Your Story and the Power of Community

photo by Diana Turner-Forte, Ellerbe, NC.

May our prayers be protests, our worship become witness, our faith become fuel for change. — Unknown

This past year I’ve spent time listening to other’s stories and sharing my own. It’s been a humbling and vulnerable experience, as well as elevating. When someone really listens to what you are saying, you feel validated and affirmed in every cell of your being.

Deciding what to share and noticing how it is received; hoping against hope that you are not being judged brings up a lot of stuff having to do with trust and human inter-connectiveness. But in the process you reach a point where you really don’t care what someone thinks of you, if you are being honest with yourself! What someone thinks of you is of little importance in the grand scheme of things. Eventually, you even lose that latter bias, as you unravel the deeper truth of yourself.

It’s an honor to be listened to, especially in today’s society. We don’t do a lot of listening—deep listening—without multiple filters, judgements, and disclaimers.

Our best stories come from a place of inner security!

When we are in a safe space, we divulge the deepest truths about ourselves—our sorrows, joys, tragedies, regrets, and dreams; no editing required. The beauty of this storytelling is that the community doesn’t have to be large. It can be as small as 4-5 friends committed to meeting once a month on ZOOM (because we are spread around the world). I can attest to the value of these relationships. What a gift of spirit and nourishment we have provided for each other. And the wisdom!

Community is the container in which the sacred is remembered, practiced, and made real. — Sobonfu Some from Welcoming Spirit Home

Sometimes we end up telling our stories from a place of insecurity. It’s strange how that unfolds but it shows up as a person you don’t even recognize—where showing off the best part of our selves is diminished. We put on a persona that people recognize as untrue over the long run as we end up not honoring what we know about ourselves but what we have been told about ourselves.

Oftentimes imprisoned in the societal framework our real stories get filtered through the impressing and acquiring lens instead of the sharing of pure enchantment of a relationship or new learning.

Rumi reminds us that:

When you do things from your soul, you feel a river flowing in you, of joy.

It’s an amazing thing what you can appreciate in another person, even someone you’ve know for awhile, by engaging in a deep listening of their story—a soul story.

Regardless of what we might think the journey to inner truth is a journey that is way too treacherous to go alone—even for the most independent personalities. It takes courage, depth, and love—all connected by fragile threads that disappear when cast out far beyond our sight. One thing for sure according to Patricia Jabeh Wesley:

What you need to know about me / is not what country I am from / or how many languages I speak / or how I pronounce my name, but that I believe / we are connected / by the simplest thread— / the need to be seen, to be held, to be heard.

“The need to be seen, to be held, to be heard.” Such simple and basic ways of interacting with another person that happens automatically among people just like us; however, when we extend authentic genuine behavior to people we don’t know, who are different from us that’s another story just waiting to emerge.

M. Scott Peck has this to say:

The wisdom of a true community often seems miraculous. . . . The members feel that they have been temporarily—at least partially—transported out of the mundane world of ordinary preoccupations. For the moment it is as if heaven and earth had somehow met.

This is a feeling I can attest to even when the group is as small as two. The third breathing space is filled with something divine that is inexpressible, but pure and from another dimension.

I’ll close with these words from Henri Nouwen from The Genesee Diary:

Community is first and foremost a gift of the Holy Spirit, not built upon mutual compatibility, shared affection, or common interests but upon having received the same divine breath, having been given a heart set aflame by the same divine fire, and having been embraced by the same divine love.