Sunday mornings 11 AM–12:30 PM: Feb. 9, 16, 23, March 1, 8, 15, 22, 29
Wednesday evenings 6:30 PM–8 PM: Jan. 22, 29, Feb. 5, 12, 19, 26, March 4, 11
From Rev. Tom Martinez, Desert Palm UCC:
I’m now on schedule to begin my storytelling groups. The good news is, because of the delay, we’ll now be finishing up our 8 sessions sometime in March, just in time for the April gathering of the Southwest Conference of the UCC. And guess what the theme of the annual meeting is this year? The power of story! Our Conference Ministers (Bill Lyons and Barbara Doerrer-Peacock) are both aware of my doctoral program storytelling project and excited to see how our storytelling will flow naturally into the annual meeting (and the “Moth”–like storytelling event that’s planned).
If you’re hearing about this for the first time, this all pertains to my dissertation that’s part of my Ph.D. program in Community Psychology (actually Community, Liberation, Indigenous, and Ecopsychology, but that’s a mouthful) through Pacifica Graduate Institute, outside Santa Barbara, CA. The dissertation’s design is based on the work of Marshall Ganz, who teaches leadership at Harvard and who cut his teeth as an organizer first in the Civil Rights Movement and then working with Caesar Chavez and farmworkers. Over time through his work as an organizer, he came to appreciate the ways shared storytelling could help groups identify common themes and areas of interest and thereby guide and direct their course of action.
The public narrative model created by Ganz begins with the story of self (your story), moves on to the story us (the collective story of the group), and the story of now (that place where our shred concerns and the world’s injustice meet). I have to again express not only my gratitude for those of you who have signed up to participate but also for our patience in putting up with the recent delay! And again if this is the first time you’re hearing about the project and you’d like to participate, please give me a call at the church (480) 831-0065.