Brian’s Reflection: Monday, July 2, 2007


All good books have one thing in common –
they are truer than if they had really happened.

-Ernest Hemingway, author, Nobel Laureate (1954),
killed himself on this day, 1961


True of the “Good Book” too. I remember reading the Creation Story (aspects of which, or perhaps more accurately interpretations of which, I profoundly disagree with) and thinking “Don’t be ridiculous! And the stories in Luke about the birth of Jesus and thinking, “Nice story, enhances the idea in a charming way” – but happened literally, nope. It wasn’t until I got to the point that I could accept them as “stories” that I understood what Hemingway is saying. Such stories are “truer than if they had really happened”.

But what is “really happened”? The point is, such events indeed “really happened”!. It’s just that reality is such a poverty-stricken concept in our modern culture. It is no wonder to me that certain cultures today censor and/or ban literature – Salman Rushdie, for example. “Good books” reveal reality when the events in them never literally happened, the people in them never literally existed. In my experience and opinion, fiction is most often the truest reality.

Adam and Eve as individual persons never (in my view) existed. But as symbols or humanity, they and their story speak much about what “really happens” in human lives. Angels (in my opinion) never sang in the sky in the first Nativity – but Creation does indeed sing It’s own glorious song about the presence of the Holy One in human life.

How about you, your Life. Write a “good book” about it. Let your imagination rip! Even if you say things about yourself that never literally happened, we will certainly hear your truth!

Brian+