The Stories of Our Life

 

What insights did you glean yesterday from listening to the diverse stories you heard around you and contributing to the stew of stories within you?  I know when I look at the economic and political stories I hear, they are often heartbreaking.  When I pay attention to the stories of people I encounter each week, I hear many feeling disheartened and dismayed.  Then, I match that up with the stories I hear right now of people doing what they can, where they can.  Sometimes I do wonder if the story of our church slips and slides into, “Do more!”…which can also feel like, “Not enough,” that I felt when I got a C on my report card.  This is but one small example of the ways the stories (Notice the use of the plural here) of your life are all jostling around your mind/heart/soul.  Because the various stories of people around us are not always neat and tidy, don’t fit perfectly together like puzzle pieces, we still try to put everything into a coherent picture.  Do you notice yourself negotiating and reconciling the information you receive from a multitude of sources each day?  This leads you to a conclusion, which can be that things are going to you-know-where in a handbasket, or that things will get better, or that everyone is against you, or that the system is rigged, or that people are broken.  Once our minds are made up, this becomes the overarching narrative, and any external evidence that contradicts it is thrown out by the judge and jury in our minds.  For example, if the world is completely broken, not only will Facebook keep serving you stories to support that point of view, but you will quickly dismiss any story of hope as naïve or foolish.  Or if you believe that humans are basically good, you will spend a lot of calories trying to find one redeeming quality of the person you just met who seems to be mean.  This isn’t about being right or wrong but noticing and naming the ways our brains are wired and how that was given to us by moments in the past.  Return today to those sentence descriptions of the narratives in our world you wrote yesterday.

 

What story does our church tell?

What story does your political identity tell?

What story does your economic bracket/background tell?

What story does your neighbor/friends/peer group tell?

Where are these stories aligned, and where is there tension? 

 

May your reflections be grounded in the One who can hold the beautiful diversity of Scripture together, so that they can also hold your complex/contradictory stories together too.  Amen.