on television, a new kind of gadget in technology that you don't have to wait like some of these old machines where you wait two and three seconds before there's a response. Now story is casual. It's put your pencil down and listen. You don't take notes on this, you just listen to this and you gradually unroll it and you respect it and trust it to do its own thing, but you don't rush it, you don't push it, you don't pull it, you just let it go. And I think you should entertain the question, I'm not going to do it, but you should entertain the question as to whether or not there is a different place and a different function for storytelling in a world in which communication is measured by its speed. People talk faster. Our daughter does, our granddaughter, I cannot understand on the phone. It's just real fast. I was saying, now what did you say? She'll slow down and say, oh yeah, I've got to tell you a story, Grabs, and I said, well, slow down. It's just the way it is now. If you tell a story, they may even welcome some slow speech. The young people may come and you ought to hear our speech preacher slow as molasses in January. You'll enjoy it, but it is a real question. It's being raised by people who haven't heard stories or have heard bad stories or inappropriate stories is the speed of problem, the lack of speed of problem is something being contested just in the technology of the thing. But I'm not going to talk about that. We could spend our time, and I would prefer this really, spend our time just enjoying the reasons stories are effective. Stories are in the past tense, so you don't have to worry about it. It's not a cloud on the horizon, it's all over. And that's relaxing. It's always about somebody else. That's relaxing. No indictment here, no hitting you between the eyes. Peel the bark off and let them go. I bent their axel so the wheels wouldn't roll, I let them have it just. No, it's none of that. It's about somebody else, somewhere else, and it's already happened. So those of you who kind of guard yourself during a sermon, deflecting the blows, you don't have to worry about it if a story is being told because it's all over. It creates anticipation. By the way, that's a very, very important pastoral effect of storytelling, is you create anticipation. Where is this going? What's going to happen to it? Anticipation is the single greatest source of pleasure that there is. So if they don't have it anywhere else, they can have it during your preaching. Some anticipation. If you know how to tell a story, if you don't know how to tell a story, say, I never could tell a story, so the point of this one I'm going to tell is, I tried to urge students when I was here, that when you do pastoral calling, always call and make an appointment. Even if the person is in a nursing home, and you know they're not going to be going anywhere, call and make an appointment. Evelyn, this is your pastor, thought I'd come out to see you. How about Thursday afternoon, like 3 o 'clock? She says, well, I'm trying to work you in, Reverend. It's Monday morning. You see the difference you've made in her Monday afternoon and her Tuesday and her Wednesday. The anticipation of your call is more valuable than your call. It's just, we forget sometimes how important looking forward to something is. The worst day of Christmas is Christmas Day. It's all over. Gives a lot of pleasure, storytelling gives pleasure, and there's nothing wrong with something giving pleasure. You don't have to make people feel put down or miserable. There's no built-in contradiction between something being true and being enjoyable. They can be both at the same time, and stories give pleasure, still can be very, very important, and carry a lot of freight, the freight of the Gospel of the Kingdom of God. Stories are very pastoral. I said that a while ago, but in another way they are. Stories, I think she's right. Is Denison a story writer out of Africa and other books like that? She says one reason she writes stories is stories help to take away the pain. To write it or tell it has an exercising quality to it. I also know it has a pastoral function, and it gives order to people's lives. Some people's lives are so chaotic. Days are confused, everybody's running, there's too much to do, and everything is bad news. You turn on the news and it's bad news, and their lives are so chaotic, and they come in here, you preach, and you tell a story, you know what you're doing? You're telling something that has a beginning, a middle, and an end, and for a few minutes, at least, order, and they may find a way in your preaching to reorder their own lives and release some of the chaos. But that's a very important pastoral function of storytelling. From a practical viewpoint, it would probably be good for us to review the great biblical storytellers. Mike has talked about Luke, who is one of the great, and the way he builds anticipation is just something, you know, at the close of Acts 7, the beginning of Acts 8, and those who stone Stephen laid their coats at the feet of a young man named Saul. He just leaves it there. Over a chapter later, he says, now Saul, that's good, isn't it? No hurry, just hang on to it, you can tell, when he leaves the hook out, I'll be back. Just to read them as storytellers, the writers, or writer of judges. There was no king in that land at the time, and everybody did what was right in his or her own eyes. Now, there lived in the valley of Saurik, a family, and here he goes. Wonderful thing. There's a former student of mine who's going to, is writing now, a book based on the ministry and the preaching of her father, who was a Pentecostal, holiness evangelist, traveled all over the Southeast, brush armors, tents, old unused church buildings, wherever, and she let me see one of his sermons that sketched out rather thorough outline description of it, just extraordinary. I remember the one about Samson. I don't remember preaching on Samson, stumbling around, having all those women around him and everything, he was just a lathered up mess. But this man, his name was Skildun, Skildun, he was from Russia. He uses a little expression from the story of Samson and comes back to it and back to it and back to it, and that occurs at the end of the story of Samson when he has been, his eyes have been burned out, and he's been tied to the wheel and is grinding like a jackass, the grinding of the grain and grinding of the grain, and the writer says, and Samson's hair began to grow again. See that gets you, you know something's going to happen. He's going to get his hair back, and when he gets his hair back, look out. Isn't that something? This sermon, he just comes back and Samson's hair began to grow again, just a kind of refrain. He was masterful, never saw the inside of a seminary, I think gradually finished high school, but had a heart for and a head for the things of God. I look forward to her publishing the book, which she's been hesitant to do because she didn't want anybody laughing at her father. I don't think, I don't think they will. And it came to pass. You know what's coming. And in those days, in the days when Herod was king of Judea, wise men from the east came. In the 15th year of Caesar Tiberias, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, you know it's coming. It's the way it locates in time and place, the way it starts, the way it continues. They're marvelous stories. Second Samuel, the stories of David. Pay close, that sounds like advice, well, anyway. Pay close attention to little phrases, little expressions that you know carry the freight for something extremely important. John 4, we know that the expression, the prophet has no honor in his own country. The synopsis, the writers use it, talking about Galilee, Nazareth in particular. But in the Gospel of John, it's a reference to Judea. But it says it this way, for Jesus himself said, a prophet has no honor in his own country. Why would you say that? Jesus himself said, what comes to mind is an argument, is there a question, is there a debate? Flesh that out, imagine what it might be. I like the expression in Mark 4, I think it's chapter 4. Jesus has been teaching the parables through most of chapter 4. And they get in, they take Jesus, the expression says, and the disciples take Jesus just as He was and put Him in the boat. What does that mean? When He got in the boat, He went to sleep immediately. They had to wake Him for the storm. How deep was His sleep? And they took Him just as He was. I pause over those. It's like cracking the door into something about Jesus' physical condition after a long day of serving as God's Messiah. And they took Him just as He was. Does that turn the mind loose? The imagination that you can go crazy. But you can also be grateful for just opening the blinds a little bit. What does that mean? By the way, sometimes very strong preaching can have no answer to the question. It might be, it might be, it might be. And in the course of that, it might be, you can teach a lot of scripture and theology and all things ethical. It might be. Just notice little things that are begging for an answer. King Saul's right-hand man said, Is there anybody now left from Saul's family? David wants to see that they're taken care of. Anybody left of Saul's family? David wants to know. Well, there's one grandson that's still here. He's a crippled boy. He's named Mephibosheth. He's a crippled. 117 years ago, I heard a sermon on Mephibosheth. I had to look up Mephibosheth. I was just getting started. And the title of the sermon was, Plub Feet at the King's Table. And it was a masterful sermon. I think the preacher kind of forgot about Mephibosheth during the course of it. But that's such a moving scene that the now triumphant David wants to take over. But I want to do it responsibly. Is there anybody left of my predecessor's family? One crippled boy. Take it literally. Take it symbolically. It's moving to think about. Well, I'm not going to talk about that. There are a lot of practical things to be considered in using stories in a sermon. You want to locate it properly. If the story has a lot of emotional force, you don't want to have it too close to the beginning because people just got there. Wiping breakfast crumbs off their chin. Regretting being there, arriving a little late, trying to get settled, not paying a lot of attention, fumbling with the bulletin, trying to get the kids quiet. You don't want to waste your fragrance in the desert air. You don't want to use something emotionally forceful when everybody's just getting settled in. You're wasted. A little later on, when you have built a nest, you can lay the egg. But don't lay the egg until you build a nest. Otherwise, the story is useless. It doesn't help at all. You would want to be patient, of course. We talk about sometimes the density of the story. By that, it's meant not its obscurity, but how complex is it? Does it have many meanings buried in it? Does it carry in its bosom all kinds of insights? Therefore, the same story, if it has density, can be very appropriate to a variety of sermons. And you'll go somewhere and preach, and somebody will come up afterwards and say, didn't I hear you preach that sermon back at Concord? No, no. But that story fit the sermon at Concord just as well as the sermon here at Melrose. I'm making those up. Are those places? Does the story have density? Is the story too trivial? After all, the story has to pass, not only your homiletical monster, the sermon has to pass the bar. It has to be in the front of the mystery of the grace of God. Can you take your story and let it kneel at the altar before God? Does it respect the mystery of God? Or is it trivial, rinky -dink, the cat in the fiddle and the cow jumped over the moon? Or does it do homage to God? I would recommend, if you haven't already done it, I would recommend that you always preach assuming that everybody is as interested in the subject as you are. They're keen on hearing about it and will be grateful whether they disagree or agree they will be grateful for what you did. And you may say, well, that's not always true. You don't preach as though it's not always true. You preach as though it's always true. The one great element in the services of churches that I attend is the loss of an air of expectation. Something is going to happen here today. Something will change. A relationship will change. A mind will change. Something will happen. So preach as though that is true. And it might be self-fulfilling prophecy. But, but, but, but, I've decided not to talk about any of these things. My job as a preacher is to bring the judgment and grace, the pain and relief, the sorrow and the joy of life into speech. What an awesome thing it is to bring the reality of the way life is, the tough and the tender, the lost and the found, and bring it into speech. It's almost enough to tongue-tie you. You draw your breath in pain to tell these stories that carry such weight and make such difference. And 20 years later somebody comes up to you and said, I remember when you were here just a student preacher and you told about, look what you've done to somebody. To take preaching seriously. To expect things to happen. Otherwise there's no point in our talking about stories or anything else. It's just to list, get a little something up for next Sunday. Get a little something. I'm in the retail business. Preach as though the sermon is the linguistic incarnation of the gospel. It is the gospel incarnate in words. I don't say that to make it seem heavy, but it is heavy. Even when we're laughing together, it's heavy. Preach as though that were the case. At the time of the departure of the children of Israel from Egypt, God got very, very busy with a lot of things going on in the world and turned over the deliverance of the children of Israel to a committee of angels. Said they're going to need your help, especially when they get to the water. So the committee men looked over the banister and they were ready. When the Israelites got to the Red Sea, they used the power of God that had been given to them. They parted the water. Israelites went across on dry land. Here came the Egyptians soon after. And when they got out in the middle of the sea, they released the water. Horses tumbling, chariots tumbling, soldiers tumbling, death and destruction and screaming everywhere. And the committee of angels looked over the banister and said, we got them, we got them, we got them. And they were dancing a jig and the Almighty came by and said, what are you celebrating? He said, look, we got them. And God looked over the banister and said, you're all fired. You'll never serve me again. Well, but we got them. And God said, but the Egyptians are also my children. That's true. Incarnate the gospel in the story. Let the story incarnate the gospel. But I think we should begin at the beginning and just pay respect to words, just words. We're people made of words. Men and women made of words. Scott Mamaday had a beautiful little collection of his stories. And the title of the first story was The Man Made of Words. Pay attention to little things. When we were in South Africa, a woman, a domestic worker in a home where we were, asking her if she had a family. Yes, she did. And the oldest one was a teenage girl. I said, well, how's she doing? And she just shook her head and said, she kills all my words. Isn't that powerful? She kills all my words. I knew exactly what she was talking about. Pay attention to little things. Let your imagination work until a word comes back to life and it will not come back to life. Then drop it. Drop it from your vocabulary. You don't need it anymore. There is a temptation to let the abundance of words in the world minimize the value and importance of each one. Well, there are just so many words. So many words. Maintenance man comes in on Monday morning to sweep. Sweeps up a pile of words out in front of the pulpit. Wherever in these yours? Yeah, but I got a lot more. Go ahead and sweep now. And there are just so many words. The tendency is, did you know that in the Library of Congress, there are 531 miles of books? Yeah. You think of that and someone says, words, words, words, words, words. Words will never harm anyone. Oh, yeah. You heard what she said. Just pay attention to little things. Is the word a good word? Is it a usable word? Can you bring it out of the trash heap and give it life again? Can you breathe in at the breath of life or does it just have to go? I've given up on some words. Galices. I used that word in a sermon and somebody came up and asked me, what's galices? I thought, you can't belong to this church if you don't know. I've given up on it. It's not worth saving, not worth rescuing. Make up your mind about the little words. A lot of words are born in depression. That's why we're having new words right now. We're in kind of recession depression. But I was born in the depression. And a lot of value was put on words because there weren't many. You see these long lines? Not looking for bread, but lines going to the library. Because there weren't many words and people just took what they could get. Had one family that lived next to us, they went, she had six children. And that last kid was so slow, he didn't have a word till he was nine years old. Man of few words, don't waste words, don't speak until spoken to. Those are depression expressions. Words were valuable and very, very carefully selected. I once paid a boy in school with me five marbles, glass marbles, hunting molasses kind of marbles for one word. He had the word hell. And he just said it and I thought, man, that's the strongest word I ever heard. And I gave him five marbles for the word and put it in my pocket. Never got to use it. Because when my mother washed my overalls, she washed that word and it was gone. I've never been able to use it. Do you play and make fun of yourself as you play with the word to see if there's any juice left in it, or you just go along and along? When Kenneth Burke was here as a guest preacher, a teacher in the university some years ago, he suggested to students, if you find yourself reading paragraph after paragraph and you think you're really not getting into it, why don't you just write this way vertically? And the change in the flow will quicken you again to a word if it's really important to do. A good suggestion. How can I keep life in this? During the dry spell in the north part of Georgia where I live, our creek that flows under the house got real low. And I discovered when the creek was real low that lying in the bottom of the creek were a lot of nouns. I've never seen them before. Nouns. Smooth ones, brown. I keep them in a fruit jar on the bank porch. Because a noun is no good if it's not a verb. Reverent is a noun. If you don't have some verbs, I mean you're just waiting for the pension. A noun is nothing. A noun has to have a verb. Boy, when the rain came and the water came down the creek, there was sloshing and dashing and dancing and splashing. I had all kinds of verbs and those nouns came to life. You don't think that's true? I'm trying to give life to language because that's the only way I can communicate the gospel. Some words are confusing. Take the word dust, D -U-S-T. Airplane flies over a crop and sprays something out on the crop to kill the germs or whatever the bugs. You know what they're doing? They're putting stuff on. You go inside and take a cloth and run it over the piano. And the table, what are you doing, dusting? You put it on, it's called dusting. You take it off, it's called dusting. That's not real helpful. But see it all comes from the depression. Words had to do double duties. Times were hard. Times were hard. I wrote down here one little word, a very little word, in some of the ways it's used. U-P-U-P, up. Now I can't do without it, but I need to keep it alive. Put it up, put up with, put him up to it. He's not up to it. He broke me up. They broke up. Give up, beat up, show up, show me up. She stood up, she stood me up. Took up with while he up and died. Where will he end up? Look me up. I'll eat all that up. Is this on the up and up? Time is up. I just wrote all that silliness down. I'm wasting my time, aren't I? No, no, no, no, no. I'm preserving a word. And it won't hurt if in the course of your pulpit work you are playful a little bit. As Kierkegaard said, stay light on your feet. They don't follow a pedestrian. You're slugging along. Stay light on your feet. It's all right to dance a little bit. But it keeps it alive. Play with a word in front of the congregation. It may be one of their good words. I described, in a little paper we put out up in the mountains, I described the word tarnation. I still think there's a place for tarnation, but I don't hear it much anymore. So I just went to a little service of retirement. It was held over in Birmingham. We retired the word tarnation. But outside, where we had it in the Civic Club, outside there were a whole group of people with posters refusing to retire tarnation. So over around Birmingham, you can use the word tarnation and there'll be people smiling. They refuse to retire it. I have not much use for it anymore. I have other words like that, just as useless. Shote. Shote. S-H-O-A -T. Shote. There are not many shoates around anymore. Pull it. Not two words, one. Pull it. Pull it. Any when. Any when. You hear of anyhow, anywhere, and there was, in my culture, it was a fairly common word, any when. Don't hear it much anymore. Try it in a sermon. If it bounces off, it falls on the floor, nobody picks it up. Don't use it anymore. I'm trying to get you to think about your language. When we were all at home, my sister, being the oldest, started dating for anybody else knew what that was. And she dated this fellow, Henry, who had a vocabulary of only adverbs. Only adverbs. He said that's all that was left. Time he got to the end of the line, they only had a few adverbs. My sister came in the room one night when I was going out, and Henry was coming in, and she said, to Henry, did you meet my brother? And he said, fleetingly. Well, how are y'all getting along? Swimmingly? Well, how did you get here with all the ice and snow on the ground? Carefully, he said. Well, you got to go now, reluctantly. He grew ill, and I said, have you had this, did you get this some time ago? He said recently. It's cancer, do you think it's fatal? He said probably. I went out to read his marker after he was buried. It said, finally. Now, what I'm doing, for your sake, is making a fool of myself. Because there's a kind of heaviness around ministers who feel obligated to be heavy, and you should get light on your feet and bounce around, but especially if it's in the serious business of saving words. Or retiring words that are of no more value. Pay attention wherever you are, the pastor or minister. Pay attention to the way people speak in that community. Not in general, but how do they speak in that community? In the community where I speak, they have ways of being very reticent, almost apologetic, non -intrusive, and gradual, getting conversation started. Knock on the back door and walk in, and the family is seated around the table, and the visitor says, are you eating supper? It's getting it started. It's very nice. Non -intrusive way of doing it. I was at Charlie's funeral this morning. Oh, did he die? That's very nice. Well, our vacation is over. I've got to go back to the factory at tomorrow. You work there? I've noticed that they also use a lot of extra words, unnecessary words, as a concession to the listener. She's a teacher. She teaches. Now, you don't really need all of that. But this is the way, this is comfortable talk down the road where we live. He's a farmer. He farms. She's a painter. She paints. He's a singer. He sings. He sings. Cushions. Comforting. I don't want to intrude. I don't want to have any jagged hard edge to my relationship to you. So it just is eased into. Fall down. Well, you don't need down. Bad cold. No, I'd rather have a good cold. You don't need that. But it is necessary to maintain a relationship of common way of speaking. And I enjoy the great deal. Two twins. With a woman. Raise up. I recall in school when I was in West Tennessee in a public school and rural area. And the teacher would say, raise the window and you'd say, do you want me to raise it up or raise it down? And it was accepted. How do people talk in the area where you minister? Very cautiously where I am, scarcely sometimes but very cautiously. Once they start, can talk forever. Here's an expression. What it was was that they didn't want to. You don't need all of that. But it is a way of talking. A way of communicating. There's a good deal of disjuncture non sequiturs in conversation in my area. They moved in here from Enterprise Alabama, didn't they? The other person says, but wasn't she Methodist? No. I'm not saying we go in there to correct it, not to imitate it, but to understand it and understand it as fundamentally a person-to-person relationship. There is an acquiescence and a pathos in Southern Appalachian people in the music when I was sinking down, sinking down, sinking down what wonders love. There's a just let me not even be here kind of acquiescence. It's moving to me. It's in the music. The mountain hymns. It's in conversation. You hear it in the churches. You hear it on the street. Your neighbors talk this way. I'm going to be a preacher to these people. I'm not going to mock them. I'm not going to have to wear bibbed overalls and check a red checkered shirt. I'm not going to do this. I'm not going to do that, but I'm going to be their pastor and I'm going to understand why it's this way. Why it's talked this way, not just historically, but what personality and what relationships mean. The Creek woman. One of the five civilized tribes that moved to the west, you know, on the Trail of Tears, Chickasaw, Cherokee, Choctaw, Creek, Seminole. She was Creek. Reporter said to her, Do you have any children? And she said, I had sex. But they're all dead, except Adam. And Rachel. And Joseph. And Wes. And Annie. Isn't that something? All kinds of registration of depth of the loss of a child is just something. Things like that are very, very important. That's the way some people talk. Listen for sentences that give you phrases with story potential. If you're going to be a storyteller, you pay attention to words and phrases, and you are stimulated by things you don't quite understand, but you are checked by, interested in, heavily invested in, but full of puzzlement about the way things are said. A woman on whom I called on behalf of trying to get her some help, she was so poor. No floor, just the ground. One bed with a quilt on it and a feist dog, a little ratted dog, had just had her pups up in the middle of the bed. She herself had more snuff on her chin than in her mouth. No teeth. I had met her son George who was encyclopedic in his knowledge. All the great books he had read, and he wanted to talk about Plato and Aristotle and the Roman Empire and things beyond my knowledge, and he had never been one single day in a schoolhouse. He wanted me to meet his mother, I met his mother, and she was a pitiful looking thing. Maybe 70 thin gray hair pulled back in what would have been a bun except there wasn't enough hair. A snuff box in an apron was sticking out bulging in the apron pocket. And I said, I went down to visit George and she said, law me, why waste your time? And I said, oh, it was not a waste of time. And she said, this is her son. She said, his head is plumb full of notions, but his heart is as empty as a churn. Now, that's the kind of thing if you're really a pastor that you'll jot down. Not that it'll ever see the light of day. It will never appear in a sermon, but it gives you insight into people you meet and the disappointment they are to their own family. I went back many times. She buried her husband herself without a casket. Up the hill, back of the house, the little house she lived in, buried him on the hill up behind the house. And between the burial place, she took me out there, it wasn't a very deep grave. I said, this is against the law. She said, oh, they don't care. But between the grave and her house was her well. And I said, but after a while it's going to get into your well. And she said, I never thought of that, but never mind. She's not an exceptional woman. She's very bright. Her heart is full and her head is not full of notions like her son George. One of the lead characters in Arthur Miller's After the Fall in the story of all these left over and haze bands and going nowhere characters. One of them, the female in the story of the misfits said, if I'm going to be alone I want to be by myself. Now that makes a lot of sense. One I'm talking about may seem strange to you but if you just catch on to a phrase or a sentence that is pregnant with something and you don't know what. Hold on to it. If you've got a close friend you talk about things like this but it's the resurrection of English language the way it's commonly used and the way people think. Now that expression from Arthur Miller is perfectly clear but it's not clear at all. It's almost parabolic. So how are we going to do this? What I thought I would do tomorrow I don't know what time it is 3.30. Tomorrow I would like to go at stories by talking about three of the first cousins stories have three first cousins and since story is indirect just to lecture on it directly may not be as appropriate for me as to go by way of the cousins like Emily Dickinson said if you're going to give me the truth give it to me on the slant. Well I thought I might just talk about the story by going at a slant and talk about the story in connection with three of its first cousins poetry songs and proverbs or wise sayings or aphorisms or maxims or whatever you want to call it these three are very close to a story and I want to talk about them as a way of resurrecting the story in ourselves and I'm talking to those of you who have already dared to use stories and with success or not success but to think through again what you already know that's what we're doing is discerning what we already know and paying attention to it and that's what I want to do with poetry and with songs many of which would be hymns of the church and also maxims the connection between a story and a proverb or a wise saying is as old as American education and I want us to talk about that that's what we'll do tomorrow we're not going to do it today because I'm going to quit in a minute in fact I've already quit