I can quote almost the entirety of The Princess Bride.
Seriously.
My mom refuses to watch this cult classic film with my father, my brother, and I. Ever. She can’t stand our constant quoting and attempts to one up the screen with our ability to regurgitate the zingers of lines before the characters themselves. This movie is as formative to my personality as anything else. Forget nature vs. nurture. This is Fezzik and the (original) Man in Black we’re talking about.
Naturally, any time this film graces my television, I’m glued to the screen. This past weekend was no different. My best friend, along with her lovely sister and awesome boyfriend, came home with me for a thrilling few days in the BEST VIRGINIA. As we were channel surfing, on one of the 7,000 channels of utter mindless dribble, there was one shining beacon of hope.
The Princess Bride.
One of the many reasons I fully support my best friend’s choice of significant others is his impeccable taste in films. As soon as he saw it, he exclaimed, and we both began mouthing the lines along with Mandy Patinkin and Cary Elwes.
Among the many aspects of the film that cements its classic status, is the breaking of the fourth wall with the story within a story trope. A tweenaged kid falls ill and the charming, elderly grandfather comes to save the boring sick-day with best thing of all:
A story.
Seriously, who doesn’t love a story? It’s the most human thing there is, storytelling. We do it all the time, without even recognizing the significance of the act, the sacredness of it. We all have a story to tell. We all love the act of telling it. We all love the experience of pulling up a chair, settling in, and listening to somebody else tell us their’s.
What is it about stories?
It’s a lot of things. But I think it’s in part that we understand how stories work.
First comes the intro, then rising action, an all important literary climax, and some falling action, then FIN. There’s something comfortable in it. Something that feels like coming home, when a conclusion fits snugly after the climax and we’re all tucked in our beds, lulled to sleep in the familiarity of it all. We want our stories to make sense. More importantly, we want our stories to end in the way we want them to end.
The guy gets the girl
The hero finishes off the baddie.
The queen is crowned, the war is won, the song is sung, and
All’s well that ends well.
Or not.
There’s a moment in The Princess Bride, in the very heart of the film, in which our hero seems to have been bested and all appears lost. And in that blessedly tragic moment, the sound of the grandson’s voice cuts through the sadness with a childlike, “Grandpa, grandpa, wait.” The boy is distraught. This is the Hero. This isn’t how it goes. “He didn’t mean dead?Wesley’s only faking. Right?”
His grandpa gets irritated, “You want me to read this, or not?!” And then the line. The line that spawned this whole post. The line that launched a thousand words (give or take):
“Who gets Humperdinck?”
“I don’t understand.”
“Who kills Prince Humperdinck? At the end, somebody’s got to do it! Is it Inigo? Who?”
“Nobody. Nobody kills him. He lives.”
“You mean he wins? …Why did you read me this thing for?”
See, while I was immersed in one of my favorite stories, I watched a scene I’d seen at least a dozen times over, and realized something:
We feel entitled to our narrative.
We feel we are owed a certain story. Think about it, take your own story out of the equation, if just for a moment. I realize that might be a little too close to home for hypotheticals. So let’s think about movies, since we’re already talking about one.
I had a brilliant friend of my late professor come and talk to our Naturalism and Realism in American Literature class last spring. She used the example of Rom-Coms. She pointed out how angry we feel when we leave a dud of a flick: where the love affair ends badly, hearts remain broken, and it doesn’t end in a marriage. We feel cheated out of our $12.50 and our suspension of belief. They were supposed to end up together. This isn’t the ending we paid for.
Then it got personal. This wonderful woman sat us down, juniors and seniors in college, and promptly told us that the plans we had laid out for ourselves were not were not all that there was in life. Shocking, I know. Yet, how often do we feel slighted when things don’t go our way? When that relationship ends badly, and he was supposed to be the One? Or we don’t get into that school? Or someone who definitely wasn’t supposed to leave us, passes on too quickly to whatever comes next in their own plot?
When I thought back to moments like this in my own life, it became clear. Suddenly, I was the grandson, yelling at my storyteller, “This isn’t my story! You’re getting it wrong! This isn’t how it goes!”
Whether we recognize it or not, we all have a story-line playing out in our heads and hearts, and it stings some wound within us to think that we might not get to hit all the major plot points we had picked out for ourselves. Financial success. Family. Marriage. Living here, living there. Pick your poison. I know mine.
But as with any harsh truth, there came a balm. This woman, who to me seemed like she’d wandered out of some fairy-tale, a wise person, traveled far to impart some deep, essential truth, just to me; this woman looked at each of us, long and hard, and with something vastly ancient, and said: There’s more.
There’s more than your hole punch plot points.
There’s more than 2.5 children and a picket fence dream.
There’s more than world-travels and things unseen.
There’s more than doctorates and theses.
There’s more than romance and roses.
There’s more.
There’s more than what you’ve imagined to the climax of your life’s story.
Following a man, who from a strictly narrative perspective, led a fairly unusual story. He was born a pauper, among livestock and feces (yes, there were angel heralds and Kings bearing gifts, but that comes later). He apprenticed under his father, as a carpenter, hands becoming rough and worn in on the edges. He became, despite everything, a rabbi, garnering followers and disciples, teaching, and healing. And it was miraculous. And wonderful. And worshipful. And…
Despite all that, he died a criminal’s death, on a cross of all things. Beaten, murdered, and left to be forgotten.
And that was His story. That’s what the world wrote for Him.
But then it wasn’t.
All of the sudden, the tomb was empty. The wounds were visible and the doubters believed. And Sin was defeated and Hell’s keys taken away.
The best part is, the story spread like wildfire.
Besides the obvious cosmic implications, you know why I think that is?
Because it’s a good story. The BEST story! A true story. A story-line to put all story-lines to shame. An underdog, who draws people in, loves them intentionally and fearfully, just to lose and lose again, until the very end. An underdog who makes us the victors too.
That’s why we have to let go our preconceived notions about what our own story has to look like. We have to sacrifice our dreams for the gift of being able to take on dreams bigger, and scarier, and much more costly, but much more worth giving everything we’ve got to.
We’ve seen people who’ve taken on this challenge, that the person, the God-Man of Jesus presents us with. You know them. They’re the ones who you leave conversations with, shaking and scratching your head because they’re so alive. They’ve put to death the old self, and taken on a new one. One with radical goals. One that goes further, has faith that you think probably could do some mountain moving, and tries things you wouldn’t believe possible.
The ones leaving everything they had, selling it all for a plane ticket, because they heard Jesus say, “Go.” So they went.
The ones staying put, digging in their heels, cultivating community out of untilled soil, because they heard Jesus say, “Stay.” So they stayed.
The ones who are still single. Yes. Still single. So they love and live and give to all. And they’re lonely. But they believe Jesus when He said He’s the life, and that He loves them. So they’re single.
The ones who run their business in a way that values humanity over profit. So they’re a business man.
The ones who makes people really good coffee.
The ones who hang out with the church’s middle school kids.
The ones who do whatever it is they love, and love Jesus while doing it.
They’re the ones that have taken Jesus at His word, and decided to test out that whole “Life, and life to the full” promise.
They can be you and me.
Let’s let them.
Lord Jesus, set us free from what we’ve written as our story. Let us live out Your’s. Write us something we can’t even believe. Let us look at the day ahead of us and ask “What is my story to be today?” Then give us the grace to live it out.
Let others see and marvel and how you weave our stories together.
Let them see you when they read between our lines.
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“The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life,and have it to the full.” -John 10:10
“Then one night when my whole heart was open to hearing from God what I was supposed to do with my life, God said, “Anything that pleases you.”
“What?” I said, resorting to words again, “What kind of answer is that?”
“Do anything that pleases you,” the voice in my head said again, “and belong to me.” -Barbara Brown Taylor
“I wanted a perfect ending. Now I’ve learned, the hard way, that some poems don’t rhyme, and some stories don’t have a clear beginning, middle, and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what’s going to happen next.
Delicious Ambiguity.” – Gilda Radner
“that you could be anything you wanted to be
except whatever you wanted most.
which was to be nothing in particular
to be a connoisseur of things to be
to be a trier of tries and an attempter of attempts
to never settle on any one thing long enough to let it define you
to be whatever brave is.
what you wanted was to grow into your self, not out of it
to still have your breast bleached red from the beating of your heart
to still believe in optimism
to hold things loosely with reverently trembling fingers
to shed titles like skin
and to elevate the act of living.” – To Be Whatever Brave is, (Me. I wrote that.)
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