Charleston: Telling Stories
“My people are from an oral tradition, meaning we did not write things down, but told stories or sang songs to express our history and theology. We are a people with a long memory. A very long memory. We did not leave our past behind, but brought it with us, encoded over generations in a thousand stories and kept sacred in ancient songs sung beneath the moon. We know the long thread of human hope that runs through time, reappearing repeatedly, just when we need it the most. Come gather by the firelight. Come gather on holy ground. There are many stories we need to share, many songs we need to sing, for the time has come to remember: our story goes on because it is the story of the Spirit, the One who remembers it all, the endless song our Maker sings, when She sings beneath the moon.” Bishop Steven Charleston's Facebook Page.
Telling Stories is what we do as we observe the Liturgy of the Hours: Morning Prayer, Noon Day Prayers, Compline. We tell the stories of our faith given to us in the oral tradition, now written down as Holy Scriptures. The Liturgy of the Hours frames these stories since the very early church as the liturgy marks certain times during the day to stop and pray and read stories of our faith. We daily say prayers written in our own faith tradition recently and centuries ago. We are hearing the faith of our ancestors, their struggles, their loves.
The cornerstone of recovery groups also is an oral tradition as we read stories of those in recovery in our past, and then we are to add our own story. The more honest our story, the more beautiful it is. This is not beauty lovely to look at. It is beauty which is a passageway to the heart, a passageway to the person God created us to be.
I have one faithful friend named Joe who told me that all we have to offer to this world is our story. My prayer is that it will be a story of love.
Joanna. joannaseibert.com