What's your story?

Spotted on the back of a work-out top at the gym were the words ‘What’s your story?’ 

You all know those ice-breaker activities… At the startup meeting for the fall there was a a new member, as well as someone returning after an absence, and so we did one of those get-to know-you exercises or ice-breakers. Every one was given the same list of questions as suggestions for what they might want to speak about. The interesting thing was that although some of us had actually known each other for over 40 years, we still learned new things about each other that hadn’t come up in conversation before. But we all commented on how unusual this was. What we hear from these exercises is not someone’s story but rather a brief highlight of some biographical facts, getting to know each other on a superficial level.

How many times does the average person have someone else ask them “What is your story?” and then have that person sit, wait, and listen to whatever is said? I have and it is both scary in the moment and powerful in the long run as you learn to embrace both vulnerability and trust. Trusting that whatever you say will be honoured and being vulnerable in that you expose something of yourself that you have never shared aloud before; to put the pieces of your life together to explain who you are and how you got to the present moment.

It is even rarer that we get a chance to tell the story of our spiritual journey, the stops along the way, the people and events who have shaped us, to voice that where we are in this moment spiritually didn’t come out of a vacuum but from events and people in our past. 

Having the experience of telling the story of your spiritual journey and being heard with uncritical and accepting ears happens to everyone at the beginning of the year in EfM [Eduction for Ministry], a group I belong to. For many in that group it is very powerful, being the first time that they have had their spiritual story listened to with out being asked to defend or explain what they have said. However I would posit that for the listeners it is even more powerful as they attempt to listen without judging, accept without challenging, and put their own beliefs on the back burner. I might add that these people are without exception people who have spent several decades within the walls of organized religion without previously having had this experience of either telling their own story or listening uncritically to others tell theirs. 

‘It is not the voice that commands the story: it is the ear.’ ~Italo Calvino

[Italo Calvino (Italian:1923 – 1985) was an Italian journalist and writer of short stories and novels. Lionised in Britain and the United States, he was the most-translated contemporary Italian writer at the time of his death.]