Letting Be the Mystery

Storied Lives

Abstract

Human beings re-inhabit our lived experiences—the happening truth of an experience—by remembering, through the power of story. The author refers to the work of Catherine Keller, John Caputo, and Barry Lopez to suggest a theopoetical approach to remembering and interpreting lived experience. Human beings employ a complex constellation of stories and songs, poems and artistry, memories and prayers to give voice to and seek meaning in the wide array of particular experiences in which we detect Mystery, in which we hear and seek to discern God’s call and what is being called for. The pastoral, poetic, and prophetic can be held together in a theologically informed approach to life in community, to a lived faith, to an openness to hearing and heeding a call from God that is often unbidden but not unwelcome.