Childrens books rhyme and repeat. Repeat and rhyme. We remember them. They become a part of us; engrained in our memories. Wendell Berry's character Jayber Crow, in the novel that bears his name, puts it this way, "... I see that my life is almost entirely memory and very little time... Finally I realized and fully accepted that one day I would belong entirely to memory, and it would then not be my memory that I belong to..."
We tell stories because they make us more of ourselves - because parts of ourselves are bound up in them, and can only continue in memory. So to be, we repeat; and in the beauty of life's language, we rhyme.
Do we know the weight? Even He has tied up himself in our memories to be known, to tell The Story. I often shift this burden from one shoulder to the other along my journey - but it is not to simply be borne. It is to be passed. If we hold on to our memories so tightly, we will lose ourselves and everything.
Stories, The Story, must be told.
