Monday morning—just about any Monday morning, but this one in September 2008 is a prime example of heading into another week of fear and anxiety. At least that is the invitation streaming into my inbox and coming over the news in dramatic announcements and making headlines on the front page of my neighbor’s newspaper—the one I glance at before he picks it up. The markets are falling, banks are bankrupt, there’s been a horrible train wreck in California, and a dog in Arizona dialed 9-1-1 and barked so frantically into the phone that medical help was dispatched and saved its owner’s life. And somehow American politics has turned into “American Idol.”

It takes me a while to notice that the sun is out, the breeze is soft, the late summer flowers still blooming in the yard, and the garden still producing squash and carrots. It takes a few breaths to look up, smile at my beloved, pet the dogs, call the grown kids in LA and Denver, write my niece in Japan—young people venturing into the world, offering their gifts to an uncertain age. In other words, life in the immediate and the moment is still good. And the “goodness,” the “ordinariness,” the “stability” of anything is impermanent. How do I make story out of this?

Today I’m looking at three aspects of story:

• Story as meaning-maker,
• Story as pattern keeper/breaker,
• Story as path-finder.

The story of meaning is how we got here, how we have strung life together thus far and arrived at our worldview, our beliefs, explained our life circumstances to ourselves an others. We make the world of our history by the stories we hold onto about who we are and how thing are.

The story of pattern-keeping and pattern breaking is how we stand at the edge of all we know and reinforce the stories that got us here, or challenge them and open ourselves to new possibilities. We make the world of the moment by discerning the values within the stories swirling around us and choosing that to follow.

The story of path-finding is how we dream our ways forward, stories of what if, and wow did you hear about the courage of someone else? We make the world we want first in the stories we share—and then in the creativity with which we face our own choices.

So on this Monday morning, I am looking at the onslaught of meaning-making that streams in through printed and electronic media, looking for patterns to keep, patterns to break, and trying to find a path forward.  Here are a few questions that might elicit stories that help:

• Do you remember a childhood moment when being an American (or whatever nationality you are) was significant to you?
• How does that moment live in you now?
• What patterns do you see around you that you cherish and want to keep? What patterns do you want to challenge?
• What or who nourished you today?

Let’s start there—

            Tell me that story. 

Copyright ©2009 Christina Baldwin. All rights reserved.

When my neighbor started emailing me articles about Obama and McCain, I was intrigued—he seemed to be asking me to join in his thought process; he admitted to being unsure who to vote for. It was the first time we had the possibility of getting to know each other beneath chit-chat. We began writing back and forth, and our dialogue reminded me of this story from a few years ago.

In Boston in the early 1990s, when there was increasing violence around abortion clinics, the Center for Public Dialogue called a group of people together, half adamantly anti abortion, and the other adamantly favoring a woman’s right to choose. They asked participants to commit to six months of facilitated conversation to put a human face on the opposition. The primary mode of conversation they used together was story—not opinion.

Nobody changed their position, but they understood the other side better, and they had people on the other side of the issue about whom they cared, and whose life stories they knew. So all these people became in their own ways advocates for tolerance and developed the ability to see abortion as a social issue that was not going to necessarily be “resolved” in their favor, but could be carried socially without that resolution. Violence decreased and the conversationalists became so engaged with each other they stayed together for three years.

Reading about such experiments as this led me to write my book, Storycatcher, about the role story plays in making society possible. One of the things I totally believe after all this work is: stories build bridges, opinions build walls. Opinionating has become a kind of verbal blood sport in our country—with people cheering on one outrageous spokesperson or another as though they were cheering sports teams. But opinion can tear apart the social fabric, and it has. We have become more an us/them society based on polarized pro/con thinking than ever before.

What is possible in story is the chance to learn how people come to hold values and opinions and deep beliefs. So, when someone comes across my path expounding a passionate opinion, I try to find time to ask: What life experience do you think led to this belief?

It’s hard to switch—opinion is a little race-track in the mind, and our thoughts run round and round it, deepening the groove and our sense of being right. But if we are willing to stop rushing by each other and inquire into the story level, we can have an amazing conversation. We can discover what sources our opinions and beliefs about the world and find ways to draw together—even in our differences.

What are you curious about: and who might you be willing to talk to and listen to in story?

Copyright ©2009 Christina Baldwin. All rights reserved.