I can be pretty cynical sometimes. My brain is wired to quibble. My personal and professional background make me prone to doubt. I am Thomas or worse, and it’s hard for me to trust sometimes. It’s hard for me to believe.
But every now and then, something comes along that drops me—something that makes me want to pray and sing, to laugh and cry.
We’re in the midst of a barrage of training sessions here at Focus on the Family—sessions designed to remind us who we are as an organization, where we’ve been and what we’re to be about.
Now, if there’s anything that’s liable to stir up a certain weary cynicism in me, it’s classes like these. I’ve been through the drill before. I know they tend to be loaded with high-level jargon and buzz phrases like “synergy” and “infrastructure” and loads of mysterious acronyms. I know where we’ve been, I’m likely to mutter to myself. I know what I’m to be about. I’m to be about writing a television review! Right now! I sit down, eyeroll at the ready.
And then the stories start coming.
Stories from co-workers who came from broken homes or broken marriages. Stories from Focus supporters who are dealing with loss and disease and death. I hear about a little cancer-stricken boy who loved Adventures in Odyssey and, for his dying wish, wanted to come to Colorado Springs to see Whit’s End. I hear about a Focus executive, finding God in the midst of debilitating disease.
I hear stories.
I look out at the parking lot here and see hundreds of cars. Each car represents another story—powerful and poignant, tragic and triumphant. I am a cynic in the face of speech and sermon and spreadsheet. But faced with a story, I melt.
Entertainment, at its core, is about story. It’s why our culture embraces it so. It’s why it can be so influential. We’ve all watched movies that have affected us deeply. We’ve all listened to music that voice our own feelings better than we could’ve ever articulated. Our screens and speakers tell us stories and they speak to our own. They break down our barriers, drill through our cynicism and strike to our core. We can’t help it. It’s how we’re made.
I guess that’s why we take entertainment so seriously around here. We can be critical of these stories. We can be dismissive. Sometimes, people rail against our restrictive grids, complaining that we just don’t like anything.
But how can we not like stories? How can we not embrace them for what they are and what they can be? It’s our love of story, I think, that makes us so critical: We know their power. We know their beauty. We know the right story can change someone’s life: How could we not treat them with the upmost care?
But here’s the other thing: No matter how many stories we see onscreen or played out in video games, none of these stories are any more resonant or any more important than your own. Your neighbor has one. Your mailman has one. Your boss. Your teacher. Your children. Your parents. Sometimes, you’d never guess what stories they hold, what stories lurk untold. We live in libraries, and yet we’re so absorbed with our own stories sometimes that we forget to learn anyone else’s.
As you know, we’ve tweaked our website a little bit, strengthening some of our objectives and refocusing some of our time. We’re synergizing and shoring up our infrastructure and using various acronyms and doing loads of other things behind the scenes that you don’t see and shouldn’t care about.
But in the midst of it all, we also want to hear more from you. We want to hear about your experiences with entertainment. We want to learn how you deal with our raucous world. We want to know how to help you better.
We want to hear your stories.
This blog is a pretty decent forum to talk with us. So is our Facebook page. If you have something longer or deeper to say, we’d love it if you just dropped us a letter or email. Maybe occasionally we can sometimes find a way to relay your story to our broader Plugged In audience: Maybe you can help someone out there. Maybe someone can help you.
Stories are important. Your story is important. For your story is a part of bigger one, a sweeping epic told by a master Bard and filled with beauty and pain, of heartbreak and healing.
And of course, when you know the storyteller personally, it always has a happy ending.
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