A Different Story…

Setting our clocks back over this past weekend brought the arrival of the night earlier, reminding us that the hours of darkness will grow here in the northern hemisphere until the Winter Solstice.

For eons we’ve told stories in the dark to keep hopes alive, fears away, and to be entertained until we’re ready to let our minds relax and sleep to come.

Sometimes we’re telling our own story to build trust and connection with people and other times we’re being reminded of the transformative power of the stories in the Bible or the epic tales of our favorite legends and heroes.

In the opening pages of her exquisite book Night Visions, Jan Richardson invites us to explore the stories of Advent and Christmas in new ways, bringing who we are now and our own journey into the story. Whatever your faith tradition, her invitation also serves as a reminder that we can engage with our own story in new ways. Perhaps we can even begin to tell a different story!

“As my life unfolds and my perspective changes, I realize that each telling of a story reveals part of the whole, but does not contain the whole story in itself. The stories I tell are continually shaped by my changing understanding of events, conversations, feelings, influences, the people around me, and of my own self.”

―Jan Richardson

As we move into the heart of the holiday season and approach the close of 2025, we invite you to consider where in your life it’s time to tell a different or even new story. Maybe your different story is about how you choose to experience the holidays or how you speak about a mistake you made long ago that you’ve let define you…until now. Or maybe, it’s about how you engage with the stories of your family, country, or faith.

What’s your defining story for this  season, this year, and your life? For now.

May you be blessed with the awareness of the power of stories and how you can choose at any time to engage with them in new and exciting ways…to bring fresh light to your own story.

With Each Telling…

“The understanding of my past continues to change according to the experiences of my present. With each telling, more of the story comes to light…”

—Jan Richardson

A New Story…

“It’s like everyone tells a story about themselves inside their own head. Always. All the time. That story makes you what you are. We build ourselves out of that story.”

― Patrick Rothfuss

Blessing For Waking

This blessing could
pound on your door
in the middle of
the night.

This blessing could
bang on your window,
could tap dance
in your hall,
could set a dog loose
in your room.

It could hire a
brass band
to play outside
your house.

But what this blessing
really wants
is not merely
your waking
but your company.

This blessing
wants to sit
alongside you
and keep vigil
with you.
This blessing
wishes to wait
with you.

And so
though it is capable
of causing a cacophony
that could raise
the dead,
this blessing
will simply
lean toward you
and sing quietly
in your ear
a song to lull you
not into sleep
but into waking.

It will tell you stories
that hold you breathless
till the end.

It will ask you questions
you never considered
and have you tell it
what you saw
in your dreaming.

This blessing
will do all within
its power
to entice you
into awareness

because it wants
to be there,
to bear witness,
to see the look
in your eyes
on the day when
your vigil is complete
and all your waiting
has come to
its joyous end.

—Jan Richardson, Circle of Grace.