Ben Okri, a Nigerian storyteller, says, “We live by stories, we also live in them. One way or another we are living in the stories planted in us early or along the way, or we are also living in the stories we planted — knowingly or unknowingly — in ourselves. We live stories that either give our lives meaning or negate it with meaninglessness. If we change the stories we live by, quite possibly we change our lives.” [1]

As we move a little early into July’s worship theme of “Story”, I’ve been thinking a lot about what importance narrative has in our lives, our faith, and the world. Stories are woven into our existence as humans — we use them to tell us who we are as individuals, families, communities and nations, to develop empathy, to transmit information, to envision new futures. We are our stories.

In thinking about stories, I have learned three things that I want to share with you today. First, that we are wired for stories. Second, that the stories we tell about ourselves and others matter. And third, that we can and should make choices about which stories we embrace, because our survival depends on it. As Ben Okri said, “If we change the stories we live by, quite possibly we change our lives.”

So first — we are wired for stories. 

When I was a kid, my life was full of stories: family stories about my mother and grandmother when they were growing up, stories and understandings about why the world is the way it is, and many, many, many bedtime stories, fantasy books, and folktales from around the world. I had lots of favorite bedtime books by Patricia Polacco, Dr. Seuss, Maurice Sendak, and others, but my parents were perplexed that, as they were tucking me in, I also loved for them to read me math books. 

Not just any math books though — the several I liked were part of a series called “I Love Math” which introduced mathematical ideas through stories, riddles, and poems. I learned about volumetric measurement from anthropomorphized elephant siblings fighting over who got more juice, and about division from the pizza chef trying to make pizzas with perfectly distributed slices of pepperoni. 

Even though math-based bedtime stories may sound a little odd, it was no fluke that as an elementary-schooler I loved stories that were teaching me real-world skills. People have known for millennia that stories are an incredibly powerful and effective method of transmitting information, and the fields of psychology and neuroscience have more recently begun to delve into how and why this is the case. 

As you probably know, storytelling is part of the national zeitgeist right now — podcasts like The Moth offering individual and interesting stories have proliferated, as have storytelling slams, storytelling circles, and storytelling festivals, and I can’t seem to buy a basket of groceries without at least four different companies telling “our family’s story” on the label of the product. 

I think that part of what has become so popular is in a digital and sometimes depersonalized age, many of us are hungry for the deep connection that comes with learning another person’s story. And part of it is that marketers have been keeping up with the latest developments in neuroscience, which tell us that when we hear a compelling narrative arc, no matter the subject, our brains release oxytocin. Oxytocin is the so-called “love chemical” that promotes bonding between people and pro-social behavior, and is naturally released during intimate moments such as childbirth, sex, vulnerable conversations, or a long hug. And now we know, it is also released when we hear a good story. 

Research shows that when oxytocin is present we are more trusting and collaborative — and more likely to donate money or purchase a product associated with the narrative we have heard. It is literally a chemical response. 

One of the lead researchers on oxytocin and storytelling says, “After years of experiments, I now consider oxytocin the neurologic

[foundation]

for the Golden Rule: If you treat me well, in most cases my brain will synthesize oxytocin and this will motivate me to treat you well in return… to the brain, good stories are good stories, whether first-person or third-person, on topics happy or sad, as long as they get us to care about their characters.” [2] So in other words, when we hear a story about someone, we are more likely to have empathy and attachment than if we just heard facts about the same person. 

Of course, for this reason, stories are also used on all sides of the political spectrum to drum up support. (That’s what propaganda is, right?) It’s media that is telling a certain story in order to get us to agree with an idea and act accordingly. I’m sure you all can think of your own examples about the stories told in our nation right now — about who belongs, who is respectable, what the future might hold, who is trustworthy. Stories are wired in us, and for both better and worse, we are susceptible to change based on the stories we hear. 

“If we change the stories we live by, quite possibly we change our lives.”

Which brings me to my second point: The stories we tell about ourselves and others matter. In our story for all ages today, “Mira and the Big Story”, a young girl confronts the possibility that the stories she grew up with, the stories of her peoples’ identity and origin, might not be true. She comes to this realization because the story she was told named a promised land that was for her people alone. No doubt, Mira loved that story because whenever she heard it she got a big dose of oxytocin, and felt closer and more connected to her people, the folks the story was about. 

But her assumptions are upended when she is helped by a boy from across the river, whose people she had always learned were enemies, “the Others”. When she asks the wise man Old Alfred about this dilemma, he tells Mira that stories can grow us or diminish us, and wonders if maybe there is a story big enough for everyone to belong. Old Alfred tells the story of the universe, and how both peoples in their valley are connected to everything else and that they both belong there. 

At first, Mira is elated by the understanding of connection and belonging, but then she starts crying, and asks, “What about our stories?” She feels grief because she thinks she has to give up a story that has been central to her identity. 

Old Afred reassures her that it’s not that the story or the gift of belonging isn’t true, it’s that both the gift and the story “are so much greater than [she’d] ever dreamed.”

In reading this story I empathized with Mira (and not just because we share a name! That’s not why I chose the book!). With the new story from Old Alfred, Mira reasons that since the Others across the river also belong and are compassionate people, the particulars of her people’s story, that the valley was given by the King of Heaven and made for them by giant birds, that those particulars must not be true. I empathized with Mira’s grief because expanding our hearts to include bigger stories and more welcoming narratives can be painful sometimes. It can be so hard to feel like we are losing something of ourselves if we accept another story as true, and especially so when it is a story that tells of who we are, why and how we are here, and what we hold dear. 

Sometimes stories are just stories. But they can also form our identities and actions. A promised land given by the king of heaven for exclusive use by one group of people? That sounds like some stories I’ve been told by mainstream American culture. To me, that sounds like the story of Manifest Destiy. It sounds like the story of exclusivity that is prompting our border crisis right now. It sounds like a story of supremacy. And yet, the kernel of truth in Mira’s village story — that they belonged there and had a relationship with the divine — that part of the story could be true. Mira just needed help to widen the inclusion of that truth. 

We all could use that help sometimes. I found it a week and a half ago, when several thousand UUs from around the country gathered in Spokane for our annual General Assembly of Congregations to worship, learn, conduct business meetings, and build new connections together. This year’s theme was “The Power of We”, and throughout the week, leaders and participants searched our faith for a deeper and bigger love that can hold us all. Many people spoke of justice, of healing, of repair, and of storytelling. 

As we spoke about “The Power of We” it was important to define who we meant when we said “We”. So often in Unitarian Universalism, the most-frequently heard story of our faith is that it was formed from two once-Christian heretical denominations that gained steam in England and New England, and eventually evolved into today’s faith that values building community and getting involved in social justice projects to help others, and incrementally change the world. There is some truth to this story — but it doesn’t contain the whole truth. 

Usually, this story is very white. Often, when white UU leaders talk about “we”, there is an assumption that most of the people in this faith are white, and that our history is white, and that people of color must be converts. On top of making invisible all of the people of color who do grow up in our faith communities, it also erases the stories and histories that people of all backgrounds bring with them when they join our communities. 

At General Assembly, we, the participants, heard from speakers who shared how the diverse stories of their lives across all genres — comedy, tragedy, drama, redemption — how their stories came to deepen their faith and their engagement with Unitarian Universalism. And how, much like “Mira and the Big Story,” claiming an ever-widening definition of “we” gave them the courage and narrative to work towards peace and liberation for ALL of all of us. 

We also heard how these most-often-heard stories, that place whiteness at the center of Unitarian Universalism, that place white people as “normal” UUs and everyone else as “the others”. These stories continue to exclude people of color within our communities and fail to provide the welcome that we say we offer to everyone. The story is that “we” are white, but “we” are also “good” and “welcoming” white people, so people of color ought to feel comfortable here. 

However, rather than being truly welcoming, this untrue and naive story has the unintentional and opposite impact.  The impact of these stories can be as weighty as discrimination in hiring because of a so-called “poor cultural fit”, or as seemingly-inconsequential as people of color being asked if they are new — every single week for years in their home congregation. 

These default stories also pave the way for white people, assuming that we are already open and welcoming enough, to become annoyed, dismissive, or even hostile towards anyone who tells a story of pain and betrayal within our movement — a story that doesn’t fit the default narrative.

Which brings me to my final point: we each can choose, and have a responsibility to choose, which stories to embrace, because our collective survival depends on it. That is the “Power of We”. All of us carry stories about ourselves, our faith, our future, that are limiting in nature. I’ll admit that the story that Unitarian Universalism is a white faith is rooted in some truth — institutionally, this denomination has long been majority-white, and some of the theology that we now celebrate was developed by white people — but that story is also limiting and only a partial truth. 

There have been black and brown Unitarians and Universalists forever, and much of the theology that we now draw on comes from indigenous spirituality, Islam, Black Christianity, Latinx liberation theology, Buddhism, and more. Our saving message — that all people are worthy and that we are all connected — has roots in many places and cultures, and continues to resonate with a vast array of people. Ours is a global faith, with a multicultural and multireligious theology, and made up of so many people who defy the old story of what a UU looks like — people who are young or brown or trans or immigrants or poor, or some combination thereof. 

We have a responsibility to tell a different story about who we are as Unitarian Universalists because this is a faith that saves lives — and not just the lives of the “others” beyond our walls who we engage with our social justice work. Our faith saves the lives of each of us who come through the doors on Sundays and find acceptance and welcome here. We have the aspiration of welcome and beloved community, and we have to embrace the stories that are big enough to hold that hope. 

And just to be clear — we have that aspiration. We need that big story that includes all of the people for whom this faith rings true. But just because that is the story we choose to embrace does not mean that we are off the hook for working towards making it true, or for working against the systems of fear and oppression that narrow the window of belonging. We still have significant work to do in this congregation, and our denomination, and in this increasingly-unsafe nation right now, to make that big, aspirational story of welcome true. 

It has been a long time since the stakes were this high for the importance of which stories we choose. Look at the homelessness right outside our doors. There are literal concentration camps on our border full of children and there have been literal nazis roaming the streets of Portland lately, looking for queer and trans people to harass. We need different stories that urge us to action and to preventing and repairing harm. 

Rev. Susan Frederick Gray, the president of the Unitarian Universalist Association, said at General Assembly, “Incrementalism and progressivism are insufficient in this moment of growing totalitarianism and state violence.  We must show up not just with activism and risk, although we must show up with activism and risk, but also with love. Because the practice of love and the theology of love is the way to dismantle the narratives of hate that fuel state violence and totalitarianism.  Loving one another — risking to protect one another — that is the leadership that is needed, because it is life and death right now, for trans people, for people with disabilities, for people of color. There have been moments when our faith has rested in the belief that change will just come and will be incremental.  We don’t know what’s going to happen, but we must fight and we must love one another.” [3]

As Ursula Le Guine wrote in our responsive reading, “we will not be free if we do not imagine freedom.” We have to first imagine freedom and tell its story, before we can bring it to be. With love, we must tell the story of who we will be, of how we, all of us, will be free together. Knowing what we know of narrative, how the stories we tell elicit compassion, attachment, and changed action, we must begin to be intentional about the stories we tell and embrace about ourselves and the world. 

Rev. Frederick-Gray concluded her homily by saying, “there is a future for Unitarian Universalism where our communities reflect a spirit of compassion and solidarity, where we create space not just to bring our shared interests or our intellects, but our boldness and our brokenness, our dreams and our despair, our vibrancy and our vulnerability…. A future where we build a marginless center and where our communities all have the skills, the language, the spirit, the resources and respect to create places where not only is everyone welcome but everyone is at home. This is the community I want to be a part of. This is the community that I need—for my life, for my strength, for my soul.” [4]

I join Rev. Frederick Grey in this hope and offer in prayer a song by Ma Muse that we sang at each worship at General Assembly. It has also been one of the central songs for the Young Adult Caucus this year. Sing along if you know it. 

We shall be known by the company we keep

By the ones who circle round to tend these fires

We shall be known by the ones who sow and reap

The seeds of change alive from deep within the earth

It is time now — It is time now that we thrive

It is time we lead our selves into the well

It is time now — and what a time to be alive

In this great turning we shall learn to lead in love

In this great turning we shall learn to lead in love

Please join me in a spirit of prayer. 

Spirit of life and love, holder of all that is and that shall be, open our hearts to embrace an ever-widening story of love and belonging. Fortify our spirits to face the grief, anger, and pain that is so present in ourselves and the world right now. Join us, and help us join one another, in the sincere searching of ourselves and our stories and the courageous growth beyond those stories that limit us. Help us to find communities of care when we are lonely and in pain, and help us to become that home of love when others are in need of our embrace. Let us be fierce in our love, resisting the stories of scarcity, hate, dominance, and division that allow unspeakable violence to occur. Let us be present to the joy and beauty around us, and steadfast in our courage. May we be a balm to one another, widening our circle of love to include all those with whom we journey on this planet. 

Amen. Blessed Be. 

[1] Ben Okri, A Way of Being Free (London: Phoenix House, 1997), 46. 

[2] Paul J. Zak, “Why Inspiring Stories Make Us React: The Neuroscience of Narrative” (Cerebrum. 2015 Jan-Feb; 2015: 2.) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4445577/ 

[3] Susan Frederick-Gray. “Saying Yes to the Power of We” Closing Ceremony of the UUA General Assembly 2019. https://www.uua.org/ga/off-site/2019/worship/closing 

[4] Susan Frederick-Gray. “A Love to Change the World” Thursday Morning Worship, UUA General Assembly 2019.  https://www.uua.org/ga/off-site/2019/worship/thursday

Topics: Story