I am no prophet. I do not belong to a company or school of prophets; but the Lord called me and said: Go and prophecy to my people.

In the time of Amos, there were schools of prophecy, which sought from God the voice of conscience, both individual and collective.

Listening to stories and telling them helped our ancestors to live humanly - to be human. But somewhere along the way our ability to tell and to listen to stories has been lost.

As time went by, the art of story-telling has fallen to the wayside, and yielded to movies and videos and internet, a media without contact, without relationship. And those who went before us also gradually lost part of what has been our human heritage, the ability to ask the most basic question, the questions about the essence of who I am.

We search for answers to our most anguished questions in technology. But how do we understand the inevitable part of life captured in the term angst, the anxiety and anguish that seem an essential part of living today.

I'm not alright. You're not alright. But that's alright. Religion allows God to come through our human woundedness. What is important is the recognition that healing is both necessary and possible.

Storytelling and story listening help us to remember, which means the opposite of being disremembered. It means entering the membership of a community. Memory is communal.

Stories are mirrors of human be-ing, reflecting back on our very essence. In a story we come to know precisely the both/and mixed-up-ed-ness of our very being. In the mirror of another person's story, we can discover our tragedy and our comedy, and therefore, our very humanness.

Once we accept the common denominator of our own imperfection; once we begin to put into practice the belief that imperfection is the reality we have most in common with all other people; then the defenses that deceive us begin to fall away, and we can begin to see ourselves and others as we all really are.