Having had so much lay leadership participation in our January Practice of Story Worship Services has been a blessing! But that’s what it’s all about, isn’t it? Hearing multiple stories and perspectives that help us understand how the web of interdependence is woven. An abundance of opportunities this month has supported our learning on how to be intentional about storytelling, and very importantly, how to listen to the stories of others. I hope we carry this learning forward as we continue to connect and create a community culture around our shared UU values.
To further enhance our learning, I am including some snippets of wisdom from our Soul Matters Worship Resources packet. I hope you engage, expand, and enjoy! Please share with me any a-ha moments that occur, as I always love to hear about your experiences!
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“i have been reflecting a lot lately on how i don’t trust people with agendas, master plans. i think of those people as trying to create a new story for others, placing a massive end on the story, a period that only they can see.
for me, storytelling is an emergent process, a pollination-style intimacy, where the results can’t be fully predicted as the conditions shift.
in my experience the best storytelling is the best organizing…it’s rooted in a truth people have experienced, has some magic in it and something to long for, and a moment of beauty. but it is co-created as it is lived, no one can see the end of it. that allows people to stay in the present moment, and attend to the work before them with intention, seeing the story unfold with themselves in it, rather than directed, with themselves just outside the frame.”
From the Essay – ripe conditions by Adrienne Maree Brown
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Check this out:
On finding healing and well-being by intentionally shaping our stories. Choose narratives that put you in the driver’s seat! Reshape stories of failure as tales of redemption! Tease out the storyline of connection to counter the narrative of isolation!
Podcast – Healing 2.0: Change Your Story, Change Your Life: Hidden Brain Media
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Quote – Rev. Kenneth W. Collier, from The Great Wound: Confessions of a Slaveholding Family
Religious knowledge is very different from scientific knowledge. Its object is not description, but healing. Its truth is not intersubjective and tied to the external world, but personal and tied to a mythology that brings wholeness to the broken heart. Since what I know religiously is what heals my heart, it need not be the same thing that someone else knows religiously. Indeed, in a certain sense, it cannot be…
I have come to the rather unorthodox conclusion that theology is far more autobiographical and invitational than it is prescriptive. I do not say, “This is what I believe; you must believe it too.” Rather, I say, “This is what I believe. It is the story of my religious life. Tell me your story.”
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Quote/Reading – adrienne maree brown
This is, to me, the most exciting thing right now… if we wake up, we are in a place where we can create so much history and so much change. Everything is falling apart, but also, new things are possible. And Octavia said that “[t]here’s nothing new / under the sun, / but there are new suns.” We are in a time of new suns. We’re in a time of new suns. We have no idea what we could be, but everything that we have been is falling apart. So it’s time to change. And we can be mindful about that… it’s like — we are the action heroes… once you wake up and recognize, Oh, I can shape everything. I don’t have to be a victim of someone else’s vision for my subjugation, I actually get to be a powerhouse in the story of my own life and my people’s lives — oh! That’s a different invitation. I’d much rather live in that scenario. And so I do.
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Interview – How to Improve Your Life with “Story Editing”
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-to-improve-your-life-with-story-editing
Related: https://www.ttbook.org/interview/how-edit-your-life-story
& https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Qypd3-M-R8
Article – The transformational power of how you talk about your life
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20190523-the-way-you-tell-your-life-story-shapes-your-personality