Stories Give Us Meaning

Traci Hubbard

November 2, 2025

So, this happened...this past Friday, I was running errands, and I encountered a very awkward moment…a Zombie was out looking for brains and walked right past me.

Lately, if you called my cellphone, my greeting would say, “Hi, you've reached the cell phone of major disappointment, leave a message and when I get back to myself, I'll get back to you.” I’m just kidding, I didn’t leave that greeting, but I felt like it.  I have been experiencing the tears of things as I swim through a self guided study of Richard Rohr's last book, The Tears of Things. Last weekend at the CAC conference, Richard shared that he thought his Book the Universal Christ was his last book. But after flying to the Vatican and having a private meeting with Pope Francis before his death, his idea was challenged three times when Pope Francis said, “You're not finished, go write what is alive in you.”  

So, while the world was shut down during Covid, Richard was opened by the Spirit to write a prophetic challenge to all of us. The thread of his book through the voices of the prophets and mystics is all things have tears and all things deserve tears. Happy tears, sad tears and tears of rage for the dismantling of humane ways of being in our world. The dehumanizing of all those marginalized by skin color, gender identity or who they love, the ones who have not had the opportunities most of us have enjoyed, us, the privileged...and families struggling to keep a roof over the heads, or find a roof …a spiritual hatefulness that does not hide its selfish agenda has finally lead us to shed overdue tears. Why does it take a tsunami of human degradation, economic and nuclear fear to open the floodgates of our hearts so we can see the suffering that surrounds us? If we believe that we are here to become the heart, hands, and feet of God in our world, that also means that we are here to suffer with others, just as the Spirit suffers with us.

Almost every teacher at the conference spoke from a healed traumatic lens. Each person taught as Jesus taught, sharing stories wrapped in words from Hebrew Prophets, except they also moved to Boethius and Benedict, to Dr. King, The great books, The Consolation of Philosophy, The Dark Night of The Soul and The Cloud of Unknowing, as well as their own mystical and prophetic voices. I would not have been able to take all the wisdom in that was offered had I not been surgically cleaned out by the love of the Spirit's heart towards me. Yesterday, I shared with Norrie that I feel like the scarecrow in the wizard of Oz after the flying monkeys ripped his straw out of him. Some of me has been scattered over here, and some of me has been scattered over there...my straw being some ideas and dreams I have been holding onto.

Before August 30th, I had been waiting four and a half years for a promise to come true, but the opposite appeared. I spent the last two months beating myself up for wasting my energy and time. What I have discovered is nothing was wasted, in fact, I learned I had outgrown my dream and my journey has been preparing me for something I cannot imagine, something that is on its way and when I am ready, I will recognize the moment.  Jeremiah wrote that Sacred Mystery knows the plans she has for us, and we cannot receive them until our hearts are emptied of whatever is taking up space where those plans need to live. 

Boethius had to be dethroned from his political position and imprisoned so he could become a teacher from prison, drawing students to his cell to listen and learn. Benedict left fame and fortune to live in a cave ten feet deep, five hundred feet high above a lake that Nero built. But even there, his energy drew students to sit outside his cave to listen and learn from his stories. Dr. King had to walk across bridges and hangings to land on the White House lawn where his energy drew and continues to draw countless dreamers to listen and learn how to practice nonviolence while speaking to Empire and how to empower the marginalized. Jesus had to humble himself to the point of execution to draw seekers of love and truth to live on their knees. Paul had his Harvard and Vancouver School of Theology PhD’s beaten out of him so he could write to the church in Rome and preach mercy and love to the guards who held him prisoner. Either consciously or unconsciously we forget the pieces of stories that are hard to swallow because we are afraid that we too will be swallowed whole. 

But let's take a moment and ask, “What swallowed up all of these people and more to live like this?”

It was love. Love for neighbor, whoever that was, wherever they were. Love for self so clear that they were intimately connected in a precious relationship with the Divine, with a love that would not let them go. A love that stripped them from everything that separated them from becoming equipped and gifted servants of the Holy and servants of everyone and everything the Holy created. Think about it...there was no place Jesus could go where he could not be refilled with the energy of Mystery, of God. On the way to the last week in his life in Jerusalem, he glanced at a fig tree, and it shriveled up and then he stood on a cliff crying for the self-imposed life of spiritual death that people were choosing. He chose the wilderness route right after accepting his call to ministry. He chose a lake to watch the wind shake a reed when his bucket was empty. And he chose a motley crew of three clueless students, a garden in Gethsemane, and a rock to pray out his ego so he could show human history what love looks like. 

I have decided that the ego is like a speedo...nobody looks good in it, and nobody wants to see it. You can take that to the bank! 

The teachers at the conference had academic credentials behind their names and books that bore their names. But that was not what drew me in. What compelled me to leap off my chair was their simple genuine way of being in their skin and the way they shared their stories with us. Richard said we remember stories because we remember how they made us feel, and how they continue to spring up feelings in us when we remember them, and especially, when we are changed by them. The way one tells a story is just as important if not more important than the content of the story. Healing messages are impactful when the one speaking is a wounded healer willing to live and love out of the scalpel of the Spirit who pierces deeply, separating bone from marrow. I'm someone who had only 20% marrow flow on the right side of my spine in 2009, and I am living proof that a loving skilled scalpel saved my life. The scalpel of the Creator of my soul saves my life every day.

The theme of the conference was Reimagining Christianity, specifically we are alive to be personally and intimately in relationship with the Spirit, ourselves, others and creation. The way we experience this connection is through sharing our stories and we need to pay close attention to the language we use, because the church has ceased to be a safe and healing place for too many. Churchy words some of us may love cut many in harmful ways Humans are drawn to open, genuine, authentic, imperfect humans who share their experiences of making it through being thrown over here and over there and how LOVE was with them in every moment. The listener gets to learn what the storyteller has learned without going through the pain of their story.

That is mercy and grace alive at work.

Each speaker/teacher spoke from the premise of:

Order – which means to weave

Disorder – Which means to unweave

Re-order – which means to weave again.

This is the wisdom pattern reminding us that we are only as good a teacher as we are a listener. And we are to listen with the ears of our heart.  Carmen shared that the word ‘ordinary’ comes from the word ‘weave’.

A few weeks ago, I sat with Aino and listened to her story. I was inspired by her gentleness, sweetness, and her genuine childlike humility. I was drawn to her strength in choosing who she wanted to be in a world that had been cruel to her. Two hours with a 91-year-old woman from a Baltic State, changed me for the good. So did a recent Dear John letter. It's interesting to me that my eyes swelled up with tears when Aino was sharing her story, yet I have not shed one tear over the Dear John experience. Yesterday, it occurred to me that my soul was ready for both experiences. I did not expect Aino's story, but I was spiritually aware that Dear John was on its way to make room inside my heart for what dreams may come. Releasing that dream in my heart created caverns of room for the treasures the conference stories laid on my interior beach. And now, I am beach combing again, my favorite spiritual practice where I contemplate what lays within me and before me and how to swallow all the ways of Jesus whole. 

During Richard’s time of teaching at the conference, at least three times he said something that resonated deeply with me, he said, “Jesus is the erotic decision of the soul, and our erotic decisions change our lives.” He was not talking about sexual eros, he was speaking in the classical sense of a fundamental life energy, a deep longing, and an intense desire for connection and union. Richard emphasized that God desires intimacy and union with the human soul. He uses the "intimate language of lovers" to describe this relationship, including mystery, tenderness, risk, ecstasy, and incessant longing. He taught that the purpose of life is to "fall in love with the divine presence," a process that involves a deep, personal commitment and a reorientation of one's entire being. This "falling in love" is an active choice and an expression of profound desire, aligning with the concept of an "erotic decision." This "erotic" desire for God is about tapping into an energy source that awakens us to our deepest longing for connection, moving us beyond our own boundaries into vulnerability and intimacy. Moving us from order, to disorder, to reordering our lives. The church today is in disorder – unweaving what no longer works, and we are moving into reordering – reweaving new language and ways of being Christ in the world.

Sometimes a person will share the same painful story over and over with you because there is something they still need to heal, and they trust you are a safe container. Sometimes a person will share a story because there is something the listener needs to hear so they can heal. Stories encourage us when we are breathing under water and challenge us to get on our inner surfing boards and navigate our way through to a new beginning. Stories are divine scalpels that remove what no longer is serving us, making room for divine flow, which beats freeze flight fight ways of living. Stories crack open our shells and soften us into sweet strength. 

As you leave today, look for opportunities to share a story that someone may be dying to hear. Let your shell crack wide open or leave your shell if it’s keeping you from growing. And try not to be crabby about the journey. May it be so, amen.