Mary Hess

Here’s a lovely post about the First Baptist Church of McMinnville, Oregon, and its use of storytelling to create community, remember history, and engage people beyond the sanctuary. The post includes a variety of very useful resources for doing this kind of storytelling particularly in the context of worship.

“I’ll tell my story” is a project of the Sarah Webster Fabio Center for Social Justice. Formerly incarcerated persons tell their stories through the creation of digital stories using the CDS methodology.

Storypath is a site I’ve mentioned in here before, but I am reminded this morning of the excellent lesson plans that they have made available to use with strong picture books.

Photovoice is both a practice and a research methodology, and it is energizing and empowering to see the ways various people are using this medium to nurture justice: Wendy Ewald, professional photographer who is a passionate advocate of photo voice work the Chiapas Photography Project, a photo voice project in the Chiapas region of Mexico

Sr. Liz Thoman, long time advocate of media education, spoke with me often about her joy in doing photography as a spiritual practice. It is lovely to see that Eileen Crowley has extended this idea and developed a website to help people engage photography through this lens.

Dr. Eileen Crowley, professor at the Catholic Theological Union in Chicago, has created a lovely website on “storytelling as ministry” in which she shares pragmatic resources and lovely examples.

The McGrath Institute for Church Life at the University of Notre Dame has a regular podcast featuring “stories of grace” which are often quirky and interesting stories fro specific contexts which are aimed at “nourishing Catholic imagination.” It’s fun to listen to these stories, many of which are by undergraduates at ND. You can access

This essay is a powerful illustration of what is possible when we allow ourselves to live in wonder and curiosity, to approach other stories with an open mind, and to hold our own stories with a degree of humility that makes learning possible. I’m making it a practice to collect stories from my more conservative

Here’s yet another Redglass Pictures short film, this one focused on how stories fund political campaigns. It’s absolutely fascinating to hear this political strategist talk about the story he told that helped get George Bush elected. This story is particularly fascinating given what happened in our most recent election.

Here is another Redglass Pictures film, this one is Ken Burns talking about story — and in it, he talks about how stories tell truths, and yet also manipulate.