Integration of our Stories

"Owning our story and loving ourselves through that process is the bravest thing we'll ever do."  

"The Latin root of the word integrate is integrare, which means 'to make whole.'... Participants spoke about the importance of feeling genuine, authentic and whole rather than always compartmentalizing their lives or hiding parts of themselves for editing their stories."

As I was reading Chapter Three of Brene Brown's book, Rising Strong, I encountered these two quotes. Isn't it interesting that sometimes your mind (or maybe God) lines up what has your focus with what is in the back of your mind? First, there is the idea that integrating our stories into our lives instead of ignoring them leads to wholeness. That idea collided with thoughts from the General Conference.

Rule 44 was proposed and failed to be adopted by the General Conference. It would have created a means by which controversial legislation would be considered in a small group setting:

The Commission on General Conference recommended Rule 44 at the request of the 2012 General Conference, which sought an alternative process to Robert’s Rules of Order for dealing with particularly complicated and contentious legislation.

The commission’s aim was to use small groups to give all delegates a chance to weigh in on selected petitions. (a quote from this source)

As I think about the proposed small groups, I imagine that in them there would have been the telling of stories. There would have been shared experiences. Instead, the General Conference did not do that.

I imagine the integration of our stories into the decision process (one of the parts of Wesley's quadrilateral) would have led to more wholeness and less division - at least I hope it would have. But we will never know.