I actually have something to think about that has taken my mind off the wedding, and what's been even more consuming, the getting of the last details together for that trip to Texas for a little bit. Who knew that was even possible at this point! But it's true. My clergy friend D with whom I had all the great Millennium Development Goal adventures in "my year of living Di" as I like to think of it now, has been in touch recently. Seems our new Bishop has asked her to do some teaching on Public Narrative at our clergy conference next week. And she is turn is calling upon some of us who have involved with her in this process in our parish MDG projects to help "demo" by giving our own public narratives, being coached and then coaching others in small groups. "Oh, would you, Kate?" she asks...and of course, I said yes. Well what I said was (with some tongue in cheek) "it's not enough that I'm coming to clergy conference the week before the wedding, now I have to work too!"
So I have been working on my public narrative....which is basically a story in three parts, and goes something like this....
Part I Story of Self: I am calling you (my audience) to this challenge because of this about me....
Part II Story of Us: We have faced and overcome this similar challenge in this way.....
Part III Story of Now: NOW is the urgent moment we need to act on this challenge because....
And the best part....it all happens in six minutes!
So as part of my prep for this, I've been going back through some of the things I wrote during that year...and remembering. That was quite the time. There is no doubt that we did good work. We raised significant money for our project, which was important all by itself. But beyond that, I think for a time there I believed that we were going to transform something in a BIG way....the church, our parish, our individual selves maybe..... And while perhaps that did not happen quite the way I envisioned it, I think we did do some transformative work. The process changed me. I claimed myself as a writer because I participated in this. And I knew myself to be part of something larger in a new way. And I know it changed others, too. One of my congregants who participated as part of our team foun his own voice as a result of telling his story. Another, sad to say, found a well of anger in herself and decided to walk away from us. But that too is a part of growth and transformation. The fire burns both ways sometimes as it transforms us. It was quite a time as times of change are. Heady and wild, deep and full of the Spirit running among us. I remember at the training we had with the folks from the Kennedy Center. As we were drawing our diagrams and doing our brainstorming we declared so confidently that we were setting out to "DO the Gospel." And for a little time there, it seemed that we did. Missional church, right here, right now, burning among us. The fires have banked a bit, and I'm feeling a bit of sad nostalgia for those hotter times right now. As ever, balance is so challenging. But who knows, maybe telling the storis again will bring something back to life again. Stories often do. Isn't that after all, why we tell them?
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