Let Your Story Stir...

Costa Rica 2011

Maya Angelo said it well: “There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.” Stirring under our skin, embedded in our souls are stories, profound and essential. Though we see the wonder arise most clearly in children, all humans, and regardless of our our ages, bring sharp, focused attention when a story unfolds. Our very lives are stories worth telling; we are adventures, lessons, and paintings in the making. It becomes a necessary task to uncover them, name them, tell them and celebrate them.

I often wonder if depression, meaninglessness and joylessness come as a result of failing to understand this essential part of truly living life. Maybe healing and growth come from weaving the threads of stories upon stories.

Sue Monk Kidd titles a chapter in her book Firstlight, “The Crucible of Story.” We need stories, she says. Sadly, we have lost the value of stories even in the spiritual world and have instead waded in the deep waters of doctrine and theology exclusively. It’s as if being an adult means disconnecting from the heart and soul of things and “advancing” into the superior realm of knowledge and information. However, if we sit still and listen to the swirling of beauty, imagery, patterns, symbols and songs within us, we will find a fortune there. Our experiences contain what Kidd calls, “the hidden holy.”

The truth is, as Sue Monk Kidd highlights, looking inward and backwards at our own stories will be painful at times. Too often, these are the memories we want to ignore and pretend away. She says, “I knew there would be no wholeness unless I stepped down into my darkness and confronted the troubling angel within.” The process can be daunting. It requires us to stay, to be soundless and calm, like stopping a train from racing on its tracks. To find these moments requires discipline and intentionality. The essential things come this way. But they do come, genuinely.

I love how she expresses it: “Through solitude and silence I began to find an inner music, a love song being sung in the spaces of my own heart.” The mysteries of the soul are concealed by clutter and discord. Too often there is little left to give but trivial observations, superficial utterances and flat experiences that leave us with no story to tell. Sadly, we eventually stop knowing ourselves. The most exquisite parts of who we are become overshadowed by the best of nothing.

Untapped we sit, and soon expire.

Our hope rises when we share more stories, when we take note of the metaphors chanting songs of the Spiritual world all around us. Each piece pulls back the curtain of revelation. We must stop talking and listen. Stop surging forward and contemplate the colors, sounds and smells of the Earth. Let your story flood you with healing. Who you were is not who you are. And who you are is not who you will always be.

You are a living, moving, unfolding picture of restoration. Listen to what comes only in silence. As Sue Monk Kidd interprets, “In the crucible of story we become artists of meaning. There we find God most surely.”