To help with your own exploration of this month’s theme question – what does it mean to be a community of story? – here are some questions you can contemplate.  As always, don’t treat these questions like “homework” or a list that needs to be covered in its entirety. Instead, simply pick the one question that “hooks” you most and let it lead you where you need to go. The goal of these questions is not to help you analyze what story means in the abstract, but to figure out what a deeper awareness of story means for your daily living. So, which question is calling to you? Which one contains “your work”?

1. What genre is your current life’s story? Are you living a mystery? An adventure story? A romance? A thriller? Are you worried that your story is not interesting enough to be published? Is it a half-finished manuscript stuck in writer’s block? Are you in the midst of going back and re-writing the ending?
2. What stories did your “elders” pass down to you? Have you cared for them and passed them on as those elders hoped?
3. What story does your family of origin tell about you? Does that telling leave you feeling seen or misunderstood? Celebrated or unfairly characterized? If mischaracterized, what are your plans to get them to reshape their telling of you? Or is your true story better served by just letting go of trying to change their unfair one?
4. Who do you tell your secret stories to? If the answer is “no one,” might it be time to find someone? (“There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.” ~ Maya Angelou)
5. When has re-telling or re-writing your story healed or saved you? How might re-examining or re-telling a part of your story offer you healing right now?
6. What current cultural or political “story” strikes you as dangerous? How might you step up your commitment and efforts to challenge that dangerously false story? How might you double down on making sure that the true story is known?
7. How do you use story? When you tell stories, what is most often the purpose? To connect? To entertain? To heal? To conceal? To remember? To pass on? To teach? To gain power? To say thanks? Were you surprised by your answer?
8. Are you hiding part of your story from the person you say you “trust the most”?
9. Are you faking a story right now? Are you following a storyline that isn’t really you? Does anyone else notice? Do you want them to? What’s your plan for bringing this false story to an end?
10. What story did you walk away from? All of us think about that other life — that other story — that we turned down for the one we have now. Whether you regret your past choice or not, that road not taken doesn’t ever really go away. It continues to be part of our story. Does that old road want you to return to it and give it another look?
11. Are there parts of your “old” story you need to reclaim or notice, before moving on? Many of our elders told us, “You don’t know where you are going unless you know where you come from.” When was the last time you made some room for remembering your roots?
12. What’s your question? Your question may not be listed above. As always, if the above questions don’t include what life is asking from you, spend the month listening to your days to hear it.