The Unfolding Story...

We consider life mostly as a story.  It’s hard to see it otherwise.  On a personal level, the plot details are extensive and the story-crafting is painstaking and persistent.  There is an urgency to the unfolding story and it demands focus in nearly every waking moment, and even some more during light sleep.  The story is continuously being written and re-written, told and re-told, to anyone who will listen, even if it’s only the little narrator/editor in the head.  While that is often the voice of our harshest critic, it is still our favorite listener and biggest fan.  We are gratified to consider ourselves the authors of our own stories.

More objectively and abruptly, the whole elaborate plot line can be replaced with a short dash, between the birth and death dates on a tombstone.  It seems very harsh to reduce it that way, and yet that is the story of the cemetery.

Beliefs, opinions, things, events and even the other beings in our lives are the content of our life stories.  The content comes and goes with time as the tally of gains and losses accumulate.  The content could be compared to toys in a sandbox.   In this view then, life plays out within the walls of the sandbox like the play of a child using toys in an imagined story.

So, as a young child plays with toys in a sandbox, the early focus is on the toys and how they fit into the story.  There may be some awareness of the sand and the four walls, but that might only go so far as to name the sand and sandbox as being “mine”. 

Gradually, the growing child broadens the focus on the toys to exploring the whole sandbox.  Appreciation for the nature of sand may develop, and it may be enough sometimes to let it flow through the fingers and feel its warmth.  It may even eventually be understood that toys are pointless without the sand.

The toys rust and get broken and are replaced with new ones.  Sometimes there may be so many toys that it is hard to enjoy the sandbox because of the clutter.  They might be tossed out of the box, just to keep the playtime story simpler to imagine. 

It may be that one is fortunate enough to see that the toys are incidental and that it is the sand that is unchanging.  One may grow to reflect on the limitations of the four walls and take a glimpse beyond them.  Imagine a child looking up to see countless sandboxes, each with a child playing with toys.  

Now, imagine becoming aware that all the sandboxes are scattered across an endless beach of the same sand...  
            The sand has no story.  It just is. 

Imagine being able to intentionally set aside your story for a time.  Without that to command your attention, who, or what, then, are you?


Many Christians observe the start of Lent with an Ash Wednesday service where the minister may say, "from ashes you were made, to ashes you will return."  Sometimes they use the word "dust" instead. Given the images presented here, it could just as well be considered as Sand Wednesday.