Journal of Sacred Work

Today’s meditation was written by Cathy Self, Senior Vice President for the Baptist Healing Trust.

     Storytelling is believed to be one of the earliest forms of folk art. In its earliest appearing, storytelling was a way to manage long journeys and longer dark nights. For many, storytelling was the purest form of history keeping, a way to pass along the beliefs and traditions of the ancestors and elders. In the Middle Ages, storytelling became the gift of the traveling troubadour who moved from town to town, welcomed in castle and market place alike. As they traveled they gathered new tales and spread them to villages and people who could only imagine what lay beyond the stone walls of their homes. With the invention of the printing press, reading took the place of listening and story telling became an almost lost art. Some of us are blessed to live near places where storytelling is still revered through festivals and fairs. Great storytellers sometimes speak from imagination, while others tell stories from history, and many talk of myths and legends and fables. The best storyteller I’ve known simply speaks from her life.

     She is my mother-in-law, and the stories I hear from this almost 94-year-old are often repeated. She doesn’t remember that she told me the same story just hours earlier in the day. But it doesn’t matter. Her stories are who she is now. She is still the little girl working in Pop’s bakery, covering freshly fried donuts with mountains of powdered sugar. She has within her still the daring and courage of a young woman who traveled alone to the northeast to work in a gun factory while her newly wed husband served overseas during World War II. Her skin is translucent now, and rarely knows the tinge of rouge lifted from the small, round tin purchased decades ago; yet she revels in telling her secrets of beauty and makeup. Behind her words I hear the heart of a woman who has lived a long life, who has loved a family well, and who has carried great pain and made great sacrifice.

     No doubt you have the opportunity to hear many stories. It’s easy to brush by them, our time filled with tasks to be completed. I don’t hear my mother-in-law talking much about life filled with getting the dishes done or the bills paid. As I listen to her tales, I wonder what my stories will be when I am older. Will my stories rise from my imagination, or tell of my history, or will I speak of myths and legends and fables? What is this story I am creating with my life? Is it a story of challenges overcome, of journeys taken, or of tasks accomplished? I’ve been blessed by some whose lives are a living love story – caregivers who are compelled to give because they love the people they serve. In their time of remembering, I doubt they will remember the chart that was perfectly documented. I suspect they will remember, instead, the time spent holding the hand of a father looking for work and worried more about his child’s next meal than about his high blood pressure.

     As you give of yourselves in serving others, what is the story of your life that you are living? What will your life speak when you, too, are old?