To Tell A Story

Whenever I think about the stories we tell, two YouTube videos come to mind. One is The Danger of a Single Story by Chimamanda Ngozi (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9Ihs241zeg) and the other is How the Story Transforms the Teller by Donald Davis (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wgeh4xhSA2Q). In each of these videos, thoughtful storytellers reflect on the power of personal narratives to change the lives of the teller and challenge the presumptions of the listener. I think of stories as fundamental to our identity and to our faith. Once I had a wonderful professor of religious education / faith formation who told us that our religious tradition, whatever it was, was only one generation away from extinction. All we needed to do to end thousands of years of tradition is to stop telling the stories of faith.

While that seems big and dramatic, it is also small and personal. The way I see it, we have experiences through the living of our lives. Sometimes we think on the living we have done and we sometimes translate that thoughtfulness into stories to share with others.

At Courage and Covenant, we tell stories and we listen to stories. We encourage you to tell others the stories which have meaning to you. There are the big stories that we have been told and have been telling since childhood, and there are the stories of the day in and day out living we do.

Ask yourself, if I were going to tell the story of my day, where would I start? Would it be with kindness or critique? With curiosity or judgment? With a sense of tasks completed or relationships nurtured, or both?

How we start thinking about ourselves will change what we see and how we tell the story. How we tell the story of who we are, and who we are in relationship with each other will change the possibilities of our future.

To begin with curiosity, kindness or an expectation that something good can happen here is the beginning of what might be a healing story. If we are to find ways across the divides, let us begin by listening to one another. Every one of us is more than a single story, and each of us has the power to tell a better tomorrow.