Soul Food: 106 Stories for Life’s Journey

By Robert P. Vande Kappelle

Everyone loves a good story--one with interesting characters, an intriguing plot, lots of twists and turns, and a surprise ending. Storytelling is an entertaining art, but it is also instructive and essential to intellectual, moral, and spiritual growth. Literature, as all art, is a gift of divine grace, a pathway to mystery. Each literary experience is slightly beyond our horizon of understanding. What a gift literature is! When it enhances spirituality, each literary moment confounds in order to keep us going and growing. The restoration of wonder is the beginning of the inward journey toward the awaiting God.

Soul Food contains stories that are both entertaining and inspiring, wholesome and heart-warming. Some are humorous, others are tragic or sad, but all are memorable. The collection is divided into five sections: (1) personal stories, (2) biblical and faith stories, (3) classic stories, fables, and tales, (4) literary and historical stories, and (5) inspirational stories. Some of these stories come from personal experience, my own and that of family and friends. Others, including myths, legends, fantasies, and tales, come from folklore and oral tradition, while others are taken from the public domain.

As you read these stories, sequentially or randomly, I trust they will aid you in your quest for meaning, direction, and stability. Enjoy these stories, and may they enhance your journey through life and its manifold seasons. I hope you will return to this collection repeatedly, finding in these stories courage, wisdom, and inspiration.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wipf and Stock
• Release date: Jan 4, 2023
• ISBN: 9781666766394

Robert P. Vande Kappelle

Robert P. Vande Kappelle is professor emeritus of religious studies at Washington & Jefferson College in Washington, Pennsylvania, and an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church (USA). He is the author of forty books, including biblical commentaries, volumes on ethics and church history, and discussion guides on faith, theology, and spirituality. Recent titles include Holistic Happiness, Radical Discipleship, A Bible for Today, Christlikeness, and Soul Food: 106 Stories for Life’s Journey.

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Soul Food

106 Stories for Life’s Journey

Robert P. Vande Kappelle

Soul Food

106 Stories for Life’s Journey

Copyright © 2023 Robert P. Vande Kappelle. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401.

Wipf & Stock

An Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers

199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3

Eugene, OR 97401

www.wipfandstock.com

paperback isbn: 978-1-6667-6637-0

hardcover isbn: 978-1-6667-6638-7

ebook isbn: 978-1-6667-6639-4

09/17/15

Unless otherwise noted, Bible quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright © 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission.

Table of Contents

Title Page

Preface

Chapter 1: Stories from Love Never Fails

Chapter 2: Stories from The Invisible Mountain

Chapter 3: Stories from Into Thin Places

Chapter 4: Old Testament Stories

Chapter 5: New Testament Stories

Chapter 6: Classic Stories, Fables, and Tales

Chapter 7: Popular Stories

Chapter 8: Literary and Historical Stories

Chapter 9: Inspirational Stories

Chapter 10: More Inspirational Stories

Bibliography

To my grandchildren

Jacob, Benjamin, Katherine

Emily, Ryan, and Evelyn

Who love good stories:

Told, read, and lived.

Preface

Everyone loves a good story—one with interesting characters, an intriguing plot, lots of twists and turns, and a surprise ending. Storytelling is an entertaining art, but it is also instructive and essential to intellectual, moral, and spiritual growth. The stories, essays, poems, and other writing presented here are intended to inspire and entertain, and like myths, legends, fables, and parables, can expand our horizons, stimulate our imagination, further our moral resolve, deepen our connectedness to the past and others, and awaken us to the wonder around and within us.

Some years ago my oldest grandchild Jacob, then about six or seven years old, regularly greeted me with the request, Pop-Pop, tell me a story. I now have six grandchildren, and on their tenth birthday I present them with a book of stories bearing their name and date of birth, one version for boys and another for girls. The stories collected in Soul Food represent a modified and expanded version of those earlier volumes.

As of this date, all six of my grandchildren have become voracious readers and lovers of stories. One day I asked my granddaughter Katherine, who is your favorite author?, fully expecting her to respond with the name of an author or editor of books she was currently reading, but was surprised at her answer, You are. When I asked her to elaborate, she referred to the book of stories I had given her on her tenth birthday, claiming it as her favorite.

Many of those stories appear in this volume as well. This collection includes stories that I heard or read as a child, heart-warming stories that brought me joy and wisdom. The assortment includes personal experiences taken from my childhood as well as later experiences I gained by cycling across the United States and while traveling through the continents of Europe and Asia on my way to Israel and Egypt. Some of these adventures and many others are found in my books Love Never Fails, The Invisible Mountain, and Into Thin Places, books I hope you will read as well.

As I state in Deep Splendor, the first book of my trilogy on spirituality in great literature,¹ humans are spiritual beings inhabiting physical bodies for a time. For this reason, our lives are caught in a tidal pull between vast forces, one physical, secular, and temporal, the other spiritual, sacred, and eternal. While I cannot speak for your experience, this tug of war has produced in me a curious restlessness. During my youth and early adulthood, I loved adventure, engaging in activities that pushed me to my physical limits. Hikes in the woods, climbing mountains, long bike rides, participating in sports, playing with friends, these are the activities I cherished. However, I also loved reading, playing the piano, and studying theology, for these activities fueled my insatiable curiosity. Not yet appreciative of poetry, I yearned for a story with an adventurous plot, inspiring characters, and a happy ending, including elements of mystery and surprise. Many of these qualities are present in short stories, novels, historical fiction, science fiction, fantasy literature, and biographical writing, and I gravitated to this literature. As son of missionary parents, I also read the Bible, biblical commentaries, missionary stories, devotional material, Christian classics such as John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress, and other inspirational literature.

As a thirteen-year-old, my life was turned upside down when I learned that my parents were asked to relocate to a new country, exchanging idyllic Costa Rica for war-torn Colombia. Their relocation changed my life, for it meant I would be separated from my parents prematurely. Staying in the United States, I enrolled in The Stony Brook School, a select Christian preparatory school in Long Island, not far from New York City, and that school became my home for the next three and a half years. My transition from dependence to independence happened rather quickly, aided by an active sports life and a demanding academic program. At Stony Brook, I developed an appreciation of literature, and by the time of my graduation from high school, I had acquired a sizeable personal library, consisting largely of inexpensive paperback copies of classic novels purchased through yardwork and other remunerative activities available to high-school seniors.

In college, love of literature led me to major in modern foreign languages, and my personal library expanded to include volumes in Spanish, French, and German, in addition to a growing collection of English-language literature. Prior to my PhD work in biblical studies at Princeton Theological Seminary, I completed a master’s degree in Latin American Studies, during which time I added dozens of Spanish classics to my expanding library. At Princeton Seminary, in addition to courses in speech, homiletics, ethics, practical and historical theology, biblical studies, and Hebrew and Greek, I enrolled in an elective on Religion and Literature, further expanding my appreciation for literature while exploring the questions that framed my spirituality, namely, what it means to be Christian and what it means to be human.

In retrospect, love of great literature made me a better husband and parent, a healthier cleric, and a more effective teacher, for it kept me open to lifelong learning, an advantage I imparted to many students along the way. Literature also contributed significantly to my well-being, for it helped me outgrow fundamentalist and dualist perspectives and kept me open to spiritual growth and ongoing transformation.

Literature, as all art, is a gift of divine grace, a pathway to mystery. Each literary experience is slightly beyond our horizon of understanding. What a gift literature is! When it enhances spirituality, each literary moment confounds in order to keep us going and growing. The restoration of wonder is the beginning of the inward journey toward the awaiting God. In the past, when people asked me what I do in my retirement years, I responded, I write about theology and spirituality. Now, when asked, I respond, I write about spirituality and the arts. Soul Food is another volume in this series.

Soul Food contains stories that are both entertaining and inspiring, wholesome and heart-warming. Some are humorous, others are tragic or sad, but all are memorable. The collection is divided into five sections: (1) personal stories, (2) biblical and faith stories, (3) classic stories, fables, and tales, (4) literary and historical stories, and (5) inspirational stories. Some of these stories come from personal experience, my own and that of family and friends. Others, including myths, legends, fantasies, and tales, come from folklore and oral tradition, while others, taken from the public domain, are preserved in collections by scholars such as James Baldwin, William J. Bennett, Jesse Lyman Hurlbut, and Andrew Lang. Where possible, I credit sources used, including family and friends whose contributions I gratefully acknowledge.

As you read these stories, sequentially or randomly, I trust they will aid you in your quest for meaning, direction, and stability. Enjoy these stories, and may they enhance your journey through life and its manifold seasons. I hope you will return to this collection repeatedly, finding in these stories courage, wisdom, and inspiration. It is also my hope that you will pass these stories on to your children and grandchildren as well as to friends, neighbors, and co-workers.

Storytelling as Art of Life

Human life is bound up in stories, so many, in fact, that we are often desensitized to their bewitching power. Small children are creators of story. They spend many of their waking hours happily traipsing through the Neighborhood of Make-Believe. They are either enjoying stories in their books and videos or creating, in their pretend play, wonder worlds of princes and princesses, mommies and children, or fantasy figures, some good and others bad. Story is, for most children, psychologically compulsory. It is something they never seem to tire of, something they seem to need in the way they need food and love. Children the world over delight in stories and start shaping their own pretend world as toddlers. Story is so central to the lives of young children that it comes close to defining their existence. What do most children do? Mostly they do story.

Children eventually grow up; they leave the nursery, with its toy trucks and dress-up clothes, but they never stop pretending. They just change how they do it. Novels, dreams, films, music, and fantasies are all districts in the Neighborhood of Make-Believe. Story’s role in human life extends far beyond conventional novels and films. Story, and varieties of story-like activities, dominates human life.

While adults don’t spend as much time reading as they once did, more than 50 percent of American adults still read fiction, but they mostly do so in bite-size segments. According to recent surveys, the average American reads about twenty minutes per day, and that figure includes everything from novels to newspapers. But even that habit is changing. Though we read far less than we need to, we haven’t forsaken fiction. Rather, the page has been supplanted by the screen. We spend a staggering amount of time daily watching or creating fiction on video or screen. According to surveys, the average American spends several hours each day watching television programs. By the time children reach adulthood, they will have spent more time in TV or video land than anywhere else, including school.² In addition to screen time, there’s also music. It seems Americans spend hours per day listening to music.

And if we spend many waking hours creating fiction, what about nighttime? It seems we are most creative at night When we sleep, our brain dreams richly, wildly, and at great length. We simply have a limited ability to remember the adventures we experience throughout the night. And we don’t stop dreaming when we awake. Much of our waking time is spent in dreams, only we call it daydreaming or stream of consciousness. Scientific studies indicate that we spend about half of our waking hours—up to one-third of our lives—spinning fantasies. We daydream about the past—things we should have said or done—replaying our victories and failures. Mostly we daydream about mundane things; however, we also daydream in intense, story-like ways. We play out moment of conflict, defeating enemies and resolving problems, but we also imagine bright futures and happy endings.

As we now realize, humans are creatures of story, and story touches nearly every aspect of our lives. Many jobs require storytelling abilities and skills. For example, archaeologists dig up clues about the past and create vast sagas about life; historians too are storytellers. Business executives and salespeople also acquire storytelling skills, learning to spin compelling narratives about their products and brands. Politicians, journalists, and news commentators view life in intensely story-like ways, as a competition between conflicting narratives about the nation’s past and future. Legal scholars, likewise, view trials as storied contests, constructing narratives of right and wrong, guilt and innocence. Athletes are also caught up in fictionalized dramas of good versus evil, triumph over defeat. Likewise, spiritual stories are the bedrock of all religious traditions.

Humans are storytelling and story-making creatures, not only at work or at play, at school or at worship, but also in friendship. When we get together with friends and neighbors, or at family reunions, stories abound. And when we are alone, we reach out to others through social media, serializing our autobiographies in Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter posts. According to Jonathan Gottshall, author of The Storytelling Animal, The human imperative to make and consume stories runs even more deeply than literature, dreams, and fantasy. [Human beings] are soaked to the bone in story.³

As soon as we learn to speak, we tell stories—factual stories, fanciful stories, wondrous stories, all a bit magical. Fact and fancy mingle in the mind of a child, not in the sense of untruth, but in the sense that myths and legends mingle levels of truth. Sometimes, the most fanciful stories are the most profoundly true. At other times, the most accurate factual narratives are the least true.

Stories aren’t factual narratives, dependent on accuracy or precision. Storytellers concerned with precision often lose the interest of their listeners, and, often enough, lose the truth as well, among irrelevant details. We are all storytellers, some more skilled than others, but every human being who communicates is a storyteller. Storytellers are mystics and artists, creating a world within and drawing others into that world.

Storytellers cannot be taught storytelling, only mentored. Skills in storytelling are drawn from hearing stories, but also through reading, by going to museums and art galleries, attending plays, musicals, and concerts, and listening to music. The best storytellers are the best listeners, for listening requires attentiveness, admiration, respect, appreciation, love of life, and openness to others. Effective storytelling also requires developing awareness of the stories latent everywhere around us and within us.

To live is itself a story, but to live fully is to become a part of many stories, and to have stories become part of us. When we share our stories, we are sharing ourselves. Storytelling is not content with facts; rather, storytelling seeks the story within the story, the story behind the story, the truth behind the facts. While facts are accessible to everyone, stories make facts come alive. They make facts relevant and real, for they go beyond the facts to the experience of being alive and present. To be present and experience the fullness of life, that is something worth telling.

To elaborate further on stories and their meaning, I focus on the biblical book of Jonah. Taken literally, it borders on the absurd. Humans do not get swallowed up by large fish and survive. On the other hand, the story is not purely fantasy. Like all myths, Jonah’s story contains a mixture of reality and fantasy; like all metaphor, the story is true, only not literally so. In order to explore its meaning, let’s summarize the plot.

The book of Jonah tells the story of a prophet named Jonah, called to preach against the wickedness of Nineveh and the Assyrians. Unlike other prophets, Jonah disobeys God’s call and heads in the opposite direction to which he is commanded to go. During a storm at sea, he is cast overboard, and is swallowed by a fish. After surviving in the fish’s belly for three days and nights, he goes to Nineveh, whose entire population repents. The book ends with an angry Jonah, bitter because God had led the people to repentance and then spared them. He leaves the city, builds himself a shelter, and waits to see what will happen to the city. As a result, God provides Jonah three experiences: a vine to provide shade, then a worm to eat the vine, and lastly a scorching wind and hot sun as further provocation.

Because a literal account of the prophet’s adventures cannot be sustained, the book is interpreted allegorically, satirically, or as a parable. Although the prophet lived in the time of Jeroboam II (see 2 Kgs 14:25), the book seems to have been written at least two to four centuries later, after the destruction of Nineveh in 612 BCE. On account of its universalism and its opposition to the narrow sectarianism and exclusiveness found in Ezra and Nehemiah, the book likely originated in the later fifth or early fourth centuries (after 400 BCE).

At a time when the policies of Nehemiah and Ezra fostered narrow nationalism and doctrinaire exclusivism, an unknown prophetic author wrote the book of Jonah as a counterbalance, focusing on the mystery of God’s mercy. Scholars debate the book’s essential message. Is the book rejecting intense nationalism and suggesting that God controls history for good and not for woe, or is the central message one of divine forgiveness as a response to repentance? The book of Jonah ends with a question God asks Jonah: If you can have pity for a plant you did not grow; should I not be concerned about the thousands of people in Nineveh? While the question may be rhetorical, the book’s ending suggests that various levels of interpretation are possible.

Great literature inspires; entertains; provokes; transforms; expands horizons; creates intriguing characters; prompts curiosity about history, life, culture, and context; opens us to otherness; and gives us permission to be creative. Like all great literature, the story of Jonah contains many meanings, which readers must take time to ponder. Asking questions of a story may help unlock its meaning. In the case of the story of Jonah, for example, ask yourself the following questions: What is this story telling me about my life, about decisions I am making or need to make? What is it telling me about my relationship with God, myself, and others?

The Bible is great literature because we accept it as inspired. And it is inspired, not only because of the stories it tells and the truths it reveals, but because of the characters and personalities it portrays. Ultimately, of course, scripture bring us inside, and we find we are characters in its story: I am Adam, I am Eve; I am Noah, Abraham, Sarah, Moses, Aaron, and Miriam; I am Naomi, Esther, and Obed; I am Job, his friends, and also his wife. I am also Jonah. However, I am also Peter, Andrew, John, Bartholomew, Matthew, and other of Jesus’ disciples. At times I am Judas, but also Paul, Barnabas, and Mary Magdalene. But why stop here? I am also Jesus (or at least a pale imitation as a Christian, for the word means little Christ).

Like Jonah, I have made bad decisions; I have disobeyed, been stubborn and wrong-headed; at times I too have been swallowed alive, but I have survived to tell the story; I too have been disappointed when opponents and enemies have been blessed. At times my protective shelters have been eaten by worms of anger, bitterness, and frustration; but despite these worries, setbacks, and complaints, I am blessed. Who gives me life, vision, energy, determination, health, and vitality? Despite my rebellion and disobedience, there is nothing I am or have accomplished that I have not received from the Father of lights (Jas 1:17).

The book of Jonah, like other great literature, speaks to our personal lives, but also to our understanding of history and the development of society. In many respects, the church has undergone a Jonah experience. It too has made bad decisions, particularly in the fourth century, when it wedded itself to Roman imperialism. It then found itself on a boat in a cultural upheaval that culminated in the Enlightenment and the birth of modern society. Eventually, the church was swallowed by this large cultural fish, and after a period of darkness in the fish’s belly, it was disgorged on the shore of secularism. But over time the enemy embraced the message of spirituality, cultural growth, and change, and the church became despondent over its reduced role in society.

What can be said about the church can also be said of practically every institution and national government. All are on a journey of improvement, but all hit snags, disappointments, and setbacks along the way. Why? Because this is the way things work. Every individual, like all organizations and national entities, is caught in an evolutionary spiral. Because Jonah is the story of evolution, in some ultimate