Stories Are Foundational & Transformative and we need practices to unlock them

Guiding question: How might we embed ‘seeking the stories’ into the fabric of our congregation?

Stories are transformative.

When another cares enough to hold space for us to risk revealing a part of our story...

When we hold a space for others and they might even for a moment not feel like a stranger...

The possibility of an authentic and real relationship and thus real community is unlocked.

Brene Brown says “People are hard to hate close up. Move in. Speak truth to bullshit. Be civil. Hold hands. With strangers. Strong back. Soft front. Wild heart.”

As Henri Nouwen writes:

In our world full of strangers, estranged from their own past, culture, and country, from their neighbors, friends, and family, from their deepest self and their God, we witness a painful search for a hospitable place where life can be lived without fear and where community can be found. Although many, we might say even most, strangers in this world become easily the victim of a fearful hostility, it is possible [...] to offer an open and hospitable space where strangers can cast off their strangeness and become our fellow human beings. The movement from hostility to hospitality is hard and full of difficulties. Our society seems to be increasingly full of fearful, defensive, aggressive people, anxiously clinging to their property and inclined to look at their surrounding world with suspicion, always expecting an enemy to suddenly appear, intrude, and do harm. But still—that is our vocation: to convert the hostis into a hospes, the enemy into a guest, and to create the free and fearless space where [kinship] can be formed and fully experienced. - Henri Nouwen

During the process many groups were drawn to new practices that unearthed and discovered and made space for each others stories:

💡Caring: Sharing Our Truths: The Life Stories of Foothills UU’s

💡 Elders Connect with Joy: visiting, sharing stories, enabling continuing service

💡 Wellspring: Story holders & Death Conversations

Thus in the new year we will aim to gather a team around the question:

How might we embed ‘seeking the stories’ into the fabric of our congregation?

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