For millennia, humans have gathered around the fire, at kitchen tables, or en masse in protest to share stories with one another.  As tools of connection and truth-telling, stories play a much larger role in culture, religion, and identity than mere entertainment. Stories teach us how to live.

Over the coming year, we will engage the theme of “Story” in worship services, educational opportunities, and special events. In The Science of Storytelling, journalist and author Will Storr argues that story is driven by our brain’s desire to control the world. Through story, we create narratives that explain the world and the people in it—often casting ourselves and people like us as the hero.  And yet, an ever-shifting reality and repeated encounters with people who tell different stories chip away at our models for how the world works. Such tension generates the dramatic questions: Who am I? Is there another way? Will I (they) change? Indeed, Story suggests that “every story you’ll ever hear amounts to ‘something changed’.”

As a nearly 400-year-old congregation, First Church in Boston knows a lot about change. Founded in 1630 by Puritans seeking expanded religious and political freedoms, First Church evolved over subsequent centuries into today’s multi-faith, Unitarian Universalist community. Along the way, questions about freedom and slavery, science and new technologies, gender equality and sexual identities challenged the people in the pews to reexamine the stories they told about how the world works.

From our recent experience with a global pandemic to the rise of AI to the fracturing of democratic norms, we again face significant disruption in our understandings of the world. In this moment, how might revisiting old stories bring new insights? What new (or re-newed) stories do we need to tell today? For us, who are the heroes and who or what are the monsters we wish to slay? Who are the underdogs threatening to undo the status quo and what does it mean to come of age amidst active shooter drills?  When the wealth gap has become a steep ravine, how do we understand stories of moving from rags to riches? Faced with the bleak horizon of climate change, what quest might rekindle our hope or even signal the promise of rebirth?

Such questions are the stuff of story as well as of religion. From September through May, each month will focus on a different sub-genre of Story.  In addition to weekly Sunday worship services at 11am, special events and programming will engage each month’s theme. To stay up-to-date on services and events, please sign-up for our weekly e-news here or check the online calendar.

“The universe is made of stories, not of atoms.” writes Poet Muriel Rukeyser. Throughout the turmoil of this moment, perhaps story can be a toolbox to help construct shelters for rest, pathways for connecting with others, and ports for new beginnings. By sharing the gift of story with one another throughout this year, I hope we might better help one another navigate our changing world.