Story Work/Story Play: The Four-Door Method of Narrative Spirituality

By Mary LaMont

A central assumption of narrative spirituality is that the act of retelling the story of episodes of our lives can help us better see the larger Guiding Story that God dreams for us. When I can see my Guiding Story more clearly, I am better able to handle crisis and transition and better able to see my true purpose. Story Work/Story Play lays out a four-door method of spirituality that invites participants to explore their Guiding Story through four doors that correspond to the four parts of any story--a main character, a problem to solve, the power needed to solve it, and the action taken by the main character. The chapter for each of these four "doors" provides theological, psychological, and scriptural foundations for the narrative method and includes up to ten to fifteen "story work/story play" exercises the reader can use to practice the method. Each chapter also includes profile stories of real people who have discovered layers of their own Guiding Stories. The book ends each chapter with a Guided Visualization. The book's final chapter explains how members of a "narrative circle" can use the narrative spirituality tools of this book to discern each one's own unique Guiding Story.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cascade Books
• Release date: May 2, 2023
• ISBN: 9781666743920

Mary LaMont

Mary LaMont is the director of The Knocking Door, a Chicago-area ministry that provides retreats, workshops, and spiritual direction for church groups, schools, religious orders, and other pastoral ministers. LaMont taught theology for more than twenty-five years at Loyola Academy in Wilmette. She is also trained in Buddhist meditation from the Zen Life Meditation Center. She has a master’s degree from Catholic Theological Union in Scripture and sacramental theology and a degree in American studies and communications from Notre Dame.

Book preview

Story Work / Story Play

The Four-Door Method of Narrative Spirituality

Mary LaMont

Story Work / Story Play

The Four-Door Method of Narrative Spirituality

Copyright ©

2023

Mary LaMont. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers,

199

W.

8

th Ave., Suite

3

, Eugene, OR

97401

.

Cascade Books

An Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers

199

W.

8

th Ave., Suite

3

Eugene, OR

97401

www.wipfandstock.com

paperback isbn: 978-1-6667-4390-6

hardcover isbn: 978-1-6667-4391-3

ebook isbn: 978-1-6667-4392-0

Cataloguing-in-Publication data:

Names: LaMont, Mary.

Title: Story Work / Story Play : The Four-Door Method of Narrative Spirituality / Mary LaMont.

Description: Eugene, OR: Cascade Books,

2023

| Includes bibliographical references.

Identifiers:

isbn 978-1-6667-4390-6

(paperback) |

isbn 978-1-6667-4391-3

(hardcover) |

isbn 978-1-6667-4392-0

(ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Storytelling—Religious aspects—Christianity | Narrative therapy | Spirituality

Classification:

BT83.78

L25

2023

(paperback) |

BT83.78

L25

(ebook)

08/04/22

Scripture texts in this work are taken from the New American Bible, revised edition ©

2010

,

1991

,

1986

,

1970

Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, Washington, D.C. and are used by permission of the copyright owner. All Rights Reserved. No part of the New American Bible may be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Table of Contents

Title Page

Chapter 1: What Is a Guiding Story?

Chapter 2: The Search for My Guiding Story through the Character Door

Chapter 3: The Search for My Guiding Story through the Problem Door

Chapter 4: The Search for My Guiding Story through the Power Door

Chapter 5: The Search for My Guiding Story through the Action Door

Chapter 6: Coming Full Circle: Connecting the Four Story Doors

Chapter 7: How to Form a Narrative Circle

Bibliography

Chapter

1

What Is a Guiding Story?

I

n the film The Wizard of Oz, when Dorothy wakes up from her dream about a journey to the land of Oz, she is able to see her waking life story much more clearly. The story of her journey to Oz had become a guiding story for her, making sense of the life she was living in Kansas. In each of us, God has planted a unique guiding story, like a seed. When we become more aware of this guiding story, our life will make more sense. Before her journey to Oz, Dorothy feels abandoned and powerless; after her journey to Oz reveals her guiding story, she comes to see she is connected to people who care about her and has key powers of mind, heart, and spirit—namely, a brain, a heart, and courage.

Narrative spirituality is an approach to spiritual growth that relies on storytelling as an integral part of the process. Narrative spirituality is an invitation to become aware of a guiding story for my life that is the road back to the truest and best version of the self God created me with the potential to be. As Suzanne Coyle says in Uncovering Spiritual Narratives, The telling of a life story is an aid to faith development.¹ Narrative spirituality puts the stories of the gospel in dialogue with the stories of a person’s life experiences in a way that helps that person better see the guiding story planted inside.

Our guiding story is our best understanding at any given moment in time of what God’s dream for us is. The guiding story that God has planted in each of us is a unique and different story for each person. My guiding story gives me the answers to four important questions:

1.

If I could see myself with God’s eyes, what would I find is uniquely lovable about me?

2.

What is the unique pain or need that most touches my heart?

3.

How am I uniquely equipped with talents, life experiences, emotions, skills, resources, and support to respond to this pain or need?

4.

What actions will I take with my powers to respond to the pain or need that most touches my heart?

While we’re in the midst of living our lives, our guiding story can be hard to see, but narrative spirituality can give us tools for finding it. In his book In Our Stories Lies Our Strength, William L. Randall says, We live in stories and stories live in us.² Randall believes that we do not just tell stories and we do not just have stories . . . but on some level we are the stories too.³ In narrative spirituality, we find our guiding story by retelling our story (or episodes of it) at each new point in our lives. As Joshua Reeves points out in Spiritual Narrative, there is a deeper part of ourselves that knows our story and wants to live in accordance with it.⁴ But we can lose track of our guiding story for many reasons and in response to many experiences.

Some of the times when we most need to find our guiding story include:

•when we’re stuck and not growing (in a job or relationship or life direction)

•when we’re stuck in a repeating story that features a destructive behavioral pattern, work pattern, or relationship pattern

•in times of suffering or crisis, such as a death, illness, loss, breakup, excessive debt, rejection, betrayal, job loss, infertility, isolation

•in times of transition, such as retirement, moving, job switch, relationship switch, becoming a first-time parent, children starting school, children leaving home

There are many branches of ministry that have already been using narrative spirituality to help people in crisis reclaim a guiding story.

•Lisa is a church deacon who uses narrative spirituality when she visits newly bereaved people and those in medical crisis as a hospital chaplain or when she ministers to parishioners in need.

•Laraine is a loss counselor who uses narrative spirituality with those who have lost loved ones to suicide.

•Tim uses narrative spirituality with homeless people when he shares meals with them in the soup kitchen where he volunteers.

The process of rediscovering our guiding story helps us to see that there is more to me than I have been giving myself credit for. The need to see that I have many unexplored or undeveloped layers can be especially strong at times of life transition. If my identity is heavily anchored in I am a wife or I am a husband, the death of a spouse or a divorce can trigger a need to see that there is more to me. If I have spent thirty or forty years developing a career, the prospect of retirement can trigger a need to see that there is more to me than my job. If I have been caring for a sick parent for years, the loss of that parent can trigger a need to see there is more to me than being my parent’s caretaker. If I have devoted myself to raising my children, the last child leaving for college can trigger a need to see there is more to me than my role as parent.

What is a story?

Before we can begin the search for the guiding story that God dreams for us, we must first develop a working definition for the word story. Story is one of those words we all think we understand but have a lot of trouble defining. Is a story a recounting of events? Not quite. I could list everything I did today or everything that occurred today but it would not be a story yet. Because a story is more than just a listing of happenings.

If we ask Erik Bork, an Emmy- and Golden Globe–winning screenwriter who wrote The Idea: The Seven Elements of a Viable Story, he will tell us, At the heart of any story is one big problem that takes the whole story to solve.⁵ At its heart, a story is built around a problem that needs solving by a main character, but for a story to be a complete story, it needs even more than the problem and the main character. A complete story needs four key elements:

•a character with a problem to solve

•a problem that it takes the whole story to solve

•the discovery of powers that can be used to solve the problem (some that are internal, like wisdom and courage, or others that external, like money or helpers or technology)

•action taken by the main character to solve the problem (which may or may not be successful in solving the problem).

Let’s test out this definition of a story on The Wizard of Oz as told in the

1939

film. If we were to look for the four key elements of a story in The Wizard of Oz, we would find that:

•the main character is Dorothy;

•the problem she needs to solve is that she’s stuck in Oz and wants to get back to Kansas;

•ultimately, the power to return home is in the ruby slippers on her feet, but she doesn’t discover this until she visits the Wizard, the one she believes has the power to send her home. To get to the Wizard she needs the power of support she receives from her three friends (the Lion, the Scarecrow, and the Tin Man). Only after she encounters the Wizard does she discover she has had the (internal) power of the slippers all along—the power of her own desire to return home;

•the action taken that ultimately solves the problem of returning home is to click her ruby-slipper heels together three times and say, There’s no place like home, three times.

The Scripture story of the disciples on the road to Emmaus (Luke

24

) is another great example of how to see the four parts of a story:

•The main characters are Cleopas and his companion (unnamed), who had been followers of Jesus before his death but who are now heading toward a town called Emmaus.

•The problem for Cleopas and his companion is that Jesus has just been killed. Cleopas and his companion had believed in the dream and the promise of the kingdom of God Jesus had preached about but now this dream seems to be in shambles, their leader gone, their lives in danger.

•The power discovered by Cleopas and his companion comes from Jesus. The risen Jesus himself appears to them as they are walking along the road, but they don’t recognize him. Jesus leads them in a process of retelling the stories of Jesus and the Hebrew Scriptures foretelling Jesus. By the time they break bread with this stranger, they recognize who Jesus is. They now realize that Jesus is with them even though he’s dead and that the dream of the kingdom is still alive if they work to keep it alive. They discover their own faith and the support of a risen Jesus.

•The action taken by Cleopas and his companion is to turn around to head back to Jerusalem to tell the story of what happened to the other disciples and to resume the mission of kingdom building that Jesus started.

Story Work / Story Play Exercise

1

: Finding the Four Parts of a Story in a Movie

To see how the four parts of a story give structure to a story, choose two of your favorite movies and answer the four questions below about each story:

1.

Who is the main character of this movie (the one with the biggest problem to solve)?

2.

What is the problem this character must solve? (When this problem is solved, the movie ends.)

3.

What powers from inside the character and what resources from outside this character are needed to solve this problem?

4.

What final action does the main character take to solve this problem? Does it work (happy ending) or does it not work (tragic ending)?

The Story God Dreams for Me

The four-door method of narrative spirituality is a way to search for the story God dreams for me. The story God dreams for me is a life-expanding story, not a destructive one; it is an empowering story, not an imprisoning one. The search for this story is a little like tuning a guitar. When it’s time to play a song on the guitar, the guitarist strikes a key on the piano for each string of the guitar that needs tuning. Starting with E, the guitarist taps the piano key, then plucks the string, and notices that the two sounds aren’t in sync. So the guitarist twists the tuning key and repeats the process. Tap the piano key, pluck the string, twist the tuning key until the two sounds line up exactly. In our lives, we recognize those moments when our lived story is in tune with the story God dreams for us. But it can be hard to see where and why we fall out of tune. Each of us may well wonder:

•Am I Rocky Balboa trying to dig down and find powers I never knew I had?

•Am I Dorothy trying to find my way back home, trying to reconnect with my family?

•Am I the owner of Rick’s Café in Casablanca, trying to find new meaning when the world stops making sense?

•Am I George Bailey, too focused on what I’m doing wrong to notice what I have been doing right?

•Am I Marlin (Nemo’s dad) chasing after a connection with my teenage child who seems to be running farther away from me?

•Am I Indiana Jones, always looking for the next adventure and missing the challenge of right now?

•Am I Maria in The Sound of Music, trying to figure out what I should give to God and what I should give to self and family?

When we look back at the events in our lives, or even look at events as they are happening in the present, we don’t always see what the true story is. We may interpret the events through a lens that misses or mislabels key elements. Sometimes when an event is occurring, we can forget that this event is just one moment in a larger story and miss the way the event connects to the beginning or end of the story. When we are at the problem moment of a story with all its pain and confusion, it can help to remember that the story doesn’t end until we discover our powers and support and see all our available action options. The story I think I’m living or the story I would most like to live is not necessarily the story I actually am living, that’s evident in my actions.

I may be judging myself by the wrong standards or measurements and missing my own unique and irreplaceable way of being a main character in my story.

•I may be missing the real problem and focusing on the wrong problem. I may have named or framed the problem in an inaccurate way.

•I may see my main character as powerless in situations where I have many powers I am not tapping into.

•I may be blind to many of the action options that are available to me.

•I may be so focused on secondary problems along the way (how to follow the yellow brick road to get to the Wizard) that I miss the primary problem I am here to solve (how to get home).

•I may have made a bad choice and now believe it can’t be redeemed. I am stuck in the problem with no access to powers