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Monday, February 13, 2006
A Story
"Get Real: How to Cancel Conflict" is a message that -- sad to say -- is timely all the time. Pastor Jack takes a fresh look at James 4:1-10 for practical advice about where our conflicts come from and some godly ways to resolve them.
Listen to the GODcast!
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She cried as she sang her song.
On Valentine's Day, at our Rotary Club lunch meeting, Kathy chose a Jacques Brel ballad of lament and ironic hope. Musical images of love conquering prejudice and melting cannons brought the tears and shook her voice a bit.
Not your average soft pink ode to romance.
Our featured speaker was Joel Ben Izzy, a professional story-teller. He developed the love theme further for us. Like a verbal magician, he drew moral tales old and new out of his hat -- each a variation on the idea that real love delights in giving itself away.
Joel lost his voice a few years ago, unable to speak a single word, and he feared it was gone for good. Fortunately, he found a doctor who had one last experimental procedure to try. And Joel could speak again! But in that same season his aging mother lost her hearing forever.
During his speechless stage, Joel visited his mother. She said among other things, "I'm dying." He scribbled notes for his half of the conversation, finally asking, "Tell me your story."
Joel's mom had loved to sit on his boyhood bed at night, asking for and listening intently to a new story he would make up on the spot, just for her. Now, he said, it was her turn.
The story she told was about attending a concert with her dear friend who'd recently lost her sight. Both of them had always loved classical music. That night the orchestra played Beethoven's sixth symphony, which he composed after he too went deaf. She "heard" the music, she told her son, in several different ways. Vibrations in her seat. The conductor's graceful gestures. And, best of all, the sheer joy on her blind friend's face as the music worked its magic.
Joel told us that single story was his mother's greatest gift to him. She knew he would find ways to retell it in his travels here and there spinning his magical tales.
In a way, all of his stories are gifts, too. He freely gives them away, no strings attached. Let them do what they will in a hearer's heart, soul, eyes, and throat. Then his listeners give them away all over again. Passed on from one hearer to another, time after time, in place after place, they do what they can to change the world a little bit.
I cried as he told his tale.
We'd come full circle in one brief hour. Hear and tell enough stories like that one, and you get to witness the power of love disarming prejudices and melting down cannons.
Cupid doesn't know what to make of that. St. Valentine would be proud!
posted by Jack Buckley at
4:53 PM
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