"Add-On" Stories & The Stories We Choose

Photo by Rabie Madaci on Unsplash

“The significance—and ultimately the quality—of the work we do is determined by our understanding of the story in which we are taking part.” —Wendell Berry

My daughter, Amelia, was a very precocious little girl and an exuberant early talker. By exuberant I mean, non-stop-run-on-stunningly-astute-commentary-in-surprisingly-grown-up-language-about-anything-and-everything-she-was-thinking-about-or noticing-around-her-or-within-her-in-that-particular-moment. By the time she was two and a half years old, random people near us in the grocery check out line, who overheard my daughter’s ongoing narration, would look at me quizzically and ask, “How old IS that child?” She loved ideas and thoughts and stories and language from the very beginning. One of the games we would play was called “add on stories” in which I would start with a phrase “Once upon a time there was a little girl and—” Amelia would take up the thread and add her own piece of the story, “and and and she was a princess and artist and dancer and a paleontologist and one day she found a puppy and—”. I would respond with “and the puppy was as big as a small pony, but very sweet and well behaved for such a very young dog, and the puppy said to the little girl….” You get the idea. I loved those add on stories and how they would wind around and go all kinds of unexpected places —remember this is the same child that at three years old told me that for Halloween she wanted to dress as a fairy with real wings or NPR’s Linda Wertheimer. Anyway, I loved that the stories we created were on-going and often based in the stuff of our real lives and yet infused with the power of our imaginations, our dreams and sometimes longings.

Human beings, we love stories. We live our lives through the stories we tell, the stories we hold dear, the stories we let go—and the stories we tell or hold or lift up or value can shift our perception or frame our reality. Stories matter.

Tomorrow on January 20th, there will be two stories presented. January 20th is our national holiday celebrating the birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., a day when many communities, like my own, will celebrate the stories of resilience, the spirit of service and the power of living into a deep and abiding love-ethic. We will be honoring the stories of those who worked for justice and the dignity of all people, as well as ongoing movements for a better world based in love, animated by love and lifted up to greater expressions of love. On Monday we honor stories that are real and lasting, stories of hope and faithfulness, of courage and deeply ethical living.

I think it is important to say clearly that our celebration of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s life is not a story that ended after his tragic assassination in 1968, but instead essentially one of our greatest and most honorable “add on stories”. We honor the work that has come before, we take humble and grateful insight from those who have faced enormous challenges and suffering and did not quit - even in the face of grievous cost. In terms of the concept of power, Dr. King wrote, “Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands against love.” We decide the kind of power we choose to believe in, and the power we hope to build upon each in our own way, through our own daily actions.

There will be another very different story presented on Monday January 20th. There will be a new president who has based his entire life and political career on self serving opportunism, a man who has used fear, hate, division and deceit as simply a way of grasping and holding power. This is a man who promotes a story that would deepen and strengthen the worst “isms” of our society.

To be sure, this is the beginning of a new and dangerous regime, but it is an old story that is essentially unoriginal and without the kind of true power Dr. King described. In the story of this new regime, there is no room for anything that is truly expansive, no room for our highest values, no room for the good we can imagine and then create, there is no room for spiritual growth, only spiritual decay.

And so we choose, although I imagine for many of us, it is a choice we made long ago and now reaffirm. We choose the kind of story in which we will participate, the story that we want to ground our lives and actions. We choose the story that we would like to be a part of, to add-on, expand and support. We can choose a story that lifts us all, that empowers us all, and that holds dear the long arc of justice, that removes and corrects “ everything that stands against love.”

I remember the first time I drove across the Great Plains and how it felt watching a huge storm cloud coming in from miles away. In the weeks since the November election I’ve thought often of that storm cloud, and now its here. In the coming months and years we are going to need to hold close the stories that keep us resilient and bold. We are going to need the stories that help us to embrace what is so beautiful and joyous in our lives. We are going need to help one another remember that the some of the most powerful stories often have moments where events go someplace we did not expect — taking us to beautiful places astonishing in their sense of hallelujah—or sometimes to places where our dreams were undone, only to be found again, rediscovered, picked up and carried forward.

We are going to need one another because the add-on story we are choosing to participate in, the story of revolutionary love we stand beside, is not ours to carry alone, but a story we carry together, that we will keep telling, keep reimaging and co-creating, We can do this hard thing…yes we can.

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Question

If you are choosing to “add-on” to a story of revolutionary love, let us hear from you…..”I’m here and I choose (add what part of the story you are choosing)” I’ll start

“I’m here and I choose clarity, courage and living faithful to a love-ethic.” - Carrie

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Music Always Music

I want to encourage folks to listen to music on Monday that lifts you up, that speaks truth to power, that reminds us we are not powerless, we are great with love and we are many.

This is a song I’ve posted before, but it feels right to post again. This is a community version of a song I recorded on my album The Beautiful Not Yet. I created this community project at the beginning of the Covid Pandemic using videos from people all over the USA & Canada who wanted to be part of a message of courage and encouragement. It ended up being a beautiful “add-on” story we shared at that time, and glad to share with you now. Its called, “You Can Do This Hard Thing: A Community Project” and I’m posting it because…yes we can. Note - do watch to the end, the outtakes people sent are truly wonderful!

This is a second song that appeared on my album Until Now. Its called “When the Wolf Is At The Door.” Most of the songs on Until Now were written during the Covid pandemic, and this one feel appropriate as we watch a storm coming in this week. But in this song is the acknowledgement of what was hard and dangerous, but also that we have the courage and strength to weather this storm… and that in all times of change and crisis there is an opportunity to not just be changed, but transformed.

One Inch Photos

Because the story in which I am taking part in… includes such things.

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