MORAL DYNAMICS OF STORYTELLING: INVITING TRANSFORMATION

Telling autobiographical stories is an action that shapes the practice of educating persons in faith. The action of telling such stories has moral significance. Telling our story expresses the person we are. It forms the person we are becoming. It effects changes in the world around us. A religious educator is challenged to engage in a reflective and ongoing inquiry into the nature of these stories to see what they express, form, and effect by way of promoting a more just and peaceful world. Students in an introductory Christian ethics course were asked to think about ordinary activities they choose which are morally significant to life as a human person and as member of the human family. Few students had thought about the moral importance of daily activities such as eating, resting, leisure, and driving their cars. Similarly, another overlooked, constitutive and morally significant activity shaping the very fabric of our human experience is storytelling. As human persons we both hear and tell many different kinds of stories that shape an understanding of self, others, our world, and God. In Mighty Stories, Dangerous Rituals, Anderson and Foley (1998) concur storytelling is a constitutive part of the human experience. Religious educators ar