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Showing posts from January, 2018

Defined by story

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“It's like everyone tells a story about themselves inside their own head. Always. All the time. That story makes you what you are. We build ourselves out of that story.” —Patrick Rothfuss,  The Name of the Wind I have lots of stories in my head, about who I am, what I’ve done, what my life and its constituent pieces mean. Every one of my three (so far) tattoos has a story attached, but the one I will not always tell when strangers ask “what the tattoo means” is the story of my first tattoo.  It’s a story that started out with one (complex) meaning, andnhas taken on new shades as I’ve grown. My stories define me, I define them, and the dialectic circle goes ‘round. That’s actually a really core piece of my theology—we have to keep telling our stories, but can’t ever let them get stuck. When we do that, we’re lost. It’s part of why the liturgical year means so much to me, and why I keep returning to the Bible again and again, even though I no longer believe about it what I