Reconciliation Sunday Reflection (Jörg Strobel)

I wonder what your association is with the idea of story-telling. We just heard a few minutes ago here the children’s talk and a story was told. You may remember probably stories you were told at bedtime when you were a child.  And the moral of that story is… That question leads to the meaning that is carried in a story.

In psychotherapeutic work we know that unhealthy meaning making is linked to suffering, amongst other things, and this is why people come to therapy. Narrative therapy is a branch of the range of psycho therapies that tries to re-narrate a healthier version of a life’s story. In the political sphere we seek the grand narrative and at the moment we hear a lot about growth and jobs. Growth of what? Of love, of connection or consumption?

We were taken on a rather profound journey of story-telling, led by Auntie Denise, which impacted on me quite profoundly because I didn’t quite appreciate the depth of what story-telling really is. It is serious education. It is the narration of identity and culture.  We learnt that there are three elements to aboriginal story-telling.

One: how do we live together? – this points to the relational. Second: how do we live on the land and with the land? – which relates to sustainability and ecology. And the third theme imbedded in stories is how do we relate to all that is? – which is the spiritual dimension.

If we would imagine the current election drama unfolding, people competing on the questions about how we live together, how we live sustainably, and how do we honour our individual and collective spiritual lives, we would have a different discourse.

This is a lesson we can take from the aboriginal people.