telling a good story
last quarter, one of my classes required me to do some research into members of my family. when i began digging, i was surprised by what i started to find out, and i decided to continue to dig deeper. here are a few of the very interesting things that i learned about my family: *danish and czech are the two cultures that run richest in my blood, but there is also a smattering of english, irish, scottish, french, german and dutch. *i have blood ties to an all-but extinct native american tribe called the chetco, who were located at the mouth of the rogue river on the oregon/california border in the 1800s *my paternal grandfather (and thus my last name) can be traced all the way back to the mid 17th century in france. my ancestors were huguenots who fled to the US to escape persecution by the catholic church *one of my ancestors was an activist in the temperance movement in new england in the 18th century. his essays have been compiled into a book which i now proudly own *another one of my ancestors successfully traveled from michigan to california during the gold rush, and wrote letters back to his hometown during the process. these have since been compiled as well *much of my family has been in the united states since its founding, or shortly thereafter aside from these interesting facts about distant generations, part of what i was struck by was the vastness of it all. i saw all these lives that had to unfold exactly the way they did in order for me to come into existence. i was also struck by the individual stories of those around me. for example, i learned a lot about the lives that my grandparents lived - details that i was not privy to as a child, or just didn't think to ask about. the most important thing that i learned from my family is that we each have a story that we are living out. this is something that i've thought about before, so its not entirely new, but i began to look at my story from an entirely different perspective. as i began to learn about the lives of individuals within my family i began to wonder what kind of story would be told about me two, three, or even more generations from now. i learned things about my grandparents and other family members that i had known before but hadn't understood the full scope of, or hadn't seen from this angle before. i began to understand that the way we articulate our stories is important. the language we use, the attitudes we have, are often just as important as our actions or the choices we make. finally, i've learned that every story is just as important as the next. my goal in the next couple months, before beginning seminary and grad school, is to catch up on as many stories that i can. i want to know the stories i haven't heard from people who are closest to me, like my brother, my dad and my grandmother. i want to catch up with friends that i haven't have time or energy to invest in while finishing my undergrad. and i want to hear new stories - preferably those that share a different perspective than i'm used to, or might challenge me to reevaluate my assumptions about life, God or the world.
