Telling Me The Story

As the diocese digests, as it seems to be, the imminent death of its bishop - things have moved on since the news got to the BBC - I'm conscious that I have been silent lately, but even though my thoughts today weren't connected with the update +Andrew issued they are not a million miles away from relevant. 

I am struggling towards the end of a number of projects, themselves the conclusion of a series which has occupied me really since the early Covid lockdown. I think that, once they're done, I may well have a rest for a while. I find myself writing about something contemporary over which opinion is very divided, to the point that different groups involved seem to inhabit entirely separate mental worlds. I fall more on one side than the other, though I will strive to be fair and at least do justice to both.

As you know I am a historian in a small way: even my holy well compendia are, in a way, gathered stories. When you set out to write history, you almost always have a thesis, a story already vaguely formed in your mind, if only because the smaller subject you're writing about is set within the grander story of humanity and you probably have that pretty much sketched out according to your beliefs. It's rare that you know nothing about your topic in advance. As you do your research, you'll be looking for anything that bears on that narrative, but not only what confirms it; you'll continually be checking it against what you find. It's a process of constant revision and re-evaluation, and to do it properly and honestly you have to be prepared for the possibility you might uncover something that sends you in a different direction from where you thought. It's not an exact business, but neither is it simply a rehearsal of one's own biases. That's how it works.

That's as it may be. As we draw closer to the end of our lives we might wonder how an impossible collection of events and impressions, of memories and experiences, can conceivably be shaped into a story, something we could put into a memoir or tell to a child. It cannot be, really. We don't know where in the human story we are: closer to its beginning or its end, or what that story means, even whether there is one. I tell the good people of Swanvale Halt Church that the story of Christ is the one overarching narrative of Creation in which our individual stories are gathered and made sense of. His is the book of which we are sentences. There is a comfort in that.