You Live Too Much In The Past

Someone informed me that I lived too much in the past.  After talking to them, I looked at my fitbit to check the time and how many miles I walked.  I checked my iphone to check for missed called, voice mail, text messages, and email.  I checked my weather app on my iphone to see how warm the day would get. The fitbit and iphone are new millennial, current.

The stories I write do deal with things of the past, but when I write them, they become current.  I reminded my accusers of my antiquity, that I have a Bachelor of Arts Degree in History.  I am a student of the past.  Those who do not study the past are doomed and destined to repeat the same mistakes and atrocities.  A study of the history of Rome, Sodom, and Gomorrah will reveal how our nation is following in their footprints.

If I write about an event yet to happen, it becomes a work of fiction.  It will be a product of my imagination and creativity.

The late Dr. Calvin Miller encouraged me to write.  I responded to his challenge by asking the question, “About what?”  Dr. Miller said one of the most effective ways to share the Gospel with the new millennials was by story telling.  A close examination of the Bible and the teaching of Jesus disclose the use of story telling.  The Bible is an Oriental book, filled with short, bright stories.  These stories, or tales, are like people, good or evil. “A tale” is the view of brevity, a trifling character, and a speedy forgetfulness into which they fell.  Tales have these essential elements: energy and activity, thoughtfulness, characters revealed, a generous and high aim, and it must end well.

I remember studying Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales translated by Edward Hopper.  It intrigued me that I might have a relative that was a writer long before I even thought about being a writer. 

Hopper translated Chaucer’s tales from Middle English to Modern English.  Canterbury Tales is a critique of the society in Chaucer’s lifetime and reflects diverse views of the Church in Chaucer’s England. 

Chaucer created satirical tales prompted by the Church, political figures, and stories told by Christians making the pilgrimage to the Holy Land during what was called Verde or the greening associated with Spring.

Verde is a word I learned while taking Dr. McMillan’s English class at the University of Montevallo.  Verde is Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, and Romanian for green.  Green reminds of renewing and new life.  Incidentally, I made the highest grade on one of the tests about the Verde.  It helped that I was taking Spanish also.  Oops, I am talking about the past again.

A tale or story roots in the past.  Fond memories of daddy are those nights we would lay outside on an old quit or blanket on the grass and he would tell interesting things about his childhood and people associated with it.  I could never get him to talk about WWII other than a few funny things he did while serving.  Little did I know that his generation was passing and mine was rising.  That is true as I write.  My generation is fleeting and another is rising.  I challenge you to pay attention to the target audience of commercials.  The ones for my generation are for medicine, medical supplies, life insurance, lawsuits, and ensure. 

My life, your life, is as a tale told.  “Our lives are illustrations of heavenly goodness, parables of divine wisdom, poems of sacred thought, and records of infinite love; happy are we whose lives are such tales.  When it is said and done, our time on earth is as a sailing ship, which leaves no impression or track behind, a dust, a vapor, a morning dew, a flower flourishing one day, fading the next.”  The rapid consummation of our years is speedy and inevitable.

Some years of our lives are as a pleasant story, sometimes a tragic tale, mixed, but all short and transitory; which may have been long in doing, but may be told in a short time in a book, newspaper, magazine, or even an article on the back of The Alabama Baptist, which I wrote for several years. 

It is said, “Life is real, life is earnest, – the simile only holds good if we consider that a holy life is rich in interest, full of wonders, chequered with many changes, yet arranged as a story.”

As Moses writes Psalm 90 he tells about the brevity of life as the years in the wilderness rapidly roll down life’s highway.  While the Hebrews were consuming in the wilderness, another generation was rising.  Justice shortened the days of rebellious Israel.  Each stop they made was marked by a graveyard marking their trails with burial places left behind.  Sin cast a shadow over all things, and made the lives of the dying wanderers both vain and brief.

Moses’ view is very sad.  All he heard was about the tales of how good Egypt was.  What lay ahead were tales that would give hope to the nation of Israel as they remembered the Passover and the crossing of the Red Sea.

 

We spend our years as a tale that is told (Psalm 90:9b KJV).