Getting under our skin

I paced back and forth in a frenetic circle at the foot of my bed. Holding my cell, I concentrated on each syllable coming from the headphones. I was interviewing my mom for a book, when I realized the pent-up energy in my dizzying march. I wondered why my interrogations had such urgency, as I longed to fill in the holes in my incomplete memories, as I yearned to make the fuzzy edges of my recollections sharp.

I glanced at my paper, pen, and computer, abandoned on the bed. Unlike most of my interviews, I wasn't tapping a keyboard as I peppered my mom with questions. I wasn't exactly trying to get to the facts. I didn't care as much about the hows. I wanted something more than that. I wanted the whys. I wasn't worried that I'd forget her answers, because the stories she told were a part of me. The stories were me. Because what are we, if we are not our stories? 

Read the rest at Patheos, as I join a panel of very impressive people, like Barbara Brown Taylor, Marcus Borg, and Brian McLaren, talking about Religious Trends.