Stories as Living Seeds
Stories shape people, just as seeds grow into the trees that define the world all around, said Kaitlin Curtice at Calvin University’s January Series on Tuesday, Jan. 20. The acclaimed author, poet, public speaker, and enrolled citizen of the Potawatomi Nation helped listeners reflect on how stories live, grow, and shape us.
Drawing from her latest book, Everything Is a Story: Reclaiming the
Power of Stories to Heal and Shape Our
Lives, Curtice led listeners through the lifecycle of stories, exploring how they influence identity, faith, belonging, and justice.
“Stories are incredibly powerful,” she said. “We are storytellers, but we are always inheriting stories as well. From the trees and the waters, from the ants and the cone flowers – and, yes, from the oak trees.”
Seeds – The Early Years
Curtice began with the earliest roots of our stories, asking listeners to reflect on experiences that shape identity. “Who first told you the story of yourself?” she asked. “Who held the power to shape your everything?”
She described childhood as a time when stories take root through mirroring, absorbing what families, faith communities, and society reflect back.
Sharing a journal excerpt from a retreat spent beneath an oak tree on Indigenous land, Curtice spoke about learning to find holiness in the natural world. “I can find my sacredness, my holy story in the story of collective belonging with the world around me,” she said. She urged attendees to honor their beginnings. “May we pay attention to the stories of our births, of our early years.”
Sprouts – Adolescence
Adolescence, she explained, is a tender season when our stories begin to sprout through community roles and expectations. Curtice reflected on growing up labeled as a leader and a “social butterfly” even though group gatherings exhausted her.
“How funny that I didn’t really connect all of those dots until, as an adult,” she said, “I had to stop performing and really ask, ‘Who am I, and what is my story?’”
Through poetry, she said, she explored how spiritual beliefs are often formed in childhood and later reshaped through lived experience.
“There is deep tenderness in our adolescent stories,” she said, encouraging listeners to circle back to their younger selves with compassion. “Part of the sacred cycle of being human is to circle back to our young selves again and again, to see them, to know them, to honor their stories.”
Saplings – Into Adulthood
As our stories mature into adulthood, Curtice described them as saplings shaped by bravery, exploration, and consequence. “We are like those oak trees that have seen their fair share of weather,” she said, “who have brought shelter to the weary.”
She invited reflection on how stories affect others, especially through rumors, stereotypes, and misrepresentation. “It matters how we tell stories about each other,” she said.
Drawing on historical examples of “othering,” she reflected as well on healers, widows, and Indigenous people targeted through colonial and religious narratives. “The status quo is built on stories that circulate in communities—” she said, “the lethal stories, the ones that destroy people and cultures.”
In contrast, she offered hope: “As stories grow, may we make choices every day to honor the stories of the othered in society.”
Maturity – Power and Responsibility of Stories
Mature stories, Curtice said, hold real cultural power. “Oak trees take years and years to grow,” she noted. “So stories, like trees, take years and years to mature and form and shape societies.”
She challenged listeners to consider public narratives, especially stereotypes surrounding Indigenous people. Reflecting on Native mascots and Western film tropes, for example, she said, “The cowboys and Indians myth lives on in the psyche of America. These stories still shape how Indigenous people are treated.”
She urged responsible engagement with stories: “Listen, read, and research. Pause and reflect. Take in what others say without responding. Spend time away from social media. Ask how this affects your life and your community.” Ultimately, she reminded attendees, “Finding your call begins with finding yourself.”
Stories of Belief and Letting Go
As time goes on, Curtice said, stories eventually become like compost, never dying but changing form. “Stories never really die,” she explained. “They become compost, moving from one kind of existence to another.”
She emphasized the urgency of discernment in a time marked by fear, injustice, and division. “It is essential that we ask which stories we want to pass on and which ones we want to let compost back to the earth,” she said.
Curtice closed with a poetic call to courage and imagination: “No acorn is surprised to discover that they will one day become the oak. Look in the mirror again, turn the to-do list into poetry, and let it bring you deeper into the truth already waiting to welcome you back to yourself.”
Shirley Hoogstra, former president of the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities, moderated a conversation following the talk to explore Curtice’s writing, spirituality, and Indigenous heritage, as well as her relationship with Jesus and her reflections on injustice and healing. The event concluded with a benediction read by Hoogstra, a prayer for Christ’s strength and sustenance in the ongoing work of justice and storytelling.
Through her reflections, Curtice left attendees with a reminder: Stories are living seeds, and how they are tended will shape what grows next.
