SHARING OUR STORIES, OUR SELVES

Everybody is a story. When I was a child, people sat around kitchen tables and told their stories. We don't do that so much anymore. Sitting around the table telling stories is not just a way of passing time. It is the way the wisdom gets passed along. The stuff that helps us to live a life worth remembering. Despite the awesome powers of technology, many of us still do not live very well. We may need to listen to each other's stories again. (By Rachel Naomi Remen, M.D. Kitchen Table Wisdom, Introduction, p. xxvii.)


The kitchen table is a level playing field. Everyone's story matters. The wisdom in the story of the most educated and powerful person is often not greater than the wisdom in the story of a child, and the life of a child can teach us as much as the life of a sage.

Most parents know the importance of telling children their own stories, over and over again, so that they come to know in the tellings, who they are and to whom they belong. At the kitchen table we do this for each other. Hidden in all the stories is the One story. The more we listen, the clearer that Story becomes. Our true identity, who we are, why we are here, what sustains us, is in this story. The stories at every kitchen table are about the same things, stories of owning, having and losing, stories of sex, of power, of pain, of wounding, of courage, hope, and healing, of loneliness and the end of loneliness. Stories about God.

In telling them, we are telling each other the human story. Stories that touch us in this place of common humanness awaken us and weave us together as a family once again. (Kitchen Table Wisdom, Introduction, p. xxviii-xxix.)


I suspect that the most basic and powerful way to connect to another person is to listen. Just listen. Perhaps the most important thing we ever give each other is our attention. And especially if it is given from the heart. When people are talking, there's no need to do anyhthing but receive them. Just take them in. Listen to what they are saying. Care about it. Most times caring about it is even more important than understanding it. (Kitchen Table Wisdom, p. 143.)


Listening is the oldest and perhaps the most powerful tool of healing. It is often through the quality of our listening and not the wisdom of our words that we are able to effect the most profound changes in the people around us. When we listen, we offer with our attention an opportunity for wholeness. Our listening creates sanctuary for the homeless parts within the other person. That which is denied, unloved, devalued by themselves and others. That which is hidden. In this culture the soul and the heart often go homeless. Listening creates a holy silence. When you listen generously to people, they can hear truth in themselves, often for the first time. And in the silence of listening, you can know yourself in everyone. Eventually you may be able to hear, in everyone and beyond everyone, the unseen singing softly to itself and to you. (Kitchen Table Wisdom, p. 219-220.)