Sometimes I wonder why it is that fiction should so easily slip in the cracks whereas a well-written and solidly supported work of nonfiction can not find even the smallest purchase in my mind. I know everyone’s mind is different – at least I’m assured of such – which comforts me because I know then that the plethora of nonfiction educative works out in the world are of use to many many souls. Even for me, I can say with confidence I have been helped and encouraged and perhaps even edified by some of the nonfiction works floating out and about in the world. Yet there is something about a good story that will do things to me that no other form of writing can do, no matter how skillfully penned. This is not an original topic of course. I’m aware that much has been written about the human craving for pattern and is not story just another word for pattern? We seek to make sense of the chaos about us and if we can just make it all fit in a story that has a beginning and a middle and possibly even an end, would not that make life meaningful in a way that our souls long for? We cry for meaning and desperately grab on to whatever may give us such, if only that we can avoid slipping back into the existential void that we are all too afraid is the source from which we sprang. So is this desire for story simply a reaction of a mind half blind with fear and anxiety? Or do we desire to hear a great tale because that mirrors something in us that may perhaps have been put there a purpose, a reflection of the reality which is greater than we can now fully grasp? Hence to dart back to my original point (which perhaps has fled from me at this juncture), a true story simply told is something that will disarm all my defenses and leave me quivering on the floorboards, aware that I am both less than and greater than all at the same time. And if the story is true, well…at what point does this truth leave the pages in which I find it and enter my soul to provide an answer for that which my soul longs? I love to ask questions for too often I feel I do not know the answers. Yet, are there answers? Is there an answer? I dare not think otherwise. It stares me in the face and I tremble.