Hi everyone,
“The good old days aren’t what they used to be.”
I love that saying. It is so easy when we are feeling dissatisfied with how things are at the moment to reach back into a remembered past and feel good about a previous time. Unfortunately memory is inherently selective. We look back on the 50s when families were stable and kids ran free and selectively edit out of our story the skyrocketing rate of anti-depressants prescribed to stay-at-home moms whose lives looked nothing like they have hoped. We look back on the roaring 20s when industrial growth was unlimited and forget that unchecked growth led to a crash and a depression.
That is why story tellers like Garrison Keillor and his mythical town of “Lake Wobegone Minnesota” or Stewart McLean with his “Dave and Morley” stories (Google them if you don’t know what I am talking about) are so good. They play around with the notion of “the good old days.” In their stories, nobody is perfect, things fall apart, life is a mixture of blessing and curse. And most importantly, people are allowed to be human, multi-dimensional, which is what really makes for the best stories. Oversimplifies cartoon characters are nowhere to be found.
Over the last 2 weeks and for the next 2 weeks we are exploring the story of Ruth and Naomi. It is a yarn about the good old days, but the characters are rich, the story twists and turns, and the good old days are not all good. The deeper we dig into the story, the murkier and richer it gets – just like life.
Some come with me to the Threshing Floor this week, where the fate of Ruth lies, literally, in the balance.
See you Sunday.
Blessings, Will