There are no true stories; we are making up every one of them.
(Pema Chodron)

There are only true stories. We are discovering the truth in them.
(Christina Baldwin)

This month our theme question asks us to consider what it means to be “a community of story.”  This is not exactly, although it is related to, the question of what it means to be a community of storytellers.  You might think that this is, as my dad used to say, “a distinction in search of a difference,” yet I think that there’s something to it.  What does it mean to be a community of story, a community that is shaped by story and that gives shape to its ongoing story?

Rachel Naomi, author of Kitchen Table Wisdom:  stories that heal, has this to say about the power of stories:

Hidden in all stories is the One story. The more we listen, the clearer that [universal] Story becomes. Our true identity, who we are, why we are here, what sustains us, is in this story. The stories at every kitchen table are about the same things, stories of owning, having and losing, stories of sex, of power, of pain, of wounding, of courage, hope and healing, of loneliness and the end of loneliness. Stories about God. In telling them, we are telling each other the human story.

Our “little” story is part of a much larger story, a story that began roughly 12 ½ billion years ago with the event we call “The Big Bang.”  There’s an emerging, interdisciplinary field of study known as “Big History,” which aims to integrate the various “stories” that are told by cosmologists, earth scientists, and various types of historians of humanity, into one story – perhaps the “One story” Ms. Naomi is referring to, an overarching narrative of which we are only a part yet in which we have a part to play.  And it is a story that we, as a species and as individuals, continue to create as time and space “march on.”

What does it mean to be a community of story?  A community that is part and parcel of the story, receiving and creating it?  And are we asking about our human community?  The community liberal religious community known as Unitarian Universalism?  The Charlottesville community?  TJMC?

Yes.

What does it mean to be a community of story?

That’s what we’ll be asking ourselves in a variety of ways this month.  The answer(s) we discover – together and individually – will be part of the story.  Isn’t this exciting?

Pax tecum,
RevWik