Stories as Hospitality

"Story is the most natural way of enlarging and deepening our sense of reality, and then enlisting us as participants in it.  Stories open doors to areas or aspects of life that we didn't know were there, or had quit noticing out of over-familiarity, or supposed were out-of-bounds for us.  They then welcome us in.  Stories are verbal acts of hospitality."

Eugene Peterson in Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places, page 13.