Sharing Stories

I am drawn to the work of people like Parker Palmer and Christina Baldwin who bring people together in a circle to share not concepts, opinions, dogma, or judgments about what is right or wrong, but to share their own lived experience. To place it in the center of the circle where it is just received by the circle. Parker Palmer calls these “circles of trust.”

Last Sunday I think the Gathering provided four beautiful men such a circle where they could share their very different military experiences and just have them received. No need to “determine the right experience.” I believe when people are able to just share their actual lived experience it become much easier for us to see that we each have lived in different realties…each of them true even though they may seem to be conflicting views. Easier for us to value and accept a viewpoint different from our own, easier to realize life is both/and not either/or. The circle becomes a place where different perceptions can reside side by side and inform each other.

Christiana uses the term “storycatcher”, someone who receives the story of someone else, not to judge it or compare it to the “right” story, just to receive it with attentiveness, care, and compassion. This Sunday we talk about gratitude. I am grateful that the Gathering is a place where such a sharing can take place.

I have also become drawn to the word “Aloha” whose deeper meaning is to share breath, to share the essence of the mystery that is our source and sustenance by whatever name you call it. Aloha is another way of saying Nemaste. To the four men who shared with us, Aloha. Aloha to Ann who wanted to have such a sharing and who values the practice of storycatching. Aloha Gathering.

Teresa Rylander