COMMENTARY: Tell me an old, old story

c. 1998 Religion News Service (Dale Hanson Bourke is the publisher of Religion News Service) UNDATED _ We are assaulted by e-mail, bombarded by phone messages. News bites inform us and sitcoms entertain us. Beepers and car phones ensure we are always within reach. But despite the dizzying technological advances, part of us remains unreached. […]

c. 1998 Religion News Service

(Dale Hanson Bourke is the publisher of Religion News Service)

UNDATED _ We are assaulted by e-mail, bombarded by phone messages. News bites inform us and sitcoms entertain us. Beepers and car phones ensure we are always within reach.


But despite the dizzying technological advances, part of us remains unreached. While our minds try to process the facts, our souls yearn for something more.

We live on a diet of up-to-the-minute news and 15-minute celebrities while we ache for a transcendent, timeless touch.

For all its advances, the information age may go down in history as the period when our culture forgot what people in every part of the world have learned to treasure: From cave paintings to ballads to story telling, humans crave the power of narrative.

It is what lifts a culture up and warns of previous excesses. It inspires the children and rewards the wise elders. It treasures what is good, warns of evil and records the lives of those who were bigger than life.

And stories have the power to release us from facts, figures and predictions, allowing us to become who we are called to be.

The most powerful stories are those that are true. Even as they are embellished by retelling or exalted by kind remembering, they gain additional strength with the benediction”and that is a true story.” At a time when stories about real people seem to be vying for the most outrageous, a new book courageously ignores the people who are”hot”and instead tells about those who are great.”Great Souls”(Word) is a book that contains six extraordinary true stories of people whose lives have exemplified transcendent moral principles. In it, author David Aikman, a former senior correspondent for Time magazine, profiles Billy Graham, Mother Teresa, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Pope John Paul II, Elie Wiesel, and Nelson Mandela in one weighty but very readable volume.”In a remarkable way, the life of each of them, as it has been lived out, has demonstrated one overriding human quality, or preoccupation, or virtue, more than any other,”Aikman writes in the introduction.”And that virtue has been expressed for the entire human race so vividly that its importance is likely to resonate not just into the next millennium, but for as long as the human race continues to survive and keep records of its history.” As I read the book, I began to see how simple but courageous decisions in each of these people’s lives had lead them to follow extraordinary paths. And as I was caught up in the story of each man and woman, I was reminded of the power of individuals to change history.

But what is truly remarkable are the ways they changed their worlds. While Mandela was a revolutionary, he is great because of his ability to forgive. Solzhenitsyn is a gifted writer, but he is an even greater truth-teller. Wiesel has made sure we never, ever forget those who died during the Holocaust.

These are traits not easily analyzed or recorded. They are rarely rewarded monetarily or in the other ways in which society measures success. They would make poor Web site material or sound bites. But they make great stories.


Aikman’s years of reporting have helped him craft a book that includes facts without obscuring the drama. I have given a copy of the book to my teen-age son, who hadn’t heard of some of these greats, and another to my father-in-law, who remembers many of the events of their lives.

And my copy is underlined now, not so much because I want to hold on to the facts but because I want to remember the principles. The stories of these greats have lifted me out of the pressures of daily details and challenged me to seek deeper meaning in life.

This morning I ignored my e-mail and instead went for a walk at sunrise while reciting an almost forgotten Psalm. I have begun to make notes about my grandmother and my father, family greats who my children knew for too short a time.

I am reclaiming the power of story over the tyranny of information. It will take discipline to hold back the assault. But my soul needs room to breathe and grow. And our culture needs moments of transcendence if we are to give meaning to the cold facts that inform but rarely inspire.

DEA END BOURKE

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