In honor of the 50th Anniversary of the ordination of women, the diocese recently invited local women clergy to record their stories of their journey to priesthood, in partnership with the Story Corps organization. When I got the request to sign up, I jumped at the chance. My son Jesse and I had just had an incredible conversation about that very topic during a car trip to Ohio in May. He agreed to recreate it with me when the Story Corp 2024 mobile tour came to Philadelphia. Yesterday we climbed aboard.
Story Corps is a non-profit organizations that collects and records people’s stories, captured in interviews facilitated by family, friends or colleagues. Since the project was started in 2003, National Public Radio has featured weekly snippets of these conversations, the originals of which can be up to 40-minutes. According to its website, Story Corps has “helped nearly 700,000 people across the country have meaningful conversations about their lives.” The recordings are sent to the U.S. Library of Congress and are also accessible from an online archive.
Jesse and I met at the Story Corps Airstream trailer that’s currently parked on the Temple University campus. We sat in a sound-proof room with microphones in front of us and a helpful technical facilitator to help us keep time. It wasn’t quite the meandering conversation that we had when we drove together from Philadelphia to Ohio a few months ago. But it covered much of the same territory.
I have often shared the story of my call and walk to the priesthood in sermons and essays. Because this conversation was with my 30-year-old son, it prompted me to consider more deeply how my own walk to the priesthood affected his life as well. Much of it occurred in his lifetime, starting when he was a year old. Jesse wondered if there were things I missed about the Catholic Church, after I left it to become an Episcopalian. Who were my role models along the way? he asked. I wondered if my leaving church affected his own understanding of church, his trust of the institution. (For answers to these questions and much more, you can listen to the interview when it is complete in six to eight weeks.)
While Story Corps is a secular organization, it understands the sacredness of story. It gets the importance of being able to place our experiences in a narrative arc, to see them as having beginnings and middles, even if the end is still to be determined. So much of what we do as a church involves telling this sacred story – from our Scriptures to our Worship to our coffee hour conversations. The monthly Listening Circles that Linda Toia and Melissa Olson facilitate at St. Peter’s each month are a powerful example of making regular space for people to share their lives through story. The great gift of this ministry is the way it fosters the skill of listening, so that others’ stories can emerge and develop.
Sometimes the most sacred of stories happens on a car trip or at a layover at an airport, when time stretches out and stories can expand to fill the space. Having a few curious questions tucked up our sleaves when the moment arises can be a good way to make space for stories to emerge. Consider whom you would most love to have such a conversation with and imagine one or two open-ended questions to pull out if the opportunity should arise: I’ve always wondered about… Tell me about the time when… I love this about you, and wonder how….
You never know when the invitation will come to call forth someone’s story, to listen to it in fullness, or two share your own. When it does, count it as a sacred gift and allow it the time and space to find its voice.
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