Curtis and Nancy French explore the power of storytelling in everyday life.   Nancy, a professional storyteller and New York Times best-selling author, urges listeners to “read” the stories of their own lives – in order to see how the ultimate Author of their stories (God) has shaped their destinies.  Curtis and Nancy also encourage people to inhabit other peoples’ stories and to interview family members, such as parents, to more clearly see the context of their “origin stories.”

CURTIS CHANG: How do we mine our own stories for greater depth and meaning?

NANCY FRENCH: If I asked you, Curtis, as we were sitting in your courtyard next to your fire, “hey, what’s your story?” Listeners, how would you answer that question?

You might have complicated feelings, because a lot of us do not like our stories.When you don’t like your story, it might be because you have apprehension about the ultimate storyteller, who is God.  When you think about your story soberly, you’re really thinking about God. You’re thinking, why did this happen to me? Or why did I do this?

Let’s imagine we were asking this question – what’s your story? – to Daniel, from the Biblical story found in Daniel 6.

Daniel’s tossed in the lion’s den.  Imagine we pause the story, and we stick a microphone in front of Daniel’s mouth and say, “Daniel, tell us your story.” His story would be pretty dire.

But aging and maturing is really beautiful. Because this process allows you to look back at what has happened and see a fuller story. 

When you read a book, you read it in order.  However, you can only tell the story of your life by looking backwards – with hindsight

CURTIS CHANG:  We don’t necessarily need a professional like you to help us do that, right? I journal, which is one practice to help us develop and recapture our story telling power. Are there others?

NANCY FRENCH: In every good movie, there’s a dinner scene. As a kid, I would watch movies of adults smoking cigarettes, drinking wine, having these wonderful lavish meals, and having conversation. I always loved that so much. I wanted to have conversations with people who were interesting, who would listen, so badly. 

One thing about Curtis and Jody Chang, they are curious people who are conversationally generous. You guys listen, Curtis.

CURTIS CHANG: That’s kind of you. There’s something especially powerful about sharing stories around food. We were made to share deeply of ourselves when we are sharing food with one another, when we are breaking bread. I don’t think it’s a surprise that Jesus gave himself to his disciples in this intimate way in the Last Supper when they were breaking bread together. 

There’s just something about that process. When I’m at restaurants and look out at other tables where families, friends, or couples are sitting at a dinner table on their phones in their own worlds – not actually connecting and sharing stories – it is one of the saddest scenes. 

Because the pressures of isolation, the draw to the phone, the draw to social media is so great, you have to very deliberately structure or choose different practices. 

I’ve been thinking a lot about this, because Jody and I did an experiment once. Jody is very hospitable, she loves to host parties. As you well know, Nancy.

NANCY FRENCH: Yes, I’ve benefited from that hospitality many times.

CURTIS CHANG: I’m a guy who craves meaning. And I felt like our parties were good, because they brought people together.  But even when you bring people together, it’s not a guarantee that you conversationally go to places of meaning. 

You can easily spend an evening talking about trivial stuff: how the Warriors or the stock market are doing, for example. 

So Jody and I did this experiment.  We invited four couples who didn’t know each other to dinner. 

“You have to bring a homemade dish,” we told them.  “A dish you make yourself or acquire, but it has to be deliberately chosen.  Bring it and tell why is that dish is meaningful to you?” 

Everybody brought their food, shared the food, and then they told the story behind their dish. It was amazing, Nancy. I mean, a Latina woman brought a simple dish of rice and beans.

“This was the dish that my mom – who held three jobs and couldn’t cook – made for us,” she said. “And it’s meaningful to me, because this is an expression of my mom’s love and sacrifice for us.” 

Another guy who was Asian brought a noodles dish. “This is the dish we ate when we found out my dad had been murdered,” he said. “This was the dish we ate, we were eating when we found that out.” 

Everyone, one after another, told these stories that would’ve never have come up in casual conversation.

When I was eating that noodle dish, I felt like I was entering his story, I felt like I was tasting his experience. 

And when I was eating those rice and beans, I was like a small Latina girl growing up with a mom who’s working at three different jobs. It was beautiful.  We all ended up connecting deeply with each other. 

I want to invite all of us to think more creatively and more intentionally about our gatherings, about our dinners, so we actually increase the story content in them and make it easier to share. Our guests were very willing and hungry to tell their stories and consume each other’s stories – both in food and in narrative.

NANCY FRENCH: Did you bring food or did you just eat everybody else’s food?

CURTIS CHANG: No, I had mine as well.

NANCY FRENCH: What was yours?

CURTIS CHANG: Mine was a rice dish my mom made for myself that sort of captures everything about growing up Chinese-American. Seeing my mom make that dish in the kitchen was sort of a touchstone for me of my own sort of story as a Chinese-American boy growing up.