Engaging the Stories that Shape Us 

“Stories keep us human, connected to the core of who we are and what we want to pass on to future generations.” Passion kindles behind Kaitlin Curtice’s eyes as she discusses her most recent book, Everything Is A Story: Reclaiming the Power of Stories to Heal and Shape Our Lives. On March 11, Curtice will lead a reading and workshop at the Evanston Public Library, the capstone event in a visit to Garrett Seminary where she will also guide students about how they can employ storytelling in their ministries. The library event, however, is free and open to the public—inviting everyone and anyone to consider how our lives are shaped by stories, and the ways we can harness narrative to better root ourselves for growth and healing. Organized and sponsored by Garrett’s Center for Ecological Regeneration, this expansive invitation bears the characteristic generosity of Curtice’s prose, beckoning the world toward transformation. “Stories are the music we set to our own survival as humans,” she observes. “Communities, peoples, and cultures have survived, thrived, and endured really difficult times through storytelling.”

Throughout Everything Is A Story, Curtice uses an oak tree to describe a story’s life cycle. Sprouted from the acorns we gather as children, narratives provide the tender shoots that nurture our dreams and longing. As in any garden, some of those nascent stories don’t survive, clearing space for others to flourish. Others continue to grow, yielding sturdy branches that support our weight and offer shelter from life’s passing storms. Some may even become towering trees that linger long past our own finite lives, offering acorns to the people who follow. “We don’t know which stories will become the past for future generations,” Curtice notes. “But we can hope that the ones we focus on today will help prepare them for the journey.”

An enrolled citizen of the Potawatomi nation, reflection on indigeneity has been a fixture of Curtice’s work since her widely-acclaimed debut Native: Identity, Belonging, and Rediscovering God. Here, this focus manifests as both praise for the role elders play as oral storytellers and a corrective against ever-shorter, market-driven attention spans. “The colonized mindset doesn’t honor our relationship to seasons or the earth, and its linear focus also doesn’t have space for thinking and living cyclically,” she explains. “I was with an elder recently where the whole point of us being together was just so I can listen to him, to be a sponge for a while. The Western mindset doesn’t value the patience and humility it takes to really sit with someone and listen to their story.” This Evanston Library gathering will create space for a deliberate slowness, to open participants to the rewards it offers. “We don’t sit well. We don’t listen well,” Curtice laughs. “Stories call us back: When they’re spoken into the air, they’re a gift from the person offering them to the people receiving them. That reciprocity is a sacred act.”

We will gather, however, while living through myriad stories’ disastrous effects. Curtice is not shy in naming that—while stories are uniquely powerful—power can cause harm as well as healing. “I categorize stories as loving, lethal, or liminal,” she explains. “Some stories are about kinship, care, and how we connect with each other. Some foster war, oppression, hatred, colonialism, and greed. Other stories are liminal—we’re not quite sure what to do with them, and it’s okay not to know where a story fits.” But understanding how widespread calamities are grounded in lethal stories provides a lens for how we can mindfully engage. “We have to decide how we want to be a part of those cycles,” Curtice says. “We’re not made for the bombardment of stories that we are experiencing right now, our nervous systems’ literally are not designed to hold all of this. Solidarity, kinship and care matter on every level, but we also must focus that energy.” Sometimes, a liberative ethic means confronting lethal stories. Other times, it means disentangling from narratives that confine our moral imagination so we can invest in a love that might supplant them. “We have to choose where and how we align our work,” she concludes.

Ultimately, Curtice hopes this collective gathering can offer participants tools for that discernment. “From the micro stories we tell ourselves or our families to the macro stories that structure our world, I want us to consider and understand them as living beings,” she says. “Whenever I spend time with people, I want them to leave feeling empowered—to know that they have agency in the stories they’re part of, and to know that engaging them will look different for each of us. But life can be overwhelming and difficult, and I want us to remember we’re never alone.”