The Stories We Tell - pt1
This is an adaptation of the first part of my talk from Make Art or Die - Story. I’ll post part two tomorrow.
My wife, Joy, is a storyteller. Her medium is the scrapbook. She weaves pictures, words, patterns, cutouts and various other items into bound stories. We have a ton of them lying all around our house; it’s the (sometimes embarrassing) visual history of our family and friends. She usually crafts these stories within a community of like-minded scrappers who document life with the care and attention to detail of a surgeon.
Nearly a year ago, one of the ladies in her scrapping group visited a home for children called Kids Harbor way down in Alvin, Texas. It’s a transitional place for foster kids to stay while they wait for the next family to take them in (or not). While Joy’s friend was there she noticed that many of the kids have shoe boxes full of pictures of their time with different foster parents. All of their best memories just sort of shoved into a chaotic box.
What’s a scrapper to do but want to help make sense of the mess? So she asked my wife and a few others if they’d like to help teach the kids how to scrapbook their pictures. Of course Joy, being a natural teacher of children, jumped at the chance and had a great time. Many of the kids wanted them to come back for more scrapping and it eventually turned into a regular event for the children. Each time Joy comes back from these Saturday afternoon outings I hear great stories of girls and boys creating meaning from disorder. Just a couple weeks ago she told me that a little girl held up her new scrapbook and simply said, “This has been the best day of my life.”
Stories Repair
From within this story we see the reparative effect of creating stories to give events meaning in our lives. These kids, with just about no material possessions, are able to arrange their life stories through scrapbooking and gain a concrete anchor into the relationships they have with others.
In 1997 James Pennebaker, a psychology professor at SMU at the time, published a paper detailing the effects of writing on the mental health of patients. This is what he found.
The writing paradigm is exceptionally powerful. Participants – from children to the elderly, from honor students to maximum-security prisoners – disclose a remarkable range and depth of traumatic experiences. Lost loves, deaths, incidents of sexual and physical abuse, and tragic failures are common themes in all of the studies. If nothing else, the paradigm demonstrates that when individuals are given the opportunity to disclose deeply personal aspects of their lives, they readily do so. Even though a large number of participants report crying or being deeply upset by the experience, the overwhelming majority report that the writing experience was valuable and meaningful in their lives.
If you write in a journal regularly, congratulations, you are in better mental health than the rest of us!
This study lends credibility to the power of stories to make sense of what we experience. And so a seemingly simple act like children binding their pictures together into a scrapbook becomes a path to meaning.
Stories Reveal
We also learn about the personhood of my wife, Joy. I could have just abstracted out some of her characteristics: kindness, love, compassion, creativity… but that wouldn’t be nearly as effective at transmitting who she is. By grounding the characteristics in narrative you get a more intimate look into her character. It’s not just a list without context, it is dynamic and nuanced. Now I could give you a more rounded look by telling you stories about when she gets frustrated at me but I won’t.
Just a quick aside for the men reading… if your special someone asks that dreaded question - Why do you love me? - you score a lot more points by telling her a meaningful story that shows the qualities you love rather than stumble over a list of adjectives. And we all know scoring points is what keeps a relationship together.
There is an inherent power in a truthful story to display the full spectrum of the human condition. In the next installment, I want to explore this peculiar story of God in which we find ourselves. It’s a specific story that subverts many of the stories we tell and are told. It’s not just a story to be learned but an invitation to be accepted. For those with ears to hear, let them hear.
