Today I offer my own poor attempt at shameless commerce to mention that my most recent book arrived at the publisher's warehouse a week or two ago. It's now available for sale, and not even over-priced.The book is called Telling Stories: Tall Tales and Deep Truths. It's an eclectic collection of original short stories, mostly, that I've written through the years with a biblical text in mind. Each chapter begins with a (hopefully) engaging story that segues, one way or another, into a reflection on the text.
In a sense, it's my take on "narrative preaching," which can describe a variety of preaching styles, all of which involve storytelling. I can't say it's the best preaching I've ever done, but through the years, I've had more requests for copies of story-based homilies like these than for more traditional sermons.
The stories include various genres, from tales that could have happened to fantasy forays into the worlds of elves and dwarves and dragons. One takes the poetic shape of a Dr. Seuss book, and two offer scripts for really unusual Christmas plays. Other stories give voices to eagles, bunnies, and ordinarily inanimate objects -- like Peter's fishing boat or the water jar carried by the "woman at the well."
One of my favorite stories happens to be true -- an account of how my second cousin Rae came to acquire (and enjoy) a reputation as a country voodoo woman. Hers was a story begging to be told, and it finally gave me a workable way to develop a reflection on the so-called "witch of Endor," who reportedly brought up the ghost of Samuel for a beleaguered Saul.
Smyth & Helwys will have the book in Memphis during the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship meeting, and they're always available online. If you buy the book but later decide it's a shameful waste of paper, just send your dog-eared copy to me and I'll be glad to personally refund your money.
Then I'll probably write a story about you, and relate it to the farmer who looks back from the plow.
5 comments:
Salmon Rushdie in "Haroun and the Sea of Stories" wrote the following words:
....Iff, the Water Genie, told Haroun about the Ocean of the Streams of Story, and even though he was full of a sense of hopelessness and failure the magic of the Ocean began to have an effect on Haroun. He looked into the water and saw that it was made up of a thousand thousand thousand and one different currents, each one a different colour, weaving in and out of one another like a liquid tapestry of breathtaking complexity; and Iff explained that these were the Streams of Story, that each coloured strand represented and contained a single tale. Different parts of the Ocean contained different sorts of stories, and as all the stories that had ever been told and many that were still in the process of being invented could be found here, the Ocean of the Streams of Story was in fact the biggest library in the universe. And because the stories were held here in fluid form, they retained the ability to change, to become new versions of themselves, to join up with other stories and so become yet other stories; so that unlike a library of books, the Ocean of the Streams of Story was much more than a storeroom of yarns. It was not dead but alive.
Nice quote ... thanks for the contribution, Gene.
You seem to have written a book of stories that were intended from first inscription to be spoken, like poems and plays, rather than read.
Ernest Hemingway would probably have liked the impulse, for he was being humorously ironic when in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech he said, "A writer should write what he has to say and not speak it."
I thought of both his widely misunderstood irony and practice of the sweet science as I laughed aloud at your closing paragraphs.
Well and gently said.
You too will be misunderstood to great effect.
A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said to-day. 'Ah, so you shall be sure to be misunderstood.' Is it so bad then to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh.
To be great is to be misunderstood.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
(1803-1882)
U.S. Poet, essayist and transcendentalist
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Well, I've been waiting for this book for a year. Glad to see it's published and ready for those of us who have marveled at your story telling from the classroom. The order has been placed. Thank you, Dr. Cartledge.
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