I don’t think we’d understand anything if it wasn’t for story.  The shape of beginning, middle and end is everywhere from newspapers to sonatas, road maps to spinal cords. What else are we doing when we listen to story, but hoping to recognize our own? We want proof that this has happened before, that we are not alone, that our struggles are legitimate and our loves are beautiful.  Stories turn data to flesh and spirit, history to voices and feelings, and truth to embodiment. I don’t trust anything that doesn’t have a character in it somewhere. It probably isn’t human.

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Kj Swanson is an MDiv student at Mars Hill Graduate School and is a brilliant, thought provoking communicator. She is in movement towards becoming a pastor, and knows every song in the musical RENT.

100 Words are shorts that I’ve asked my friends to write on various subjects. They are intended to be small windows into how they view the world and experience reality. The only instructions they are given are a.) a one-word subject on which to write and b.) that the short must be exactly 100 words. How they interpret the subject and the form in which the 100 words are produced is up to them.