Stories Worth Telling
You may have heard about the Disciple Maker Index. It is a national survey our parish participated in that gave parish leadership all kinds of information to help with planning for the future of the parish. One recommendation for strengthening our community that surfaced from the survey results was that we encourage parishioners to know their faith story and to feel confident sharing it with others.
At the same time new research has come out from a national study that religion is not a first language in our country. While our religious experience is embodied in our beliefs and practices it is also linguistically established. Learning the meaning of what we believe requires practice in talking about how we experience the presence of God in our personal lives.
Knowing the language of religion and its related symbols is central to our spiritual experience and that requires learning this second language. Even if we are surrounded by native speakers like our priests, deacons and teachers we have to practice conversations about faith, rather than just listen to others tell us about God.
Parents have the primary opportunity to do this. Everyday conversation provides the exact kind of sustained practice in learning the second language that will make religious and spiritual life make sense. It is wonderful if a child attends a regular religion class. But if that is the only place where the language of the Spirit, the stories of the heart, are shared, it is like a child going to a weekly meeting in some foreign land where their ancestors lived. A place where people speak that foreign language, which a child hears, but never speaks.
My grandparents came to this country in their mid-twenties. I have often joked that they moved to Pittsfield, Massachusetts and lived in Italy. They communicated in Italian, ate Italian and, aside from assimilating enough to be employed, they pretty much lived the values and culture of the Italian village they came from. Because my dad traveled my mom took us children to live with my grandparents every summer of my childhood. I loved them and the time spent with them, and while the sound of someone speaking Italian brings fond memories, I cannot speak nor converse in Italian. It has a place in my heart but not a working knowledge of how to pass that on to my children.
If you are reading this you probably have God stories- of grace given just when you needed it, of prayer or ritual that kept you tethered to hope in difficult times, deeply held belief in the love of Christ who lived, died, and rose, to give you trust to hold on when experiencing the loss of a loved one. That is what learning this language of faith gives us. Hope in loss, light in dark times, grace and gratitude in the gift of the everyday joys. This is what practicing conversations about faith stories can give us and our children and our children’s children, if we take the time to share the story of the God we know.
