The Sacred Worth of Storytelling

Here’s what I believe…Everybody deserves and requires the opportunity to tell his or her own story. The rest of us can help to make this world a better place by recognizing that it is our duty as decent human beings to listen respectfully and without judgment to the stories that people tell us.

I was born and raised in Gainesville, Florida in the fifties and sixties—at a time when many things in our culture were different. In my memory, it seems like we spent more time being together back then, looking at each other, telling stories and listening. There’s no way I can measure it, no evidence to hold up in court, but I think that face to face and voice to voice contact made us more sensitive to each other's needs, more compassionate toward people, animals and the earth itself. Our lives seemed to matter more because we knew the stories of each others' lives. I do not pretend to think that everything was perfect in the early years of my life. However, these days we have developed a way of life that avoids face to face connections. We get in steel boxes on wheels, lock the doors, turn up the music and drive fast from place to place. We go inside our homes through the closed garage, turn on our security system and the air-conditioner so we have no idea who or what is outside the walls. We go to our private spaces and stare at television or the computer screen. The stories that we hear are the stories of people we will never meet, people who will never know our names or have lunch with us. And I think that costs us, robs the entire community of something we really need. We need to hear the stories of the people around us in order to properly value the story of our own life. Our stories are connected.

Many of us were born and steeped in the Christian tradition, a tradition that emerged from the life of a storyteller who told stories to ordinary people on city streets, in wheat fields, on hillsides and sea coasts. Jesus shared his divine power through stories, holding a mirror up so people could see themselves in the beginnings, the middle and endings.

Unfortunately too many Christians today have forgotten how to respect the eternal and evolving life of a story. Too many Christians have boiled Jesus and his stories down until the pot is scorched and nothing is left but dried out creeds, heartless doctrines and dead disciplines. So people get the idea that Christianity is a set of rules, a wall to climb over, a way of life with guards stationed at every entrance. And we are alienated by the very tradition that came into being for the purpose of connecting us all to each other and to everything that is sacred.

Too many Christian leaders encourage people to fear one another, especially the neighbor who is different. If the story includes being from another sacred tradition it must be silenced or ignored. If the story is about being gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender, it must be condemned. Today's church leaders teach us to fear each other. When religion betrays us that way there is a terrible disconnect --wider than the Mississippi River. Religion, when it is healthy, is about connecting people, animals, and the earth. All of it is sacred; every life has a story to tell. Every life comes from the Creator.

We live our lives in circular patterns. And every circle has a broken place. A longing. An unmet need. A broken heart. A dream lost and gone. That’s where the story begins. The wisdom is stored in that broken, wounded place. Our hope comes through believing that we can begin our own story all over again. Our hope comes through realizing that each of us is created and gifted with power and beauty. Every day we have the privilege of beginning a new and sacred story. Every day we have the privilege of listening to and valuing our neighbor's new and sacred story. This is resurrection. This is faith in Jesus Christ. He came to tell us his story and to listen us all into a more sacred, trusting connection. We’re here to be connected. We’re here to do the Creator’s work.

Be the good neighbor that your neighborhood needs today. Tell a story. Listen to a story. It is a holy and sacred human process that builds a safe community.