Wrestling for Truth in Our Past | Sojourners

Wrestling for Truth in Our Past

The stories we tell about our history shape our future.
Dame Cicely Saunders, a British American nurse, medical social worker, and physician, was a pioneer in palliative care techniques and founder in the 1960s of the modern hospice movement. / Illustration by Leah Kellaway

In Derek Walcott’s poem “Midsummer, Tobago” he recalls a “summer-sleeping house / drowsing through August.” At Sojourners we are savoring family vacations, relaxing, welcoming new babies — and telling stories about our history and our becoming.

Sojourners assistant editor Josina Guess interviewed actor Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor about her recent films Origin and Exhibiting Forgiveness. Their deep conversation releases transformative power, an example of what narrative theologian James McClendon Jr. called “biography as theology.” What happens when we wrestle for truth in our personal and social histories, and open that struggle to God? As “Living the Word” writer Raj Nadella warns, “distorted memories of the past may misdirect our future; they may cause us to miss the way God is leading.”

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