5.1.7. Tracing Water Pathways

The Capitol Region Watershed, a local governmen<sup>t</sup> entity here where I live, has worked with local churches to develop a curriculum called "Wade in the Water" that helps young people to trace the ways water moves in their community, and to see what feeds that water and what is fed into it that is destructive.<sup>23</sup> Water holds such a powerful place in religious imagination, across multiple traditions, and is an easily accessible entry point into awareness of interdependence.

#### 5.1.8. Listening to Sound (an Exercise in Sonic Environments)

"Create/share/believe" is a circle I often describe as an instantiation of the social Trinity, and when drawn upon for religious education it is a recognition and embrace of our creative "maker" cultures (Hess 2014). The following three exercises become environmentally aware when the prompts used invite stories about relationship with creation.

So many of us have grown accustomed to creating the sonic spaces in which we live by curating music on our phones and keeping that music on all around us, such that it becomes a background for existence and we find it increasingly difficult to be quiet, to inhabit stillness. This exercise is described at length in *Engaging Technology in Theological Education* (Hess 2005, pp. 136–39). The learning goal is to invite people to attend to the ways in which music shapes their emotional senses, and to begin to learn how to listen more deeply. Once people have done the sonic exercise, it can invite conversation about stillness, about quiet, and about what the sounds all around us might be inviting us to hear: whether they are city sounds drowning out any other sounds, or they are the whisper of wind, the creak of insects, and the calls of birds.

## 5.1.9. Story Listening in Circle

This is an exercise (described at length in *Becoming a White Antiracist*, Brookfield and Hess 2021, pp. 66–83), in which people are invited to sit in groups of four and take turns telling a brief story based on a shared prompt. Each, in turn, then reflects on the story through attending to the feelings, the actions, and the values evoked. It is a way to slow people down to listen to themselves through the ears of others.

## 5.1.10. Story Listening through Titling

This is another exercise (described at length in *Becoming a White Antiracist*), that invites short story sharing in a circle, where the listening results in proposing various titles for the story. Again, it creates an opportunity to listen closely and build capacity through a process that is in itself enjoyable.

#### *5.2. Story Paths for Confronting and Contradicting Stock Stories and Igniting Resistance*

Having developed some basic practices of story listening and sharing, demonstrating respect in a circle, "confirming" if you will, the reality of the people with whom you are learning, it is necessary to move to widen and deepen awareness through contradicting the more narrow and oppressive dominant/stock stories in which we find ourselves (Schroeter 2019).

It is in listening to, engaging, learning from the stories of indigenous communities that those of us who are thoroughly shaped by stock stories can begin to hear what has been concealed from us in ways that nurture resistance. There are so many opportunities to learn from leaders in First Nations, Metis, and Inuit communities, to learn from the indigenous peoples who have long tended this earth, and from many other minoritized communities.

The field of religious education has focused more recently on this kind of storytelling, and there are numerous scholars working in this area. I would highlight in particular the work of Kim-Cragg (2015, 2019); Tran (2017); Parker (2003); Smith (2004); Baker (2010); and Kaunda and Sang-man (2021).

Here in Minnesota the project "Healing Minnesota Stories" (https://healingmnsto ries.wordpress.com accessed on 1 February 2022) invites people to participate in sacred site pilgrimages led by native guides. These experiential learning events draw people into direct contact with the ground upon which they stand, and then share the stories deeply held by the native communities who have tended that ground.

Film and video streaming have also begun to offer many and varied ways to hear stories that have been concealed by stock/dominant voices, and to begin to learn the stories of resistance without unduly burdening or triggering trauma by constantly asking persons who have been minoritized to share their stories. These are projects that have been created precisely to share stories. Here are just a handful that we use regularly here in Minnesota, but I would encourage you to be in contact with the indigenous communities in your own lands for ideas and resources.


#### *5.3. Creating Counter Stories for Building Self in Deep Relation to the Earth (Continuity)*

As noted earlier in this essay, the goal of shifting our storying, the learning frame necessary for coming into deep relationality, for coming to "see ourselves as nature" (Macy), for coming into a "reciprocal covenant" (Kimmerer), requires offering continuity that supports people as they move through the contradictions, many of which are deeply painful and guilt producing, that arise when opening up to wider awareness.

I am reluctant to offer too many examples in this category because I know I am myself so deeply embedded in dominant/stock stories that I find it most helpful to stand with humility and listen to my native siblings as they offer their stories. I have been deeply impacted by authors such as Louise Erdrich, Robin Kimmerer, Peter Razor, Drew Haden Taylor, Diane Wilson, and so on.

I do want to point, however, to contemplative traditions in Christianity, which have in many ways kept alive a respect for and engagemen<sup>t</sup> with forms of knowing that are not narrowly rationalist (Smith and Higginbotham 2019). These are the streams which Parker Palmer has drawn on. Maggie Ross in her book *Silence: A User's Guide*, writes of a form of knowing, of knowledge, that arises in "drinking from the well of silence" (Ross 2014). Willie James Jennings (2010), in narrating the many paths Christianity took to create and enforce racialization, notes that there are other paths, roads less traveled, that are evident in the glimpses we still have of Christians who did not perceive such a stark separation between humans and animals, between Creation and ourselves.

I am often struck by how many of my students are deeply connected to yoga, or find certain kinds of Buddhist meditation powerful, but have no idea that similar embodied practices of prayer exist within Christian traditions as well. Often the best way I know to help young adults begin to imagine how Christianity might be a resource for them, is to introduce them to the embodied practices, the rituals, pilgrimages, shrines, and other elements I can draw on within my Roman Catholic community.
