Tag: storytelling

“Political Functions of Storytelling”

In her book After Empire, Sharon D Welch talks about Iris Marion Young’s “political functions of storytelling”:

  1. Storytelling may bring into public discourse an experience of oppression that is not recognized within existing categories of immoral or criminal activity. The example that Young gives is sexual harassment. Through personal stories, such experiences have moved from being regarded as merely a private matters to a widespread recognition of the social and political ramifications of such an abuse of power.
  2. When people disagree about what counts as a social problem or how social conflicts can best be addressed, narrative may reveal “the source of values, priorities, or cultural meanings.” It is easier to engage in productive disagreement and conflict when we more thoroughly understand the multiple reasons that people have for holding ideas we may see as erroneous or dangerous.
  3. Narrative can help us understand the effects that policies and actions are likely to have on individuals in different social situations. No matter how open our understanding, we cannot know the world from all locations and from all points of view. We need the insights of others to overcome our stereotypes and limited vision.

From Sharon D. Welch’s book After Empire. Her thoughts are based on Iris Marion Young’s Inclusion and Democracy (Oxford Political Theory).

Var að horfa á Ernie Els á 12.

Það var heitt í Dublin, Ohio í dag þegar síðasti hringurinn var spilaður í Memorial meistaramótinu. Þegar ég sá Byrd taka magnaðan örn á 7. holu hélt ég að hann myndi hafa þetta, enda var Tiger Woods nokkuð á eftir.
Ég sat síðan við 12. holu og horfði á Ernie Els, þegar “Tiger Roar” heyrðist frá þeirri 11. og það barst hratt á milli að Tiger hefði náð einhverju ótrúlegu höggi fyrir örn.
Eftir það virtist Tiger vera eini maðurinn í keppninni. Þar sem ég stóð við klúbbhúsið sá ég síðan Byrd klúðra 18 holunni illa og Ernie Els sömuleiðis meðan Tiger tók 18. holuna á þremur höggum og náði enn einum fugli dagsins.
Ég fann svolítið til með Michael Letzig í dag, spilafélaga Tigers. Það er sjálfsagt ekki auðvelt að spila þegar áhorfendur byrja að labba í burtu þegar þú átt eftir högg en spilafélagi þinn hefur lokið leik. Enda var þetta versti dagur Letzig í mótinu.
En hvað um það, góður dagur í Dublin, í 31 stigs hita og glampandi sól.

Leadership in Small Churches

The preacher is the chief storyteller of the congregation’s story and knows the value of telling and retelling it on the occasion when most people are gathered and receptive to the storyteller’s spell, that is, the sermon. This is especially valuable to small membership churches, where neglect of history to the point of institutional amnesia is a telling symptom of a lack of corporate self-esteem. A small membership church that cannot tell its own story is prey to a fabricated story told about it from outside by an unfriendly critic. For the sake of building up the body of Christ, the preacher must become a determined student of congregational history. Then in an act of strategic leadership, the preacher must tell that recovered story from the pulpit.

via Leading Ideas: A Resource for Church Leaders.

From Definitions and Technical Jargon to Story Telling

The Church is about sharing, living, remembering and repeating The Story. If we understand theology as constantly contextual, we are moving away from the world of definitions (modernism) to a world of stories.

The Aristotelic way of organizing, thinking that the sum of all the parts is equal to the whole, nothing more and nothing less, is not sufficient to understand ourselves or others.

Our task as modern theologians is therefore to move away from our definitions and technical jargon and start telling and listening to stories.

We can actually ask whether Schleiermacher and later WCC in their focus on modern/enlightened theology removed God from the people in the pews, and perhaps alltogether from all of us.

Sexual Violence in the Church

Sexual abuse by people in power has been reality in religious circles since the beginning of times. Joy A. Schroeder has written a book about how sexual violence in the Bible has been interpreted by the church through the ages, Dinah’s Lament: The Biblical Legacy of Sexual Violence in Christian Interpretation.

Joy A. Schroeder wrote an article about sexual abuse in the middle ages in Lutheran Quarterly, 7 (1993): 171-190, called “Marguerite of Navarre Breaks Silence about Sixteenth Century Clergy Sexual Violence.”

The third text worth mentioning is by Marguerite de Navarre, The Heptameron, but stories twenty-two and twenty-three in that book address a sexual abuse of clergy.

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Það var blendin tilfinning sem fylgdi því fyrir nokkrum dögum að rífa sig frá fjölskyldunni til að vinna sem forstöðumaður í sumarbúðunum í Vatnaskógi. Það er nefnilega erfitt að byrja að vinna á ný eftir að hafa haft tækifæri til að vera heima með nýfæddum syni sínum í rúma sex mánuði. Um leið var spennandi að mæta í Vatnaskóg eftir nokkurra ára hlé. Á staðnum beið nýtt samstarfsfólk, nýir strákar, sömu sumarbúðir. Continue reading Þökk fyrir samveruna, takk fyrir traustið