+Porter Taylor
7/8/09
Yesterday Marshall Ganz from Harvard University’s Kennedy School spoke of the importance of story as we began the Public Narrative Project. I have been thinking about what an odd event General Convention is. It’s too long; it’s too big; it’s too confusing. However, I began to think, maybe we need this much time and this many interactions to tell our stories to one another and find our place in the eternal story of Christ dying and rising over and over again.
One of our society’s primary ills is that people’s individual stories are not located in anything bigger than themselves. It’s the world of me. Our opportunity as The Episcopal Church is to spread the Good News that all people can connect to the mystery of faith: “Christ has died; Christ is risen; Christ will come again.” But we have know that ourselves which means connecting with one another and to do that which takes time. I wonder if the important part of Convention is during the breaks or the meals. That’s when those of us from the South say, “Where you from? Tell me about your people.” In other words, “What’s your story?”
I am on the Education Committee. Our hearings begin early in the morning and continue into what feels for me to be late in the night. However, it’s a wonder to hear of people’s passions as they tell their story. They come and tell why it’s important to have a curriculum for Province IX or funding for our camps or a Charter for Christian Formation. They tell their story, and then we aren’t talking about causes but about faces and histories and real lives. We connect.
So I am slowly being converted to this long and confusing process. When I became a bishop, I argued for a two day General Convention. I may not be up for ten days, but I can see we time to talk. John Shea says, “We turn our pain into narrative so we can bear it; we turn our ecstasy into narrative so we can prolong it; we tell our stories to live.”
We tell our stories so that we catch a glimpse of the Body of Christ and that’s always worth the time.
7/8/09
Yesterday Marshall Ganz from Harvard University’s Kennedy School spoke of the importance of story as we began the Public Narrative Project. I have been thinking about what an odd event General Convention is. It’s too long; it’s too big; it’s too confusing. However, I began to think, maybe we need this much time and this many interactions to tell our stories to one another and find our place in the eternal story of Christ dying and rising over and over again.
One of our society’s primary ills is that people’s individual stories are not located in anything bigger than themselves. It’s the world of me. Our opportunity as The Episcopal Church is to spread the Good News that all people can connect to the mystery of faith: “Christ has died; Christ is risen; Christ will come again.” But we have know that ourselves which means connecting with one another and to do that which takes time. I wonder if the important part of Convention is during the breaks or the meals. That’s when those of us from the South say, “Where you from? Tell me about your people.” In other words, “What’s your story?”
I am on the Education Committee. Our hearings begin early in the morning and continue into what feels for me to be late in the night. However, it’s a wonder to hear of people’s passions as they tell their story. They come and tell why it’s important to have a curriculum for Province IX or funding for our camps or a Charter for Christian Formation. They tell their story, and then we aren’t talking about causes but about faces and histories and real lives. We connect.
So I am slowly being converted to this long and confusing process. When I became a bishop, I argued for a two day General Convention. I may not be up for ten days, but I can see we time to talk. John Shea says, “We turn our pain into narrative so we can bear it; we turn our ecstasy into narrative so we can prolong it; we tell our stories to live.”
We tell our stories so that we catch a glimpse of the Body of Christ and that’s always worth the time.
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