Narrative Education and Moral Imagination

This last section of Chapter 19 is about the Moral Imagination. Robert Coles wrote a book, The Call of Stories: Teaching and the Moral Imagination. (I haven't read it.) Stories can transform lives. (CS p. 319)

Stories "... a storyteller's moral imagination vigorously at work . . . can enable any of us to learn by example to take to heart what is, really, a gift of grace. (Coles, 1989) . . . It is precisely because stories reflect human experience that narrative is powerful and persuasive. " (CS p. 319)

Ford and Wong again quote Bolt saying, "The key to moral growth for Christians, then, is the capacity for our imaginations to be transformed by the image of Christ, by the metaphors, stories, and images of the Christian faith." (Bolt, 1993)

"Christian education centered on the mind is inadequate; [mh It's only part of who we are.] the goal is to live in a distinctively Christian manner. . . Parents need to engage their own moral imaginations with the stories and images of Christ and the Christian faith before they can engage their child's imagination. The more a child's moral imagination is shaped by the stories of Christianity, the greater will be their capacity for spiritual and moral formation." (CS p. 320)

There's more strategy for implementation at the end of this chapter but let's stop here.

Biblical or not, what are the stories that have had the greatest affect on you? How did they change you? What stories affect your children? How?

How can we process the stories of God in a way that will give them the power to filter the media and all the other stories that bombard our lives? Or will God's stories hold their own, no matter what the competition?