The Gifts of Story

Hidden spiritual gems in our personal narratives

“I think the people who wade into discomfort and vulnerability and tell the truth about their stories are the real bad asses in this world.” (Brene Brown)

Photo by Unseen Studio on Unsplash

A former colleague of mine once said that the most powerful lessons are those that are told through story.   I am convinced she is right.  The most meaningful spiritual gifts for me have surfaced within the everyday events of my life.

Author and spiritual director, Janet Ruffing, says that there is a “continual interplay between ‘what happened’ and ‘what it means’”.  When we hear enough of our own stories, she adds, we reflect on them within our larger, personal narrative. We begin to recognize patterns and perceive direction.   

That’s what often happens to a person who seeks and engages in spiritual guidance. That’s what happens for me when I look back on my life and where I’ve been.

Recalling more than a decade ago, for example, I had pretty much “arrived” in life – career, marriage, children, home, the usual stuff of middle-class America.  My comfort zone was established. I was tucked snuggly within it, and change was not on my agenda.  

But as John Lennon once noted, “Life is what happens when you’re making other plans”.

As with anyone on a typical heroine’s journey, I eventually “left home.”  No, I take that back.  I was thrown unwillingly into turbulent waters without swimming skills or a life raft.  

In my case, “leaving home” entailed a cancer diagnosis.  It meant discovering that my decades-long relationship was unraveling.  It required doling out “tough love” in the face of a family member’s addiction. 

It involved grieving a father who succumbed to heart failure and caring for a mother diagnosed with ALS. To add spice to the mix, work politics had become toxic to this woman. 

That laundry list was what I thought accurately described the problems that had surfaced in my life, the sources of my woundings.  In the heroine’s journey, however, the far-flung traveler eventually discovers her real problem – and the resolution of it ultimately becomes the key to her transformation.  

My true problem was this: I had staked identity in all the wrong places.  I didn’t know who I truly was -- at a spiritual level -- although I thought I did.  The key to my transformation was a slow peeling back of the identity onion that had slowly grown and taken form around me.  

I had to peel it back, layer by layer. I had to willingly toss aside all that I thought to be “me” and the images of self that went with that: esteemed employee, progressive parent, devoted daughter, supportive partner, healthy being, etc., etc.  

I was forced to answer the question: Who was I without these identities? I had to tap into Truth, the internal wisdom that had always been present and available.  This formed the climax in my journey’s narrative.  

Writer and Franciscan friar, Richard Rohr, describes this as “falling through” one’s life situations to discover Real Life, “which is always a much deeper river, hidden beneath the appearances”.  This river, he notes, is what flows beneath everyday events.  Many would term the discovery of this as “finding one’s soul”.  

Rohr notes that the heroine eventually returns to where she started -- and knows the place for the first time. She steps into something called “deep time” – a blending of past, present, and future – and there she finds her True Self. 

As the journey concludes, the heroine doesn’t return empty-handed.  There is an abundance of life energy that she brings back to share, a sacred gift for herself and others.  This giving back idea is what I am committed to at this juncture in my years.

My final thought is this, however: I have come to believe that most of us take several journeys of this kind in a lifetime -- arriving at the end of one, only to realize that we stand at the threshold of another.  

What, dear friends, has been unearthed within your sacred stories?