Once Upon a Time

Would you like to hear a story?

Yes, of course -- please!!

We all love stories. It seems that from the moment we are born, we are entertained by the telling of stories. Nursery rhymes are taught, Little Golden books are read, beautifully made animated movie classics are shared.  And then we hear stories every day of what happens during the day to the people we interact with.

I was weaned on the stories of my dad's work stories around the dinner table. He was my hero -- he swore at everyone, yelled at the idiots and said exactly what was on his mind. My mother cringed and tried to balance my dad's stories with the reality of what good manners could accomplish instead.

At every family gathering, old stories are told once more. The stories are old and cherished and sometimes met with groans and an eye roll.  As we lose one generation, the next hunger to hear the old stories. I am now the teller of those stories and I add my own to be rolled into that family history.

We learn stories in school about our world, our country and heritage, our struggles and our victories. They aren't always accurate I think, but we hold fast to them. Changing them is difficult.

Whatever it is we believe in, we have stories that shape and further inspire our faith. My foundation is Christianity and I find strength in the story of the fully told Christ event. But my faith is greater than even that, and my soul yearns to hear the stories of other ways of looking at the divine.

Many of us learn much better when we hear a story to teach us a lesson. We watch all sorts of television, and most of it -- is story. We are a people with an insatiable interest in stories. We are entertained, we learn, we laugh, we are chastised, we are heart broken and we live to tell a story another day.

I'm currently attending a Biblical Storytelling Festival in Dayton, Ohio. There's about 200 people here from all over. I had lunch with a group of people that came from Korea just for this experience.

The focus is to continue to improve in our ability to share our faith in a way that draws people in and connects with them. We tell our story, at the same time we tell a piece of God's story.  We tell God's story, we tell a piece of our story.

In effect, we are story. Story weaves us together individually -- our family history, our ancestry, our beliefs about God and ourselves. Story weaves us together as a faith community, a country, a culture. It's a good and powerful thing to pay attention to our story and to allow my story to interact with your story.