We have often heard that people need four things to survive: food, water, air, and shelter. We rarely define shelter beyond four walls and a roof, but we know that we need a deeper shelter than that. I think there are at least three other elements to shelter, and I want to invite you to step into it.
There’s the shelter of friendship - a community that knows us, supports us, calls us out when we’re wandering from the path, laughs and cries with us, and generates an energy that is more than the sum of its parts.
There’s the shelter of having a sense of purpose that goes beyond self-centered ambition, and seeks to serve the common good. What is your gift? What is your need? How will you bring them both together to contribute to the most good for everyone?
And there’s the shelter of being connected to someone a few steps further ahead - mentors, wisdom figures, elders who have held steady through the storms of life and can show us how to do the same.
These three elements of shelter form part of a story of what it means to be alive. It’s a story in which power and fairness and wellbeing and hope and healthy lament and action for the common good come together with celebration and community, and an invitation to move forward no matter what’s happening in the world around us.
We’re building a festival around this story, and you’re invited.
In November 2018, we’ll host a one-day New Story Experience, offering a taste of the wisdom, inspiration, fun, sights and sounds of the New Story Festival, planned for March 2019. We’re announcing the schedule for the one-day November experience today. Get the schedule and register now.