[UUCP] The power of telling our stories

[revpauld444]

Hi everyone,
This is a wonderful example of the power of telling our stories by the
author Laura Lentz.
Peace and Light,
Rev. Paul
****************
I went into the kitchen and announced to my mother’s thighs that I was
Jewish. No, honey, she said. You’re Catholic and that’s why we go to a
church.

Mommy, I said, tugging on the hem of her shorts, I’m Jewish!

She sighed and knelt down to make eye contact with me. How do you even know
that word... and she peered at me with her green Catholic eyes and Jewish
nose, and her dark skin.

I told this story to a friend recently who asked if I was Jewish, but I
told them I’ve never done Ancestry or twenty three and me, but I have a
feeling I am.

She laughed and said you definitely are. Then she used some delightful
yiddish words that lit my soul, which reminded me of an 80-year old
songwriter I worked with who sang a song in yiddish in my living room as
part of his story.

I was eight when my neighbor’s husband introduced me to his friend, a rabbi
from the city. He asked me to join him under the maple tree in a rusted
lawn chair.

I gently ran my fingers over numbers on his arm. He was older than most of
the people I knew and suddenly my mother was standing next to me saying no,
she can’t hear that story. She’s too young.

My mother asked me to go stand by the white fence while she spoke to the
holy man with the long gray beard in hushed tones, shaking her head, biting
her lower lip, looking out over the tops of the trees.

In the end she told me I could hear his story, kissed me on the forehead,
and said the rabbi was like a priest.

Except he’s Jewish, she said, winking at me as she walked away.

He had a soft, deep voice, and he told me his wife and his daughters died,
they were buried in the earth next to him, but he was still alive, and
somehow escaped. I began to cry for his loss. I could taste the the grief
and the dirt on his tongue.

I never loved my family more than in that moment. I knew some day I would
lose them. That day the rabbi awakened death in me, but he also awakened
life.

He pulled me onto his lap and assured me he had another wife and a new
daughter and a son now and his heart had healed, and he was happy again.

I didn't understand then how anyone could be happy after having such a
horrible thing happen to them.

If you are still alive, he said, you must be fully alive.

And I suppose this was my very first lesson in witnessing another person’s
grief through story. I held his story as gently as I would hold a warm egg
I wanted to put back into the nest.

The rabbi had lifted me into the story that happened long before I was
born, but when I peered into his eyes I saw whole galaxies and the dark
matter that keeps those galaxies together. I saw how the past and the
future and this moment had all braided into one.

We were all tied to each other’s stories and each other’s grief, no matter
the religion or the year or the age.

I may never do Twenty Three and Me because the branches on my family tree
broke off years ago. Most days I don’t want to find the truth of my
mother’s father or her twin sister who was given away in the middle of the
night.

Other days I can hear the spirit of my mother saying, go ahead, you need to
know where you came from.

But I already know I belong to you, and you belong to me.

Since that afternoon, I have never shied away from hearing anyone’s story,
no matter how hard it is for them to tell. My mother gave me that gift so
many years ago by saying yes before she was sure if I was ready.

Listening to story can offer us a moment of deep connection and divine
grace.

It’s the only way forward in this messy world.


-- 
Rev. Paul S. Dodenhoff
Unitarian Universalist Congregation of the Palisades
Englewood, NJ 07631
uucpalisades.org
revpauld444 at gmail.com
551-427-2648

*"God is not a Christian. God is not a Jew or a Muslim or a HIndu or a
Buddhist. All of those are human systems which human systems have created
to help us walk into the mystery of god. I honor my tradition, I walk
through my tradition, but I don't think my tradition defines god, it only
points me to god**…**You and I are not fallen people. We are emerging
people.**”**  ~~~ John Shelby Spong*
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://uuserver.org/pipermail/uucp_uuserver.org/attachments/20220724/79d5c3f0/attachment.htm>