Origin Stories

We all came to Stand Up through different means. Our origin stories are each unique.



Jackie came through a service learning course.
John came to honor his late grandfather.
Sam came to move DK in as the caretaker.
Michael came through his friendship with me.
Melissa came to do fieldwork.
Gabe came to get out of the heat.
Matt came to clean the house.

We each have our own entry point into the streaming narrative of the now. Even when humans closely share experiences, as we have this weekend, lived moments are differentiated by the stories that lead up to them. In that stories have an arc, a trajectory, our histories upend, propel, and cajole us into the present in varied manners.

It is important, though, that the present is not always compelled by the past. It is in the lived moment that the past is re-membered. And in a community as close as the one we share on Sunday morning, while we each have our disparate pasts, they slowly begin to converge. They become, each one, a narrative thread in the fabric of the whole. We listen intently because we know that each story reveals part of our collective history.

Shared space, time, and touch make narrative demands. Our bodies serve as breathing, sweating frames. It is through the enmeshed confluence of our veins that we co-instantiate the stories that lead to this moment of breath.