Who can tell whose story?

It's such a big question.

Surely no one can tell anyone else's story.

But what is "our own" story?

I used to think my own family's story went in one particular direction. We had worked hard and created a remarkable nation. We were, basically, heroes.

But then as I heard other people's family stories, especially those that intersected directly with my family, I realized that the story my family had told me about "us" was, well, let's start with the word 'incomplete'.

It took me years - decades - to learn to tell my own family's story differently.

As I did so, it shifted my sense of who I was. Of my sense of responsibility, the role I could play, and my sense of purpose and possibility.

The story of my family history is deeply connected to the story of the United States of America - specifically to the story of democracy.

It is also deeply connected to the story of climate change, racism, sexism, and the Doctrine of Discovery.

The question is not "are we interconnected."

It is instead, "how are we connected." 

There are, as Howard Thurman says, "relationships evil in design." 

Much of the current stories uphold a set of relationships that perpetuate historical and structural harms.  

The possibility here is to create a new set of stories about who we are. 

Can a better understanding of the past help us create a better future?

Yes. It can. Because certain aspects of the past lives in the present, and the future is constantly emerging from it.

In my last email, I talked about histories as akin to soil - it's the ground from which other things (the present) arise. We want to make sure we tend to the soil well.

Part of tending to history is to be able to tell your own story in a way that enacts the ways in which we are all interwoven.

Before telling a new story, though, you have to engage with a deeper history.

We can't jump into a new story.

Because stories come from somewhere.

Stories arise from metaphors. Metaphors arise from an embodied mind.

Histories and our interpretation of them are in our bodies. They are in our institutions. They are in our landscapes - how houses are built, how political districts are redlined, how concrete is made. How people are categorized and taught to relate to one another.

So to get to a place where we can begin to create new stories for ourselves, we need to engage at a much deeper, and much more interconnected dimension.

We need that now, today, more than ever. 

For our climate. For our democracy. For our families. For our land and rivers and waters.  

That's part of what ReMembering helps us do.

To learn more about the ReMembering Course, join us this coming Tuesday.

Till soon -