As a young toddler–bright-eyed and babbling happily–I loved few things more than a good story. I was known to pad into a room, book in tow, while clamoring for what I cheerfully called a “once-a ponce-a.” So many children’s books and fairy tales, after all, take narrative flight with the well-worn opening line, “Once upon a time…”  Hence, my half-comprehending shorthand. Slightly older and intent to share (force?) my love of story on my younger sister, I would solemnly intone the beginning for her the same way (to the doubtless mirth of any nearby adult). Nevertheless, “once-a ponce-a” rapidly became a family expression.

 

Perhaps I could channel this tale from childhood into destiny, invariably paving the way to my status as a justified book nerd with a doctorate in literature. A little tidy, but not without some merit.

 

Actually, though, this early anecdote has been on my mind recently for another reason: as a testament to the enduring power of story; a reminder of the propulsive force of narratives as avenues to deeper truths sometimes difficult to recognize in our workaday lives. As humans, we make sense of the world and the people around us through the stories we tell ourselves and others. Whether we pause to acknowledge this instinctual process or not, our story-making still wields tremendous power for how we show up and move through the world.

 

Knowing this, we can lean into the power of stories as a way of making sense of complex experiences and realities in our adult lives. By being more self-conscious in this process, perhaps we can also tell each other and ourselves truer stories to counteract the dishonesty that pervades our current culture.

 

Moreover, narrative agency is crucial to our vocational discernment and our educational journeys, and lately I’ve been particularly delighted to find deeper, common cause around this idea with friends and colleagues from a variety of disciplines and perspectives doing some amazing work on our campus. Dr. Reva Johnson in the College of Engineering has been training in, and drawing on, “story-driven learning” to help students more intentionally scaffold connections between scientific and narrative modes of understanding, between their personal and professional experiences and identities. In newly reimagined VUE courses, students’ topics of study meet active, experiential learning in fieldwork–whether they might be gardening, or volunteering with a local non-profit, or cooking, or exploring historic campus spaces, or observing peer-led organizations as sites of learning-in-action. Their reflections around these experiences can become avenues into deeper self-awareness about the ways they show up in the world, exploring the nuance of leadership and service. Meanwhile, in the honors college, Dr. Amanda Ruud marshals lively ideas from deep discussion about justice, community, and “the good life” to facilitate first-years’ inspiring creation of an original piece of musical theatre–a dramatic account of the conversations and ideas they’ve been wrestling with, making sense of the complex in story and song. It’s all really quite remarkable, and these are but a few potent examples of intentional story-making as avenues to deeper understanding and work in the world happening right here at Valpo.

 

At the risk of completely nerding out on everyone reading this reflection (sorry, not sorry), some of the most influential work around narrative identity and agency coming out of the social sciences hailed from none other than a Valpo alum, Dr. Dan McAdams ‘76 (Psychology and Humanities, CC Scholar), now professor emeritus at Northwestern University. McAdams pioneered a field urging scholarly study of our own narrative constructions and their power to shape who we are and who we become. (You can read more about his work here.)

 

Our story-telling matters, and it does real work, both in the world and in the ways we understand our own showing up and agency in that beautiful, broken, ever-evolving world. As a former colleague regularly reminded me–citing novelist Tim O’Brien’s powerful and true line: “Stories can save us.” Of course they can. One need look no further than the New Testament parables.

 

Less than a week ago, I had the privilege to observe this power anew as current Valpo senior Natalya Reister offered a poignant reflection at Morning Prayer, bearing witness to the ways our stories to ourselves can make and save us. (If you didn’t get a chance to be there in person, I would urge you to check out her moving remarks here on the Valpo Chapel YouTube channel.) Natalya recounts the overwhelm so many of us can attest to at the start of a new chapter in our lives, recalling herself as a first-year student huddled in the Lankenau chapel unable to see the bigger story she is part of and sometimes slowly, painfully helping to write. In her reflection, she casts herself back to this time, addressing a younger version of herself with tenderness and a deeper sensibility of things coming together in ways she cannot at that time see but must learn to implicitly trust:

 

“[R]ight now, you’re sitting in the Lankenau chapel, and you feel alone. And that’s okay too. It is a part of your journey and God isn’t going to give up on you. Our lives are a mural of experiences and stories. At the moment, though, you are living and focusing on just a small little corner. You don’t yet see the artistry in the narratives God is painting. So take a breath and slow down. The sorrows and the hurts are real, but they are not the end of the story.”

 

Would that we all would take that sort of tender care, choosing to narrate gently and truthfully from our own empowered voices… while also never forgetting that we are not, blessedly, the end of the story. We offer our “once-a ponce-a,” now and always, in a transcendent narrative frame.

 

–Dr. Anna Stewart, Director of the Institute for Leadership and Service

The tap, tap, tap on the metal roof turned into pitter-patter-pitter-patter, and my mother-in-law and I looked at each other with an expression of urgency.  The clothes we had hung outside on the line the day before hadn’t dried, and for fear of night-time rain we had brought them in, damp in their hamper near the back door.  On this particular morning we had optimistically re-clipped them to the metal wire spanning the entire yard from the neighbors’ wall to the side of the house.  It had dawned clear over the mountains, but seemingly out of nowhere the clouds had rolled in, and it was now raining in what should have been the first days of the dry season in Costa Rica.  

 

In looking at our clothes and shoes and hiking boots in the backyard, it struck me that clothes-drying is a kind of microcosm for understanding vocation.  Discerning vocation asks us to consider how we respond to a particular moment, within specific limitations and parameters.  Our lives, routines, and identities start getting built around the ways we repeatedly respond to particular moments, with particular details, opportunities, limitations, and parameters.  How do we respond when we depend on sunshine to dry our clothes, and it is now raining?  We drop everything and run outside.  

 

What other limitations and parameters do you notice that determine your daily vocations?  Perhaps the cry of a baby or small child gets you out of bed each morning.  Perhaps aches and pains determine the way you use stairs or inform an exercise and stretching schedule, or a larger illness forces you into an early retirement.  How about other larger vocations?  Perhaps housing prices influence your decision of whether to buy or sell.  Or perhaps a particular injustice inspires you to work for societal change as a career or as a “side hustle.”

 

Middle class United States culture is pretty determined to prevent and mitigate as many limitations as possible.  We purchase appliances to save time, program our smartphones to anticipate and complete tasks, and engage in as many “life hacks” as possible to maximize productivity.  Our scientists look for ways to prolong life and increase crop yields, and our engineers seek out ways to get more mileage and battery life out of our technology.

 

And it’s true – some limitations are not fair or acceptable.  As I was struggling to get my clothes dry this past rainy December, there were women in many countries of the world struggling to dry the rags they use to manage their menstruation.  Overcoming such a limitation can mean the ability to finish school or find a job for millions of women and girls around the world.  

 

Injustices and exploitation place unfair limits on the lives of so many: those without access to even public transportation, let alone an electric vehicle; those who live in food deserts, unable to access healthy food that sustains a healthy life; those who cannot access even basic health care and suffer from illnesses that many of us don’t think twice about.  We as a society need to fix these limitations.

 

And yet, what happens when those of us who are allergic to limitations begin to embrace a few, or understand the opportunity that our limitations represent?  On one of the mornings I spent rehanging damp clothes in Costa Rica, I heard the cacophony of screeching parakeets that gather in the trees of local parks in the city.  The sound kept getting louder and louder as I clipped clothing to the line, and soon I saw huge clouds of perhaps one thousand parakeets in all flying across the blue sky, west to east, their screeches and silhouettes calling out the start of the day.  A sight I would not have seen if not for my need to greet the sunny morning with clotheshanging.  I exhaled, and felt a deep gratitude for such a day settle deep into my chest.

 

In a recent podcast of the Ezra Klein Show, Klein interviewed Oliver Burkeman, author of “Meditations for Mortals: Four Weeks to Embrace Your Limitations and Make Time for What Counts.”

In their conversation, Klein shared a meditation that he practices that reminds him of his finite nature, and Burkeman’s response concurred:

“So many of the things that we call “self-improvement” can be best understood as a structure of emotional avoidance so that we don’t have to feel how uncomfortable and claustrophobic it is to actually be who we are as finite individuals.

“…I think the point is that when you really begin to let it permeate you that we are of the nature to be finite, you get to exhale. You get to let your shoulders drop. Not in order to veg out but precisely to move forward to do the most meaningful things with your day. It’s a refocusing.”

 

What limitation have you been fighting in your life?  What possibilities may open up if you embrace this limitation?  What new gratitude, what new path, might become available to you?  What unjust limitations can you become aware of, even as you seek to embrace your own finite nature?  

 

Read more about our total dependence on the sun for food and energy on the Living Connected blog, written by Lutheran Deaconess and environmental engineer Katrina Martich, and engage in reflective practice on the gifts of creation. 

 

• Deaconess Kat Peters, M.Ed., M.A., Assistant Director of the Institute for Leadership and Service

 

The Institute for Leadership and Service is dedicated to preparing students for lives of leadership and service—lives shaped by a sense of calling, equipped for thoughtful reflection, engaged in the larger world, and responsive to its deepest challenges.