Sunday Service

Stories are told as spells for binding the world together. 

~ John Rouse

There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you. 

~ Maya Angelou

I now see how owning our story and loving ourselves through that process is the bravest thing that we will ever do.

~ Brené Brown

At some point we have to understand that we do not need to carry a story that is unbearable. We can observe the story, which is mental; feel the story, which is physical; let the story go, which is emotional; then forgive the story, which is spiritual.

~ Joy Harjo

storytelling is a way to give someone an experience they haven’t had yet, or maybe didn’t even know was possible. 

~ adrienne maree brown

Those without power risk everything to tell their story and must. Someone, somewhere will hear your story and decide to fight, to live and refuse compromise.

~ Laura Hershey

The question is not so much ‘What do I learn from stories?’ as ‘What stories do I want to live?

~ David Loy

I can only answer the question ‘What am I to do?’ if I can answer the question ‘Of what story or stories do I find myself a part?’

~ Alasdair MacIntyre

You are the main character in the story of your life, but other people are the main characters of their own lives. And sometimes you can find healing just by playing a supporting role in someone else's experience.

~ Timothy Kurek

A good story is one that makes you good, or at least better.

~ Daniel Taylor

Listening to both sides of a story will convince you that there is more to a story than both sides.

~ Frank Tyger

(Curated and adapted for KUF from the 2025 Soul Matters materials on the theme ‘Story)

January 5, 2024

This list of questions is an aid for deep reflection. How you answer them is often less important than the journey they take you on. So, read through the list of questions 2-3 times until one question sticks out for you and captures your attention, or as some faith traditions say, until one of the questions “shimmers.” 

Then reflect on that question using one or all of these questions: 

• What is going on in my life right now that makes this question so pronounced for me?

• How might my inner voice be trying to speak to me through it?

• How might Life or my inner voice be trying to offer me a word of comfort or challenge through this question?

1. In your family of origin, what story was told about you? Were you the funny one? The talented one? The troublemaker? The quiet one? The clumsy one? The rebel? The leader? The smart one? The difficult one? The “good” one? How has that story about you lived on, either by supporting your growth and relationships or by hindering them?

2. What’s your fondest memory of being read to as a child?

3. If you had to put the current stage of your life into a genre right now, what genre would it be? Mystery? Romance? Thriller? Fantasy? Young adult? Fiction? Non-fiction? Satire? Self-help? Travel?

4. If you were to put the story of your childhood into a genre, what would it be? And what moment pivoted your life from that genre to another? 

5. What story told by or about your ancestors has shaped or supported you the most?

6. Twenty years from now, when we tell the story of our current political situation, how do you think that story will differ from the way you are telling it today?

7. Is it time to forgive your story for having a life of its own?  

8. What do you leave out of the telling of your life story that wants to be let back in?

9. When it comes to the story of your life right now, which best describes you: A character in it? The author of it? The editor of it? The bookseller/promoter of it? 

10. Authors go to great pains to write “in their own voice.” So far, have you written your life story in your own voice?

11. Have you ever been healed or saved by a story?

12. Is it possible that your story of facing headwinds is blinding you to the many winds at your back?   

13. What stories of survival, hope and connection are carried in the scars, aches and shape of your body? What might it mean to thank your body for the stories it has carried?

14. As your child’s identity started to bloom, what story did you tell yourself about how their life would unfold? Were you close?

15. What is one story you hope will be told at your funeral?

16. What’s your question? Your question may not be listed above. As always, if the above questions don't include what life is asking from you, spend the month listening to your days to find it. 

(Curated and adapted for KUF from the 2025 Soul Matters materials on the theme ‘Story’)

It’s dangerous to tell yourself stories are tame. To treat them as something that lives only between the covers of a book. As something that can be easily kept on a shelf, taken down and put back up as we see fit. Stories are wilder than that. And more powerful.

This month is all about remembering that power.    

Indeed, who of us hasn’t felt controlled by a story? Stuck in a story? Hopeless about the way our story will end up? Simply put, our stories often write us as much as we write them.

For instance, the author Rachel Naomi Remen talks about how her family clings to the childhood story of her being the clumsy one of the family. Ask her adult friends and colleagues and they will describe her as graceful. They’ve never once seen her trip over her own feet or drop something. And yet, somehow, when Rachel goes back to her parents’ house or attends a family reunion, she spills coffee on at least one outfit, stubs more than one toe and trips on more steps than she can count. By trying so hard to escape her family’s narrative about clumsy little Rachel, she inevitably slips into it anew. Talk about the power of story!

That power plays out on a social level as well. Just think about our cultural struggles with economic or racial justice. The unconscionable income gap is often described as “natural” or “the result of complex global dynamics over which we have little control.” Similarly, the story of race in our country is too often told as an “entrenched” story or minimized with a story about “how far we have come.” The aim of all these cultural narratives is the same: to undermine action, and worse, to undermine our belief that things can change.

Which is why it’s so important to remember that the ability to tell a new story has been at the center of our faith from the beginning. We rarely think of our UU history this way, but one of the beliefs that gave birth to our religion was the belief that human beings are authors of their stories, not passive characters in them.

It all goes back to that old theological debate for which our UU forebearers gave their lives. All around them people were saying that God had “predestined” not just the big story of humanity, but our smaller individual stories too. Supposedly, the argument went, some of us were slotted for heaven and others for hell. And God had written this list of sinners and saints in ink before the beginning of time. So there was nothing any of us could do about it. 

“Well,” said our spiritual ancestors, “that’s a bit harsh, don’t you think?!” And from there, they argued for a different way of seeing things. “Forget this extreme fate-driven story,” they said. “Freedom has a much bigger role than you’ve been told. God is not so much the all-controlling author of the world’s story as she is the magical muse that lovingly lures us to make our narratives our own.” Shakespeare said, “All the world’s a stage.” Our spiritual ancestors basically said the same thing but with a friendly amendment added. And it went something like this: “All the world is an improv performance! Our job is to hop on the stage, pick up the storyline handed to us, and then put our own stamp on it!” 

So fate and freedom. This month is much more about the tension between these two than one might have thought, leaving us with questions like: Are you an actor conforming to the scripts of others? Or have you found your way to becoming the director and screenwriter of your life? How are you struggling right now to regain control of your storyline? How are you and your friends working to regain control of the storyline of your community, and our country? 

No matter which question is ours, the answer, friends, is the same: Don’t give the storyline away.

(Curated and adapted for KUF from the 2024 Soul Matters materials on the theme ‘Story')

Ask Them About Stories

One of the best ways to explore our monthly themes is to have conversations about them with people who are close to you. It’s also a great way to deepen our relationships! Below is a list of questions to help you on your way. Be sure to let your conversation partner know in advance that this won’t be a typical conversation. Telling them a bit about Soul Matters will help set the stage. Remember to also answer the questions yourself as they are meant to support a conversation, not just a time of quizzing them.

• In your family of origin, what story was told about you? Were you the funny one? The talented one? The troublemaker? The quiet one? The clumsy one? The rebel? The leader? The smart one? The “good” one? The difficult one? How has that story about you lived on, either by supporting your growth and relationships or by hindering them?

• What’s your fondest memory of being read to as a child?

• If you had to put the current stage of your life into a genre right now, what genre would it be? Mystery? Romance? Thriller? Fantasy? Young adult? Fiction? Non-fiction? Satire? Self-help? Travel?

• What story told by or about your ancestors has shaped or supported you the most?

• What stories of survival, hope and connection are carried in the scars, aches and shape of your body? 

• Have you ever been healed or saved by a story?

• What is one story you hope will be told at your funeral?

(Curated and adapted for KUF from the 2024 Soul Matters materials on the theme ‘Story’)

The Stories Held by Your Home

Our homes don’t just provide us shelter. They also hold and contain our stories. The old family couch helps us hold on to our father who sat there finishing the crosswords after work. The living room is where we took the picture of our daughter and her prom date. The phone in the hallway was the one where we first heard the news of the diagnosis. The kids’ room contained their cradle, bunkbed and eventually the big “Keep Out!” sign on the door. The fireplace kept us warm after the break up. The kitchen table speaks of so many good friends who fed us with much more than food. In short, each room in our house has a tale to tell. Even a few tales to tell!  

So, this month, use your creativity to explore these stories held by your home (either your current home or childhood home). Here are suggestions for how to go about it:

• Take a picture of each room in your current house or find pictures of a previous house or your childhood home. Then write a paragraph about a memory that happened in those rooms and what it meant to you. Consider placing each picture and paragraph on a single sheet and assembling them all into something akin to a scrapbook.

• Walk around your house and record yourself and/or a family member telling a story connected to each room. Make copies of the recording and give it to other family members as a gift.

• Paint or draw a representation of your home (or a past home of yours) with a single word written within each room that captures the emotion connected to it.

Here are some things to think about as you go about this exercise:

• Which room represents the “heart” of the house for you?

• Which room contains the most memories and what does that say about you and/or your family?

• Do any of the rooms have a distinctive voice?

• Is there a room in your house that has yet to feel like it is yours?

• Did your house/home heal you in any way?

• What did this exercise teach you about “home”?

• If you were to thank your home for the gifts it gave you, what would you say?

(Curated and adapted for KUF from the 2024 Soul Matters materials on the theme ‘Story')

In an age of speed, I began to think, nothing could be more invigorating than going slow. In an age of distraction, nothing can feel more luxurious than paying attention. And in an age of constant movement, nothing is more urgent than sitting still.

~ Pico Iyer

The Persian poet Kabir wrote: “I laugh when I hear that the fish in the sea is thirsty.” Are you thirsty for the divine? The sacred? The clear light of awakening? All around you, the world is wet with it.

~ Daniel Shkolnik

There’s something about the holidays that invites the presence of lost loved ones into our awareness. So many things become doorways through which these beloveds return. An old ornament. A Christmas carol. The lights of the menorah or a simple candle flickering in a window. The smell of their favorite pie. Wrapping paper and the memory of how much they loved matching it with the gift. Or just everyone laughing and you noticing the absence of theirs. So many doorways. But only if we keep an eye out will they step through. 

~ Scott Tayler  

Sometimes, the emptiness left by a loved one's absence is more powerful than their presence ever was.

~ Simon Van Booy

I didn’t know I would be

the kind of woman

who talks to the dead,

who narrates the day,

who believes they hear me

after midnight when I whisper

I miss you…

How strangely wondrous

life can be after a loss.

I feel their presence in the listening,

feel how the listening wraps

its tender arms around me,

feel how gently the listening

leans in to cradle my face

with silence.

~ Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

Few skills are more essential than the ability to settle your body… When your body settles, it relaxes into its own experience in the present moment. It accepts whatever is happening, including any pain that you may need to acknowledge and metabolize.

~ Resmaa Menakem

Drink your tea slowly and reverently, as if it is the axis on which the earth revolves – slowly, evenly, without rushing toward the future. Live the actual moment. Only this moment is life.

~ Thich Nhat Hanh

Beauty and grace are performed whether or not we will or sense them. The least we can do is try to be there.

~ Annie Dillard

I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, 'If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is.'

~ Kurt Vonnegut

(Curated and adapted for KUF from the 2024 Soul Matters materials on the theme ‘Presence')

Videos & Podcasts

Nick Cave on Loss, Yearning & Transcendence

https://onbeing.org/programs/nick-cave-loss-yearning-transcendence/

Be Kind (On small acts of repair that mean so much!)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1eKoOoOTvgk&t=16s

These Three Natural Things Can Repair You...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xXPLbcsDOJQ

The Museum of Broken Relationships

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMNdTZhQ1TU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R6Q731asMtg

How Trauma Lodges in the Body

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tnKxZqObIWk

Related Video HERE

Related book HERE

Repair & Needlework

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EITLA0fvx0I

On how mending and stitching the clothes outside us repairs what is torn inside us.

Visible Mending

https://psyche.co/films/a-whimsical-ode-to-the-reparative-power-of-knitting-rendered-in-wool

Two more needleworkers and knitters testify to creativity’s power to help us repair and heal.

Stitching Our Wounds, Andrea Gibson

https://www.tiktok.com/@andreagibsonpoetry/video/7242840039527386414

Articles

A Slower Urgency

https://www.bayoakomolafe.net/post/a-slower-urgency

“In ‘hurrying up’ all the time, we often lose sight of the abundance of resources that might help us meet today’s most challenging crises…” 

Grief is Healing in Motion

https://toko-pa.com/2019/07/24/grief-is-healing-in-motion/

“Grief plays an essential role in our coming undone from previous attachments. It is the necessary current we need to carry us into our next becoming…”

The Sounds of Grief

https://mariandrew.substack.com/p/the-sounds-of-grief

Might repairing from grief be more about the sounds of grief than the famous five stages?

Want to Fix Your Mind? Let Your Body Talk

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/18/magazine/somatic-therapy.html


(Curated and adapted for KUF from the 2024 Soul Matters materials on the theme ‘Repair)