Last time we spoke of starting our discussion of stories over again. We had begun in August of 2023, when I asked:

Why do so many of us love stories? Why are we so drawn to them?

If you think about it, it’s not something we spend much time talking about. Are stories just an interesting pastime, or an eloquent expression of art? I have come to believe they are much more than this — that concealed within most stories is a single message, stated over, and over, and over again.

Many questions could arise from such a supposition, but the first one might be:

Who could possibly be behind all this, and how would they ever have access to thousands and thousands of stories?

And possibly next, how would storytellers, all the storytellers who have ever lived, play a role in this? None of it really makes sense, does it?

Nevertheless, this is the truth I discovered some years ago. It has been proven by all the stories I have read and seen over the last twenty years, plus the research of others, principally Christopher Booker.

Let’s see if another example might help.

Biological science has learned more and more about DNA over the last decades, the molecular code which lies deep in every single cell of living organisms. Here is the definition I found when I searched:

“Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) is a complex molecule containing the genetic instructions for the development, function, and reproduction of all known living organisms.”

After DNA was first identified by the Swiss scientist Friedrich Miescher in 1869, and then discovered to be a double helix in 1953 by James Watson and Francis Crick, all of living nature began to make more sense. Although it is still a great mystery.

Consider this. An architect draws up the plans for a new house, and then a general contractor takes those plans, hires all the skilled laborers needed to build it, and off they go. It will take at least six months, but the GC has done this many times before, and the men he uses have done their specific part many times before, all in a particular sequence. And before long — Vala, there’s your new house, all pretty and shining. Our DNA is just like those architectural plans, but in a chemical molecular form.

But where did our architectural plans, our DNA, come from? What “architect” drew them up? What school did this architect go to, to learn how to do this; a project which is physical, chemical and even electrical, and a million times more complex than the house you live in?

And after we have come up with an adequate answer for that, who then took the DNA of every living thing on this planet, plant and animal, every single one so incredibly complex, and every single one so different – who took all of those different plans, “hired” all the experts needed to “build” these organisms, and then put them all together? Someone had to, didn’t they?

Although we don’t know the origin of our DNA plans, we have at least discovered them, and they make sense to us. But every living organism in this world didn’t just pop into existence from the plans by themselves, did they? Or do our “architectural plans” have imbedded within them some living organic, driven and deliberate force that “builds” itself; the cells replicating, over and over again, seemingly on their own? But “someone” would have had to have designed them this way, would they not?

More specifically, each and every one of us who has ever lived came into existence, their very first cell, inside the womb of their mother. There was a single cell that came from your father, and a single cell that came from your mother, that then came together and became just one cell. And who was behind that, designed it, employed it into action, and supervised it, to make sure everything went according to plan. And what plan? Is there . . . a plan?

Are you beginning to feel the very same thing I am feeling? A little surprised? A little dismayed, how much there is to this, how deep it goes, how complex, and how little on any given day we give it . . . any thought at all?

We started talking about stories, and their origin, and then began to talk about DNA, and here we are, all these paragraphs later, only because we continued to ask the next logical question.

I started by saying that most stories, from the very beginning of time, have only told one story, over and over again. How could that be? Someone would have to be behind that, right?

Let’s begin with that next time. Hope you continue to follow along.

Sam