A Witness to Your Story

Maybe nothing is more important than that we keep track, you and I, of these stories of who we are and where we have come from and the people we have met along the way because it is precisely through these stories in all their particularity, as I have long believed and often said, that God makes himself known to each of us most powerfully and personally.

Frederick Buechner, Telling Secrets

Tell me your story.

This is one of the first invitations of spiritual direction.  When I am meeting a new directee for the first time, or gathering a small community of seekers, I want to know your story.  Where are you from?  What was your childhood like?  Who are the people--your parents, siblings, friends, beloveds, mentors--who have shaped your life?  How have you been formed by pain, loss and grief?  And how have you experienced joy and wonder?  To whom and what have you given yourself and why?

If you believe, that God is our Creator, the One from Whom we come and to Whom we return, and who is present with us throughout our lives, whether we notice or not, then every question about your life, every moment you share is spiritual.  But I also love asking and hearing explicitly about moments when you sensed a Grace or Peace or Love that was Other.  How did you first learn about God, and how has your understanding and experience of God changed over the years?  What experiences and encounters, spiritual writings and practices have been important in your spiritual awakening and transformation?  Many people seek spiritual direction because there is great dissonance between what they’ve been told about God and their own experience.  There is often a lot to unpack in our stories about the religious persons and faith communities that formed us, and very often wounded us.

I always feel a profound gratitude when you are willing to share your story with me.  The space between us becomes holy ground.  And it’s like it accesses this whole other part of us that we don’t reach when we just share our thoughts or opinions about this and that.  I am moved by both the points of connection, and the vast and diverse experiences that shape us so differently.  We’re all made in the image of God, but are only one small fragment, so it’s like our view of God and humanity endlessly expands with each person, each story, each moment we’re invited to witness.

In recent years, when I’ve felt such despair over the indifference and meanness among us, I’ve been saved by listening to people’s stories.  I wonder with the poet Elizabeth Alexander, “Are we not of interest to each other?”  and often think to myself or aloud, “If only people could hear each other’s stories. . . .”  At least, that’s been my experience.  It’s been stories, not arguments or debates, that have opened my heart, and then took my mind with it.

Our stories have such power to connect, heal and transform us, both in the sharing and in the receiving.  Something in us hungers to witness and be witnessed in all the beautiful and terrible moments we live.  And perhaps when we extend that grace to one another, we come to believe there is no moment, not a single one, we have ever been alone without a Witness.