The Perpendicular Pronoun

"...for God has granted to man a dignity which is near to divine (Ps 8:5-6). In every child which is born and in every person who lives or dies we see the image of God's glory. We celebrate this glory in every human being, a sign of the living God, an icon of Jesus Christ." (Pope John Paul II, Evangelium Vitae , #84.)

My husband recently suggested that I slow down in my blog posting, lest I run out of stories. His comment sparked a train of thought that has been on-going since then: Why am I so inclined to tell stories, and is story- telling the best way to accomplish what I have set out to do?

It seems to me lately that stories are what I posses, they are the coin of my realm, and to the extent that they reveal some small part of God and his church, they are worth sharing. The difficulty is that so often, they seem to involve what Sir Humphrey Appleby, in "Yes, Prime Minister", once called the "perpendicular pronoun."

This blog was never meant to be a reason to talk about myself. In fact , lest you think it comes at all easily, I tell stories only because I hope and pray that they are in essence about someone else, or some point that is not me-centered.

Someone I know once said "people write their best about things they know the best", or words to that effect. This is true, at least in my case.

My fund of stories comes from interactions I have with people; relatives, friends, strangers who stray into my life and leave an impression. Sometimes the impressions are fleeting, often more long-lasting. If they serve as "points of light" then I want to share them.

Mostly, these stories are about life, life in tiny increments. They are about people who do small things that, in the hands of God, leave great impressions. Mustard seeds that God turns into giant oaks.

Please forgive, then, the use of the perpendicular pronoun. Think of it only as a point of entry into a bigger, more glorious world, a world in which we are all, as the psalm says, fearfully and wonderfully made. A world in which our interactions are more than the I, and the you, but a we so large it includes the saints,the angels and our Lord himself.