A narrative of place?  A few days ago, I received an email from an old college friend with some very intriguing thoughts about the narratives of places.  An artist, my friend is very interested in how the stories of the places we occupy work themselves out in our lives.  As I reflected on his words, I thought back to, again, my recent backpack when, to my great amazement, I revisited some backcountry sites which I had first seen over forty years ago, a time, to borrow a phrase from the Star Wars movies, in a galaxy far, far, far away.
     As I stepped into these places, I remembered the stories I created about and from them.  I have carried those stories, those narratives over many more miles and years, yet the stories have changed with each passing day.  As we grow, as we age, as we experience new times and places, we constantly weave new narratives into the ones we have been using, reworking and reshaping them into a continually changing--and always new--tapestry of life and existence.  It is our places that provide the fodder for our experiences, it is the narratives, the stories of our time in those places that lead us onward.
     We might think about God as a master story teller, a person who is telling--even as he creates--a story about us, our experiences and places, a story that we--and he--are working out each moment, each day.  Infinite yet entirely immanent, God, like the Miller in Procol Harum's song "A Whiter Shade of Pale," tells a tale, a tale of us, of him, of us and him in the world he has made.
     In doing this, God elevates existence into life.  It is one thing to exist; every sentient being does that.  It is quite another to live, to understand and know existence, to grasp the essence and meaning of why we are here, and nowhere else.  Our narrative, our story of time and place is a story of life, a life with meaning beyond its existence, a life that shines with wonder, for in the construct of time and eternity that undergirds the cosmos, it will never end.