Sermon on the Mount by Carl Bloch (1877)

Everyone has a story to tell. It may be their life story, a specific experience, or a commentary on the state of the world. Jonesborough, TN even has a story-telling contest. NPR has a series called StoryCorps where they record people’s stories and then donate them to the Library of Congress as part of the American Folklore Collection.

Several years ago I told my story in the form of a memoir. It was poorly written, and it was poorly received. I was still stuck in the role of a victim complaining about the discrimination I had faced. Nobody was interested in my whining.

As I have read more about psychology, I’ve come to understand that sometimes we can become prisoners of our story. We tell ourselves lies to justify our mistakes. We concede our independent thought to the story of our tribe. We subsume our personality into a collection of events in our history. We treat those events as though they were the controlling factors in our experience of living.

I think it’s called epigenetics. We are the product of our genes, but we also are formed by our environment and how that activates certain genes and not others. This interaction of the body and the brain involves the entire field of mental health. Our understanding of the mind is still in a primitive state of development. Yes, we know a lot more about our brains, but that’s only part of the story.

How many times have you been bored at a cocktail party when someone launches into a lengthy diatribe of their story? Well, if you would really listen, you might learn something about them. The dialogue also can be useful in understanding how to interact with others. We learn these skills by listening to their stories and not just reacting with our own judgments.

Jesus used metaphors, similes, and other devices to tell stories (we call them parables.) In fact, they were homilies, or short sermons, about how we are to live. He didn’t use a lot of “should” or “should not,” as was the tradition of the Torah. He taught by example. Use your stories to teach by example and not allow them to become a “monkey on your back.”

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