How Our Stories Affirm Eternal Truths

A play, a film, a book, each story sets out to consolidate something true about life. The narrative winds its way through characters, setting, scenes, and plot to capture in time what otherwise takes a long time to learn in real life.

A director directs actors, hoping the audience will get caught up in the story and feel all the feelings, experience a reality that embeds itself in memory, almost as if the events portrayed had happened to them.

“I’m awfully interested in how big things begin. You know how it is; you’re twenty-one or twenty-two and you make some decisions . . . then whissh! you’re seventy. You’ve been a lawyer for fifty years and that white-haired lady by your side has eaten over 50,000 meals with you. How do such things begin?” 

Our Town, Thornton Wilder

In the play Our Town, Thornton Wilder treads upon that sacred territory between everyday life and the intrusion of death, in hopes that people will “realize life while they live it, every, every minute.” His premise is that we all know there is something eternal about every human being.

Only, most people don’t actually live their days as if eternity IS reality. The soul is eternal and the body temporal––bound by time.

Up Close and Personal

When I memorized parts of the play “Our Town” in high school, scenes where Emily speaks and another where her mother does, I had no idea that this play would resonate or stay with me as long as it has.

“Let’s really look at one another! . . . It goes so fast. We don’t have time to look at one another. I didn’t realize. So all that was going on and we never noticed . . .

Wait! One more look. Goodbye, Goodbye world. Goodbye, Grover’s Corners . . . Mama and Papa.

Good-bye to clocks ticking . . . and Mama’s sunflowers. And food and coffee. And new ironed dresses and hot baths . . . and sleeping and waking up. Oh, earth, you are too wonderful for anybody to realize you.

Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it–every, every minute?” 

Emily

My drama teacher coached me how to feel Emily’s goodbyes. She said, “Think about how good it feels when you need to pee. You have had to hold it . . . [that most uncomfortable feeling] and finally, you get to let it go.”

I guess that was her version of method-acting. But I have never forgotten the actual parallel of intense feeling for ordinary aspects of being human.

Letters and Letter Openers

I miss getting letters in the mail. Don’t you?

This week, related gifts sent from 2 different people arrived in the mail on the same day. A letter opener and a letter.

The friend who sent the letter opener remembered that my mother’s silver-plate pattern was Jubilee. My friend found a shop on Etsy where a craftsperson uses vintage silver-plate patterns, replacing a knife handle with a blade to create a paper knife. [1]

The distinction I make between a letter and a note is that a letter shares something about the person writing the letter, about what’s happening in their life.

A handwritten note contains words where the writer thinks about the recipient.

News and updates and memories can prompt a letter.

Both notes and letters come in sealed envelopes. Hence, the letter opener.

My friend’s gave me a treasure that evokes memories of my mom while reinforcing my love and appreciation for this friend’s thoughtfulness and our enduring relationship.

The letter I received contained a story about the person who wrote it. That story related to the play Our Town, which she had directed her first year to teach speech and drama to high school students. “I really bonded with that cast of teens.”

She wrote that a recent blogpost here brought back more recent memories. Seeing the marquee that a local production company [in Enid, OK] would perform Our Town in 2019, “We [she and her husband] had the idea of reuniting with those ‘kids’ and eventually located all their numbers.”

“Eight cast members from Oklahoma and Kansas joined us for dinner and the play, but just the phone call visits with the others who couldn’t come due to distance, etc. gave us joy. One of the ‘boys’ still had his program and brought it along! Our Stage Manager had died, but ‘Dr. Gibbs remembered a lot of his lines! They had their picture taken with the [production company] cast––a fun evening.”

And I think to myself, the stories we live need to be remembered and shared. Just think how much this story shows and tells about the person who shared it.

In the year ahead, I hope to help you think about and write down some of your own stories.

“We have a natural ability to interpret data that comes to us in story form.”

Creating a Spiritual Legacy, Daniel Taylor

[1] http://tenrandomfacts.com/paper-knife/

One of the most decorated desk items – the paper knife.

• A paper knife is an item used in a similar way to a typical knife, but is used to cut open folded papers, like envelopes and pages in a book.
• ‘Paper knives’ are also known as ‘letter openers’, although originally they differed in appearance and purpose.
• Paper knives typically consist of a blade and a handle, sometimes made of one material; and the blade is generally flat and blunt.
• Paper knives became popular by the 1800s, when it became the norm to own the object as a standard desk item.
• A paper knife commonly has a blade made from metal, like stainless steel, however the whole letter opener can also be made from ivory, wood or plastic, that is thinned out in the blade area to make it suitable for slitting paper.
• American politician Patrick Henry is famous for making a speech before the Virginia House of Burgesses on March 23, 1775, stating the famous words “Give me Liberty, or give me Death!” After this, he pretended to plunge a letter opener into his chest.

• Paper knives were used in Europe from the 1700s to open book pages that were not cut during the manufacturing process, and they replaced pen knives that were typically used to sharpen a quill, as pen knives would cut the paper inaccurately due to their very sharp blade.
• Martin Luther King, Jr. was stabbed by Izola Curry, using a paper knife in 1958, ten years before he was assassinated, and the knife had to be surgically removed.
• Paper knives were not used to open envelopes until the mid to late 1800s, and they were manufactured specifically for this purpose with a narrower and pointier blade than the original paper knives.
• The handle of a paper knife is commonly ornamental, featuring an aesthetic pattern or sculptured depiction.