faller Chapter 12 the truth

Chapter 12 truth
Some stories are more true than the truth.
Maybe all stories are more true than the truth.
We list off facts and call it the truth. But those are just facts. The truth is so much larger than facts.
Stories are dreams put into words.
And dreams are more true than we can ever put into words.
We spend a third of our lives dreaming. How can a third of our lives not be true?
We tell stories to share that truth which goes beyond words.
We have forgotten how to hear the truths that go beyond words, the truths that fill our stories and our dreams. We have forgotten that there even are truths that can only live in stories and dreams, truths that live in the spaces between words and well beyond the reach of things we can measure or hold in our hands.
Maybe all stories are truer than the truth.
We tell stories to explore the mysteries of life, to explore the great mystery of life. We tell stories to move just a little bit closer to that thing that some of us call God. Stories, real stories, never get where they’re going. We journey when we tell stories, but we never arrive. 
That is part of the truth of stories.
That is part of the truth of dreams.
We walk in stories. We walk in dreams. 
We never arrive.
We never join the beginning to the end.
We live our lives as if we can arrive, as if there is an ending to the story, as if happily ever after is some kind of ending, some kind of conclusion, not just a leaving off without absolutes or knowing, at best with a kind of acceptance that we can never arrive.
We can only abide.
That is the truth of dreams and that is the truth of stories.
That we can abide with that thing that some would call God but we can never possess it or know it or own it. That we can arrive close to the truth but never live inside of it.
God is truth.
Gandhi said that.
If God is truth then the reverse must be true, that truth is God or something like God, and if that is true then we can never fully know the truth in the same way that we can never fully know God. And dreams and stories, with their blurred edges may also come closer the truth, come closer to God than trying to nail the truth down with facts and certainty, than sacrificing the truth to our need and desire to know, to be certain.
We talk about the truth as if it is something that we can measure and fit in some kind of box of knowing but it is much larger and wilder than that. Real truth doesn’t fit in a box or a cage or some hole that we dig for it. 
Stories and dreams are truth living free and wild.
There is the story.
There are the stories. 
Stories are dreams put into words.
Stories are are more true than the truth.
Stories are more real than what we call real.
That’s why we tell stories. That’s why we listen to stories and read stories. Because a story is much larger and more fleet of foot than a collection of facts and calculations.
Because truth cannot be contained or civilized or trapped.
Because stories help us brush up against the truth. Because a good story can help us brush up against God.
Some stories are more true than the truth.
Maybe all stories are more true than the truth.
Maybe.
Maybe that’s why we tell so many stories.
Maybe that’s why we need to tell stories.
Maybe that’s why.
I don’t know.
I just don’t know.
There must be a reason.
I guess that’s as good a reason as any.
#fiction #writing #writers #authors #author #novels #novelnovels #newnovels #julesdelorme #julesfdelorme #faller #delormewriting #scarboroughwritersfightclub #story #bear #native #nativestories #metis #metisstories

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