The Power of Story
Life has a way of sweeping you and me in its path on to new ways of seeing and doing and being. Limited to our own experiences narrows our view of life.
But since we are wired to respond to stories, we can learn from other people’s stories as well as our own.
If I were to ask you about your story, up to this point, what would you say your story is about?
Analyze any story. What’s any story about?
In your life, what parts would you leave out? What would you include? What do you think describes you as a person? What events have shaped your worldview? Have your own experiences enhanced or diminished your appreciation of life? What stories do you hear yourself repeating to other people? What stories do you avoid telling?
While I’m intrigued by all that the Bible leaves out of its stories, the story details writers do include aim to help us as readers see ourselves in its pages.
Stories about Pride
Still on vacation, this past Sunday, I watched Alistair Begg preach from Exodus 2. [1] While Alistair noted that Moses wrote the first 5 books of the Bible, the book of Exodus includes few details about Moses’ 40 years spent in the desert after he had killed an Egyptian. During those 40 years, God was preparing Moses, teaching him that “privilege brings its own perils . . . pride brings real danger.”
Moses had received the privileges of wealth and culture as the “son of Pharaoh’s daughter.”
Summarized, I’ve heard: “Moses spent his first 40 years thinking he was a somebody, his next 40 years finding out he was a nobody, and his last 40 years seeing what God could do with a nobody.”
Though his motivation may have been noble, Moses’ “action was disgraceful.” Moses, emboldened by his position and prestige, in prideful assertion, he murdered a man, believing that the Israelites would see him as their defender.
What’s remarkable here is that Moses told on himself. He recorded what had happened as well as showing, not telling, that he had a lot to learn about trusting God.
“Sea change refers to a big and sudden change or transformation.”
When you examine any story, look for the sea changes––the inciting incidents, the decisive moments that propel the story in a different direction.
Downton Abbey & TITANIC Connection
In Downton Abbey, the sea change affected the entire social hierarchy. The story showed cracks in the class system in England, that the way wealthy landowners had lived for centuries was collapsing under the weight of its own hubris.
hubris––overbearing pride or persumption
What was the story about?
Well, it’s a saga, so it’s not about any one thing or person.
saga––the narrative telling of the adventures of a hero or a family; orig. from Norse, meaning “tale.”
A saga follows a long and complicated account of what happened to individuals within the same story context. These individual’s lives revolved around social class distinctions. Upstairs. Downstairs. Masters and servants. [2]
The Downton Abbey story, if you recall, begins on April 15, 1912, showing the newspaper headline that the ship Titanic had sunk four days into her maiden voyage.
Writer Julian Fellowes began his saga with an historic event to fasten his characters in a time of global change.
The theme of the entire series revolves around the estate, Downton Abbey. A residence. A relic. A snapshot of British history. As time goes by, former things (entailed estates, inheritances, and class distinctions, for example), all things become new––with or without the consent of the landed gentry. Or Royals.
This week I rewatched the movie TITANIC. An event etched on the pages of 20th century history carries forward its own timeless message.
“It’s good for a ship to be in the sea, but it is bad when the sea gets in the ship.”
Like Downton Abbey, the characters in TITANIC were fictional, made up by writer/director James Cameron to stir in watchers the same emotions he experienced while making the film. TITANIC won 11 Oscars in 1997, including Best Picture and Best Director.
An epic film about the actual disaster when the ship declared “unsinkable” went down to the bottom of the sea on April 15, 1912––two-and-one-half miles down.
Once again, man’s hubris led to the disaster.
Seventy-three years after searching for Titanic, the wreckage was discovered in 1985, 963 miles NE of New York City, 453 miles S of Newfoundland.
In other words,TITANIC sank in the middle of the ocean. Technology made possible the camera scenes captured and used in the film and the computer analysis and pictures represent what happened.
The movie story builds tension around the ship’s discovery and modern-day exploration by treasure hunters. Emphasizing the contrast between classes during the Gilded Age (also portrayed in Downton Abbey), the hubris of man’s overreach, the discovery of TITANIC’s wreckage illustrates man’s skewed values amidst a sea of ongoing competition to be the biggest, the fastest, the best ever made.
I recall the first times I saw this movie in a theater: in California, days after its release and then, a week later in Amarillo with girlfriends. Watching the last scenes where people fell into the icy waters of the Atlantic, I remember feeling almost unbearably cold. It makes me shudder even now to think of the 2,228 passengers aboard, 1,523 perished when the ship sank, 705 passengers survived, and of the 14 people pulled from the water, only seven survived. James Cameron gave one survivor a name––Rose––and its her story that propels the movie to the end.
“The TITANIC . . . embodied all that judgment and knowledge could devise to make her immune from all disaster.”
Propellers on the Titanic
My own “Titanic” story
I cannot think of the Titanic without remembering the summer camp I attended, located outside of Las Vegas, Nevada at Mt. Charleston. I loved camp so much! Those weeks were the highlight of my year. I imagined myself as Haley Mills, starring in the movie The Parent Trap. Whose cabin could we booby-trap?
One summer, my camp counselor taught the girls in her cabin a song about the TITANIC. Each cabin got to perform on the last night of camp when all other campers and camp leaders gathered around the blazing campfire.
Our Song:
“Oh, they built the ship TITANIC for to sail the ocean blue,And they thought they had a ship that the water n’er get through.It was on her maiden trip that the iceberg hit the ship,It was sad when the great ship went down.chorus––It was sad, (echo) It was sadIt was sad, (echo) It was sadIt was sad when the great ship went downto the bottom of the . . .Husbands and wives,little-bitty children lost their livesIt was sad when the great ship went down.”All these years later, from the summer that I was a 12- year-old, I remember that night and every word to a song that we had thought would regale our fellow-campers.
Our counselor had taught us hand motions, including thumb and forefinger pinched together to emphasize the “little-bitty children” who lost their lives, changing our voice inflection here as well. We were a boppy-crew, singing and swinging–– full of ourselves.
It is still sad to think of our Camp Director who was not entertained, amused, or pleased.
And her reaction is what made this memory indelible––part of my story.
Our Camp Director was visibly upset by our performance.
I can almost remember her name. I want to say Alma. She had short-cropped, gray hair, tall, a stout build, and she wore Bermuda shorts that exposed her long, suntanned legs.
I wish I could say I remember other things about that night––the campfire lighting our camp leader’s face, or that I watched her pacing behind the last row of campers, or that I noticed the fury she tried to contain as we sang our flippant song. But that’s not what I remember.
Instead, I remember my counselor’s tears as she shared with us before “lights out” that the Director actually knew people who had died on the TITANIC.
Seeing a movie all those years later affected me in a way James Cameron wanted all viewers to experience this tragedy.
He wanted us to experience the human connection. To imagine ourselves helpless on a sinking ship.
I read on IMDB (Internet Movie Data Base) that James Cameron went on 12 dives to see the actual sunken Titanic.
“During his first trip, he was so goal-oriented that he managed to film the shots he wanted, but as soon as he was back on the surface, he broke down in tears after finally realizing the magnitude of the historical tragedy he had just witnessed.”
The power of film on audiences transcends its medium. The effect on Cameron, he then transmitted through the fictional characters who listened spell-bound to a survivor’s account of a sea change.
What stories do for us
Reading books, watching movies, paying attention to how other people live their lives will drop in ideas, challenge thinking, as well as open wide vistas of what our own life story is about.
Telling your story can also drop ideas into someone else’s life, triggering memories that awaken people to our shared humanity.
These three stories––Moses in Exodus, Downton Abbey, TITANIC––hold countless lessons about life while also sharing in common the destructive nature of pride.
“The rich man’s wealth is his strong city, and as an high wall in his own conceit.
Before destruction the heart of man is haughty, and before honour is humility.”
Stories can show you and me how to learn without having to make all the mistakes ourselves. Stories can reveal my own tendency to pride myself in achievements, show effects of my own costly mistakes, and further keep me aware I cannot live my best life apart from God’s grace.
[1] Alistair Begg, pastor Parkside Church, message June 1, 2025
[2] Reminiscent of televisions series Upstairs. Downstairs, 1971. The story originated about servants, but writers realized “Servants have to serve somebody.” With Downton Abbey, I think the story reversed.