My family is not a storytelling family. No, we are a story repeating family. We will tell the same stories over and over when we are together, often using the same words and the same inflection and the same jokes. I do this too. My wife Allison will roll her eyes and settle in whenever I get started. I definitely get it from parents, and they come by it honestly themselves. My mom’s family will tell the same stories about my grandfather’s fight with that one ram (the ram got the last word) and the year their house burned down. We could tell different stories, and we do, but there is something that ties together our identity as a family when we repeat those stories to each other.

In my work at this congregation, I am always listening for the stories that people are telling about themselves and about their history. The stories of those of us, myself included, that became exiles of other religious traditions often resonate with each other in ways that are hard to explain. To then join another tradition or congregation, to take a leap into a new community and join in the telling of a new collective story, is not insignificant. I know I have been hesitant in the past to toss my lot in with new communities, fearing a collective story that hurts rather than heals. However, for the 27 folks who became members of our congregation since last April, they were brave enough and hopefully welcomed by us enough to toss their lots anyway. I’m grateful for them and look forward to celebrating with them this Sunday at service. 

When I think about collective stories and Martin Luther King Jr. Day, I am reminded of one of my professors, a Rabbi, who taught us how vital the stories behind holidays are to the identities of diasporic peoples, whether they be Jewish or Black Americans. Holidays like MLK Day and Juneteenth are a collection of opportunities for Black Americans to tell stories of survival and triumph over oppression, creating a new collective identity. And while I think White Americans are beginning to understand that, I think we too often forget that Black Americans need those new stories because their old ones were excised during the middle passage and the years of slavery.

The power of collective stories is important to identity but it’s also important to future action. My mother and her siblings all still make sure to put all their coat-hangers facing the same direction because it’s easier to grab an armload of clothes and run out of a burning house that way. UUs share in rituals in order to remind ourselves of the kind of lives we wish to lead. We as a country need to be reminded that 60 years ago, we lived in a world where the Black population of this country had far fewer rights, and it took mass actions of disruption to change that. Not just one march on Washington, but decades of strategic actions. These stories of a country struggling toward collective liberation should encourage us to vigilance and awareness in our own time of struggle. May they also rally us to action to ensure that we continue bending the moral arc of the universe toward justice, toward liberation, toward love.

Trevor Johnson

Connections Coordinator