Wonderous Stories

The meaning of the song is fairly straightforward. In each verse, the narrator is in an encounter with his "Forgiver," but at each encounter, the narrator is too preoccupied with "your wonderous stories." The Jesus figure opens the pearly gates for him, sends his spirit flying away into the heavens, and each time the narrator just thinks 'I hope I can get home in time for those wonderous stories!'

This is either a tongue-in-cheek little piece of hyperbole about some VERY good stories; or perhaps it is an indictment of people who turn away from spiritual 'truths' in favor of entertaining stories (perhaps in a simple 'skipping Church in favor of watching TV' sense, or in a more pointed 'skipping an actual relationship with God in favor of sticking with your comfortable church with its familiar stories' - though if this is an indicment of organized/impersonal religion, it is done more artfully and beautifully than the similarly themed progressive work on Jethro Tull's Aqualung, which often verges on the pompous and self-righteous).

In any case, a magical song.

This song is poetry which for describes early morning dreams that occur as one is waking up. The dreamer encounters a wondrous story-teller in his dreams. The dreamer must wake up and leave the story teller behind, but as he is awakening he bids the story teller to return in future dreams.

I think tis is a beautiful piece of music to listen too. I don't really know if it has a meaning because if it does either I'm not thinking hard enough or judst can't find it but I can't deny that it is a good, interesting piece of music.

Anderson is describing an encounter with either Jesus or Buddha.

I grew up next to my grandfather.....I loved listening to his stories....to me, when i hear this song, I just remember all his stories and I feel closer to him, even though he hasnt been with me in awhile

hmmm..paraclete may be partially right, but maybe it is about learning spiritual truths AND the stories. the stories are a means by which the narrator becomes enlightened, like when Jesus told parables, they were wonderous stories that the people would listen to and learn from..

To stand so cautiously at first And then so high As he spoke my spirit climbed into the sky

^^^to come to an understanding of univeral truths, at first you may be skeptical "cautiosly at first" then, when you come to realize some kind of truth, it can be like floating into the sky.

Nice comment from musik lover - fabulous to see how & why some songs are so important to people, regardless of the meaning of the song to many people. Grandads do have fabulous stories

I always had a feeling he was talking about J.R.R. Tolkien's works. "He spoke of lands not far" (LotR was written as a fictional backstory for England) "Nor lands they were in his mind" (They weren't real, though)

"In no time at all he took me to the gate" (The Black Gate)

shrug It doesn't fit as well as some of the religious things, but it's a thought.

I got into Yes at the same time I was reading a lot of Robert Heinlein. The two are forever meshed in my mind. So, I interpret this to be describing the amazing work of Heinlein, whose stories did see into the future and raise the spirits of many hearts. Plus "Starship Troopers" was the name of one of Heinlein's books and was made into a movie.

Also "Astounding Stories" was the name of a sci-fi magazine that Heinlein was published in frequently. I know that this personal Heinlein interpretation is probably something that very few people would share, but hey, maybe one of you feels it too.

Even when I was a teenager, first listening to Yes, then becoming a huge fan, this song always seemed to me to be describing the "wonderous stories" of his children. No matter what epic voyage of the mind he encountered, what ultimate truth was about to be revealed to him, nothing compared to these wonderous stories. I looked it up and, with Jon's first wife, he had daughter Deborah Anderson (b. 1970), son Damion Anderson (b. 1972), and daughter Jade Anderson (b. 1980). Since Going For the One was released in 1978, it would put his daughter Deborah and son Damion at about ages 7 and 5 when he would have likely written the song. I know my daughter and son were both full of tales of their daily epic adventures when I got home from work. There was nothing I'd rather hear, after they ran to the door to greet me each day, than their wonderous stories. One dad's opinion anyway. Cheers.