Amos Shelley came slow to stories. He doesn’t consider himself a natural storyteller, nor does he remember always having a love or passion for telling stories. It was through working with children and children’s stories that brought him to where he is now. It was when he began working with children who came from different backgrounds and social or economic situations that he began to notice the power of a story. The way that stories could engage the children and draw them in, the way that children engage the world through play and story. He began to notice the power of story within community. “The stories we tell in our culture can literally mean life and death. And the story of Jesus is the most compelling and brings the most life”, Shelley explains. Since then he has been telling stories. And though not every story is going to be overtly Jesus centric, he believes that “you can trace all good story back to God’s work in the world”.

Story has formational power. Shelley explains that when you tell a story to a group of children they engage the story through play and imagination and they become co-collaborators in the story. And because they are engaging in this way and they see themselves in the story the story becomes formational, and shapes them.

So it really matters the kinds of stories that we tell. And the key is imagination. It is through imagination that we empathize and co-create. Imagination is a form of generosity and inviting others in through story.

We see this in Jesus himself. He displays this generosity when he enters the story in the conventional way. He becomes part of the story through human birth and living a human life. And then, in his life, and specifically in his death, he changes the paradigm for story altogether. He, the true God in the flesh, does what no other so-called god has done. He gives his life for his people without lifting a finger in self-defence. He empties himself of all power and dies, and this leads to the resurrection. This is a new kind of story. And when we enter this story, and we engage this story with our imagination, we become co-collaborators in a new kind of imagining and a new kind of story and it leads to a new kind of ethics and it actually changes the world. “Participating in the story of Jesus is actually a culture shaping, world changing experience,” Shelley contends. To this end he has begun putting together a curriculum for the Gospel of Mark.

Amos’ latest project is a book titled Your Friendly Pocket Book for Grieving Hearts. It is a second in a series of “Friendly Pocketbooks” that he hopes to write. This is an interactive book (a book you can draw in!) that invites children to engage with their own experiences of grief. It also helps adults to engage children in conversations around grief.

Through the pandemic, within his own community Shelley was suddenly aware of death, suicide, and mental illness. “There was a lot more than I realized”. And all of this was affecting children. And so he set out to write this book. The book invites children and the parents to be present in their grief and engage it and describe it through presence and imagination.

You can find Amos’s stories and his art at chasinglion.com or chasing.lion on instagram. Review by the Rev Francis Delaplain.