"Once Upon a time ..."

There lived a boy and a girl named Hansel and Gretel;

There was a farmer who went out in the field to sow his seed;

There was a man who had two sons and the younger of them said to him: "Father, give me that portion of my inheritance which falls to me."

"Once upon a time, which is to say at a time beyond time, or at a different kind of time altogether from the kind the clock measures, or at a time that is no time at all because it's without beginning and without end." (Telling the Truth, Fredrick Buechner, page 73)

"Once upon a time," of course, is the beginning of a story and the Bible uses stories quite often. They don't always - or even often - begin with, "Once upon a time," but they are stories nevertheless. The power of stories is legendary, but their valu…