Beecken Center executive director Sheri D. Kling is among the scheduled speakers for the inaugural New Story Festival in Austin, Texas, March 29-31.
Her music-driven presentation, “Imaginal: Dying and Rising in Story and Song,” will weave the ancient myth of the Sumerian goddess Inanna with the scientific story of a caterpillar’s metamorphosis into a butterfly to show how people can emerge from experiences of darkness and loss into light and rebirth.
Other speakers and performers will include Nadia Bolz-Weber, Charles Eisenstein, Brian McLaren, and Over the Rhine.
The festival’s website says it “seeks to lead us into a better story — one that encourages growth and liberation, healing and harmony; a story where the downtrodden are uplifted and everyone is included” because “the best criticism of the bad is the practice of the better.”
The New Story Festival – Better Stories from New Story Festival on Vimeo.
Matthew Townsend is a Halifax-based freelance journalist and volunteer advocate for survivors of sexual misconduct in Anglican settings. He served as editor of the Anglican Journal from 2019 to 2021 and communications missioner for the Anglican Diocese of Quebec from 2019 to 2022. He and his wife recently entered catechism class in the Orthodox Church in America.
