Sage Telling Your Story

Obviously “Writing Your Story” stands as a subtopic under “Telling Your Story,” for writing them is a modernized version of an ancient practice that persists today around kitchen tables and campfires, and in conversations over cups of coffee. Even though I write, I stand in awe of anyone’s ability to extemporaneously tell their story with clarity and humor. They’re like the best preacher I ever heard who made his sermons sing with stories of his early years in Mississippi. He’d take his listeners back into a past of childhood feelings, wise sayings from his elders, and rich relationships that made sense of some esoteric idea he was pursuing. Of course his deep southern accent helped. As I write my stories, I keep in mind that the best written stories derive their strength from what is called a strong voice.

I learned to write because I wasn’t very good at conveying my emotions except those that warranted screaming, kicking, slamming doors, or crying. With age those went out of style. By my college years I was much more interested in written communications than oral. I tried but failed to become a preacher, but recall that even in homiletics classes we were warned that if we were to undertake difficult or controversial topics, we should write out what we were going to say and then stick to our manuscript. The preacher might need the written document to substantiate what was said rather than what might have been misunderstood. One’s job might be threatened.

My unsure feelings not only made me uninterested in preaching but also ill at ease when my girlfriend and then later she, then my wife, wanted “to talk.” When I had to say something that I didn’t trust, I’d rely on writing. Twenty some years into our marriage, when my wife realized how tenuous our relationship might become and sought to enrich it, she proffered a notebook in which we could write to one another hoping it would give me the medium I preferred—writing. I now realize that by then my feelings had become way too complicated and, I assumed, even more unacceptable than in my younger life. I could never remember to write something to her in the book so ended up disappointing her even more. By then what I needed to say wouldn’t promote her purpose. It was a sad time although a productive one for my professional writing projects! I wrote to stay afloat but not in “our” secret book. Rather on my Word Processor I was writing resources for a publisher to print and with body parts other than my fingers, sexual messages to other men.

Now, some seventeen years later, I am writing my story. It’s contained in a growing volume I call Family Portrait: Self Portraits. I suspect the manuscript will remain firmly relegated to becoming a posthumous revelation like another book I have yet to write, that one called Ministers Who Loved Me. I am writing my story because writing is my best way to tell it.

In this storytelling group, I have come to realize that collectively we are writing a gay or queer story no matter what details or themes we approach. An ancient image from one of the Christian gospels asserted that what had once been whispered in private would someday be announced from the rooftops. That’s our storytelling task, one that promises to liberate us as storytellers, as a group of citizens searching for rights, and as a group of leaders in the wider community. We announce our love no longer hidden. There’s great freedom to be found in those tasks.