Ann Smith shares her stories
By Kathy Henderson

A collector of eighty-four years’ worth of knowledge, from chunks of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales in the original English to admonitions from her own grandmother, Ann Smith still chooses to share what God is saying to her today.

People trickled into the room, wondering if they were late when they saw seats already filling thirty minutes before the Wednesday event.

Ann talked about growing in the Spirit and how we need to be intentional about what we put into our minds. Stories pour out of Ann Smith, reminding us to share what we know, that everyone has a story, that the Bible is story, and that the stories of our own lives are not about just facts, but the experience of all of it: touch, taste, smell, sound, sight.

Her own stories add weight to the wisdom—flashback to a sitting in a Studebaker with Nathan, talking of love and how little they knew about it then, and back to the present, where it staggers her to think of the truth of that now—cut to a more current conversation with her sister, whose six years with Alzheimer’s disease have brought meaning to the need to be present and focused in ways that are deeper than words.

Change, she says, is necessary for growth, “but everybody feels breathless these days. We have to find center again. I have a hard time wrapping my mind around the fact that the never-changing God is the God of change! It is so hard to turn loose of what is familiar to take hold of what is uncertain.”

Ann agrees with Thomas Merton that the rush of life is a form of violence. We do violence to our relationships, to our bodies, to our minds when we refuse to be aware of God, his movement in our lives, and of our connectedness with each other. “I am one who believes that every word of the Bible, from Genesis to Revelation, is about relationships. Don’t get me started,” she says, just before starting.

And the stories continue.

A version of this article appears in the Thursday, July 2, 2009, edition of the NAC roundup/09 newsletter.  To view the newsletter in its entirety, click here (1.24 MB). The document is in PDF format and requires Adobe Acrobat in order to read and/or print it. If you do not have Acrobat installed on your computer, you can download a free copy of Acrobat Reader here.