From Memory to Faith: Life Stories

... When my siblings and I were children, we sat around the dinner table with parents and grandparents and told our stories. At meal's end, the dessert plates were pushed aside, and we asked, "Do you remember when ... ?" and lively conversation ensued as family members shared the stories. Often a grandparent would share stories of a world we never knew: of pioneer days, the Great Depression, and World Wars. Grandparents were the story keepers, the ones who handed on the family values and traditions.

Now the artificial images families watch on television have little to do with family stories or values. The stories and values are lost in the maelstrom of our busy lives and distracted lifestyles. So remembering our stories is not just for our own benefit; it is a sacred responsibility to hand on our values and faith to coming generations.

As you begin the task of remembering your story, consider the seven basic principles that are essential for this journey of faith.

1. Every Life Is a Unique, Invaluable Story
Many persons believe that their stories are uninteresting or unimportant. They claim that only celebrities have colorful, meaningful stories to tell. They say, "I'm not important enough. Who would be interested in my story?" Yet every life is worthy of a novel. Why? Because it is a unique, once-told tale. It is your story or my story, and no one else has ever lived it.

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One only needs to read the Gospel narratives to see how Jesus valued every person's story, ordinary stories that sound so contemporary: a widow grieving the loss of her only son; a disturbed man, abandoned by the community, living alone; a woman at a well, her life like shards of a broken jug; a man sick for thirty-eight years, who began to enjoy his sickness and the care of others; a man with honest doubt who needed reassurance.

2. God Speaks to Us in Our Stories

... Remembering our stories is more than reminiscence or recalling our past. Listening to our life is like listening to the voice of God, even as the boy Samuel thought Eli was calling him, only to realize that God was speaking to him.

Stories have power. The Kalahari Desert bushmen believe that their stories contain their soul as a people. They tell their stories only to those they trust; if an enemy comes into possession of their stories, the enemy will have the power to destroy them spiritually.

I interpret this Kalahari understanding of story as referring to the individual as well as the whole community. Stories present powerful means of communicating at all levels. Though many storytellers use the same words, gestures, and inflections each time they tell the story, each telling is unique because of the audience and the circumstances.

Remembering our stories helps us perceive ways God has shared in our personal history. We remember incredible answers to prayer and grace moments, times when God helped us through what seemed impossible crises.

3. Connecting Our Stories with God's Story Is the Work of The Spirit
Another dimension of remembering our stories is the connecting of our stories with God's story in scripture. Scripture records experiences of God's presence. We must keep in mind that the stories of the biblical tradition and our personal stories are not all that different. The Bible is a collection of stories about ordinary people in ordinary places doing ordinary things, when the Extraordinary happens to them. When we take our stories seriously enough to explore and share them, they can become places of divine revelation. If spirituality means "living in the Spirit," then remembering our stories leads to spiritual formation.

In telling and listening to the Gospel stories, Christians can more readily identify times of God's presence in their own lives.

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We hear the biblical story and say, "That's my story too"; and as we remember our stories, we recall God's story. Some memory of God's presence in our lives reminds us of a story from scripture. As we connect our stories with the biblical witness, we become aware of new revelations and of times when God's extraordinary love became known in something very ordinary. God's spirit makes the connection. As Jesus promised those first disciples and us, "But the Counselor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you" (John 14:26, NIV).

In the busyness of early adult years, our emphasis on achieving and spending can strip life of its spiritual quality. We may discern the work of the Spirit in our stories only in later age as we look back on the whole sweep of our life with the eyes of faith. Our story merges with God's story whenever we perceive God as the "silent companion" in life's journey.

4. Painful Memories Can Be Healed Through Stories

Some people resist remembering their stories, because memories of painful events in the past seem best left there. The journey down memory lane is not always pleasant. Wrong turns, dead ends, stupid blunders, and careless actions torment us. We may say, "I lived through that once; it really hurt; and I don't want to think about it anymore." Furthermore, we discover family skeletons rattling around in the closets of our lives, and some of us believe those scary memories need to be kept there.

Experience proves that those memories will resurface, because they always remain a part of who we are. But instead of being a burden of guilt and remorse, even the most painful experiences, once we have made peace with them, can become sources of blessing and strength for life's journey. Remembering our stories can help us experience that even if our present story is broken, it can be made whole.

5. Remembering Our Stories Creates Community and the Future
When God created the world, only one time did God say, "It is not good," and that was, "It is not good that the man should be alone." Although you can preserve your story in solitude through personal journaling, being in a group that shares stories is a powerful way to be in touch with your own story.

These stories fill us with a holy wonder and gratitude for God's presence in every life. Indeed, shared stories become "holy ground."

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Listening to others' stories is a gift we offer them. But we also receive a gift as we realize that every story is in some way the story of us all. Despite details and events that make our individual stories unique, there are moments when we recognize our story in the stories of others. Some experience, celebrative event, or difficult moment in another's story resonates with our story, and we begin to recognize our oneness. People who share their stories become soul friends, bound together in unique ways. This being bound together may reflect Luke's meaning: "All the believers were together and had everything in common" (Acts 2:44, NIV).

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Remembering your story also gives direction for the rest of your story. Sharing stories is not simply a matter of recalling or clinging to the past. Soren Kierkegaard said, "Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards," which reminds me of an exchange between a tourist and an old farmer.

"Have you lived here all your life?" the tourist asked.

"No," replied the farmer. "Not yet!"

We continue to realize that our stories are incomplete and that the next chapter of the story remains a mystery to be experienced. One of the rewards of remembering our story is to find direction for our last years. When Moses counseled the Israelites to "remember the long way that the LORD your God has led you these forty years in the wilderness" (Deut. 8:2), he was not just giving them a gentle reminder. He was urging them to let that same God lead them in their new journey into the land of promise.

6. Faith Stories Are the Legacies We Leave
Imagine that you are visiting your mother's house. While poking around in the attic, you come across a dusty shoebox tucked under the eaves. Curious, you open the box to discover sheets of yellow stationery-letters written by your grandmother. You can almost hear her quavering voice as you read stories about her ... and you. Or imagine coming into possession of an old family Bible in which you find underlined verses with brief comments by your grandfather in the margin. You suddenly become aware of how God was present in his life.

What if you wrote your life story and hid it in a desk drawer? or saved it on a floppy disk? or videotaped it and hid it away for later discovery? What a treasure for future generations! Your story is your legacy.

We live in a time of age segregation. We see it everywhere. The greatest wedge dividing generations is the American practice of segregating groups by age-toddlers with toddlers, teens with teens, older persons with older persons. Furthermore, in many cases, activities that once pulled families together -- caring for frail elders, minding small children, and telling family stories -- are either disregarded or relegated to professionals, institutions, or government-funded service providers.

Listening to one another's stories may be the way to connect generations: young people listening to the wisdom of the elders, older people really hearing the stories youth tell about their lives. Stories can help us see beyond age and gender and realize we are all children of God.

7. Stories Create Meaning ... at Any Age

At any age, if we are to face life with integrity and purpose, we must know that our lives do mean something, that we matter to someone, and that whatever story we have lived, it has brought us to this point.

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Recall the Gospel story of the woman in the crowd who had been sick for twelve years. She had become a nonperson, without hope of healing through normal avenues. From the wounded center of her life, she reached out in desperate hope to touch Jesus. "Who touched me?" he asked. Even in a crowd Jesus knew the touch of faith. He said to her, "Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace" (Luke 8:48). She had been known as a sick person, but Christ's transforming touch restored her to wholeness and personhood.

Remembering our story helps us journey into wholeness. In the process of remembering and sharing our stories, we restore those parts of ourselves we have forgotten, suppressed, or denied. We discover that we can reconceptualize and that even the difficult memories become moments of God's grace. As we touch the stories of Christ and connect them with our stories, we find wholeness.

Erik Erikson, whose classic work Childhood and Society depicted eight stages of humanity, believed that a person's final task -- particularly in the later years -- is that of achieving integrity; that is, accepting life as it has been lived. Integrity describes a person who has adapted to all of life and who has found a sense of wholeness and peace. This person recognizes life's "dangers, toils, and snares" but affirms that life is worthwhile when seen in the light of God's grace.

Remembering our stories is a way to see beyond the roles we have played to reaffirm our true personhood. Granted, we spend our lives looking at a "cloudy picture in a mirror" (1 Cor. 13:12, CEV) and only see "face-to-face" in the next life. But remembering our stories helps us stay in touch with who we really are, instead of the roles we play or have played. In all of life's experiences we respond to definite role expectations from job, family, friends, and culture. With older age, retirement or debility strips many of these role expectations from us.

As we get in touch with our stories, we gain a sense of who we really are, the person we must be now. In a way, our life stories are like quilting. Our lives resemble a patchwork quilt. We start with scraps of material passed on to us: our genetic makeup, our family history and traditions. Then we add other materials with the talents and opportunities we've been given. Each story we tell is like a piece of quilt block that represents one bit of color or one piece of texture.

Finally we take all these pieces of material and put them together, and they become a unique pattern of our own making. When pieced together the stories become a beautiful quilt. Stories heal us as we remember the diverse fragments and witness the piecing together of the quilt.

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There is a sense of urgency about preserving one's faith story in the later years. It is sad when older people wait too long to achieve this task. As the writer of Ecclesiastes stated, "Remember your creator in the days of your youth, before the days of trouble come, and the years draw near when you say, 'I have no pleasure in them"' (Eccles. 12: 1). We might well rephrase those words in this way: Remember ... your story in the days when you can write it down, before the inevitable losses of old age come, and you can no longer fulfill that task.

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I invite you to take this journey of faith, this journey into wholeness. You may work alone in the silence of your soul, or you may join a group that shares stories. No one knows where this journey will lead you, but one thing is sure: God will join you on this journey.