Do We Get to Tell Our Stories?

If people didn’t want to be written about, they should have behaved better.
— Anne Lamott

This week, Religion News Service released a thorough expose of the culture of secrecy around a major Christian-led business, revered by many in the church. At the center of it was a woman who had gone through a divorce from one of the senior leaders and had the audacity to tell her story publicly. A story that contradicted the PR-driven story released by the org and its leaders. She was shamed for disunity and yet continued to tell her version of the events.

I interacted with her briefly on Twitter through a mutual friend, and we discussed the power of secrecy cultures and their ability to centralize power, to shame those at the margins, and to transpose unity with conformity.

For any of us who have lived in or near the epicenters of Christian fundamentalism, you know of which I speak. Alignment with the cause of Christ is so often a ruse for leaders who can’t be questioned, cultures who cannot contain dissent, or free thought of any kind.

As one commenter in our Twitter conversation said, relaying a sermon her pastor preached as he pushed her and her husband out of the church:

“Remember how the Israelites had to be ‘Silent’ when walking around the walls? It was because God didn’t want them complaining about the boss in the parking lot. Obvs.”

The Vice Clamp of Objectivity

One thing I learned in elementary school disputes is that there’s always another side to the story. Any time I tried to seek help from a teacher or authority figure about a schoolyard dispute, I was expected to consider it from their point-of-view. Under this drumbeat, I learned quickly that other people’s stories mattered. Mine, less so. Add to this the skills I’d acquired in sensing and taking responsibility for other people’s needs, silencing my own narrative became a way of life.

So important, in my life, has been the alternative facts, that I’ve learned that my own version of events is the one not to be trusted. The only way forward is with the 360-degree view.

I’ve convinced myself that you are only allowed to tell your story when it aligns with what other people experienced. What their perspective of the events was. If someone didn’t feel like a bully? Then bullying must not have happened. If a person in power had their own pressures and thus justification for not being a caretaker? Then who am I to blame them for not taking care?

I’ve lived under the vice clamp of objectivity, a pressure chamber where we train and retrain to silence our own stories and our own pain under the weight of seeing things from all sides.

Of course, we are mere mortals. And as Gandalf the Grey so wisely stated, “Even the wisest cannot see all ends.” I want to believe him, but a little voice in my head says that the wisest probably damn-well tried. Even though the requirements of absolute objectivity leave us with only one option: silence.

A story is biased. It’s one-sided. My-sided. It is—if it’s to be truthful or even interesting at all—deeply swayed by my experience and my point-of-view. The challenge is believing that my experience matters enough to be told.

Truth is an Addiction

My friend and genius writer, Ruben Rodriguez, says that the truth is an addiction. The more of it people get, the more of it they want. We live in a time where the addictive quality of lies has been in full view. Lies which become conspiracies which become worldviews, which become movements that shatter families, communities, and if taken too far, nations.

But it takes a subtle eye to see that truth has the same power, in reverse. As a person trained in the art of sermon-giving (I’m a recovering pastor, if you’re new here), I’ve always assumed that the purpose of a story is to make a point. That every story is a parable or an Aesop’s fable. Some stories, like the ones I’ve lived, feel like they exist to be a cautionary tale.

But real-life stories aren’t there for the lesson at the end. The value is in the story itself. The value is in the telling. By telling the truth: the truth of what happened to us, how we felt about it, who we blamed—ourselves and others—and what we did next… these are our entry points into truth. They aren’t the whole truth in and of themselves, but we need not live in the vice grips of objectivity.

Our heavily-biased stories are our only gateway drug into truth. If we can’t embrace what happened to us and how we felt about it, if we can’t believe that our singular version of the events mattered, then we cannot get to the place where all the versions matter. I cannot reliably hold your version of this good and terrible world until my hands have held the subtle curves of my own life.

Empathy is an illusion of codependence until it begins with empathy toward ourselves.

Love your neighbor as yourself.
— Jesus of Nazareth.

Which Story Should I Tell?

Should I tell the most dramatic prom story ever told? (Trust me, it’s good.)
Should I tell about how the megachurch commissioned its elders to shut down my church from 1000 miles away?
Should I describe how the only version of my dad’s voice I remember is when he was singing hymns?
Should I recount being pushed into lockers and the unbridled power of the word “fag” in the fundamentalist world I grew up in?
Should I tell the story of all the times I was prayed over to follow my calling to pastor and the decade I spent trying to forgive myself for failing those prayers?

I don’t know. Maybe I should tell all those stories. Maybe I should tell others. I know this: You should tell your stories. You should write them down. Weep over them with a friend over coffee. You should choose a different path than the one that got me here. The one where I spent so many years in a silenced vice grip, that it takes this newsletter, knowing you are out there, and the generous and kind responses I get to these words to bring me back here.

To tell again. To try again. To savor the addiction.

A story is where truth begins.

One thing I’ve learned is that if I am fighting to tell my stories, then many others are as well. Feel free to share to encourage all of the stories to be told.