Stories tether us to what matters most: our families, our friends, our hearts, our planet, the wondrous mystery of life itself. Yet the stories we’ve been telling ourselves as a civilization are killing us: Fear is wisdom. Vanity is virtuous. Violence is peace. In Between the Listening and the Telling, author and activist Mark Yaconelli leads listeners into an enchanting meditation on the power of storytelling in our individual and collective lives. We tell stories to remember who we are. We tell stories to savor the pleasure of living. Stories can be medicine, and they can transform entire communities.
Through his work with The Hearth nonprofit, Yaconelli has spent thousands of hours listening to people as they grieve loss, deepen friendships, strengthen families, shed light on injustice, and recover hope. In this moving exploration he shows us how individuals and communities can recover the practice of storytelling to address the despair of climate change, the trauma of school shootings, the tragedy of undocumented immigration, and the daily struggle for meaning.
With a foreword by Anne Lamott, Between the Listening and the Telling offers an alloy of story, commentary, and meditation. In an era of runaway loneliness, alienation, global crisis, and despair, sharing stories helps us make a home within ourselves and one another.

A practical book for youth ministers, pastors, parents, and teachers who want to teach prayer to teenagers. The book will be written in short, meditative chapters that provide readers with the appropriate history, theology, pedagogy, and examples for introducing teens to the life of prayer.

In many ways society teaches us to try to have everything under our control. If we are honest, we tend to think that this can be true even of our spiritual lives. But Mark Yaconelli eloquently expresses the reality of our situation: “We are small, sensitive creatures with short lifespans, in a world that is often chaotic, capricious, mysterious, terrible and wonderful all at the same time. Failure, disappointment, loss and other difficult experiences call us to accept our humanity, feel grateful for what has been given, receive the care of others and seek guidance from the Holy Spirit.” Using extraordinary stories from his own life and the lives of others, Yaconelli offers a narrative journey through ways in which disappointments have turned into gifts. In these pages are a wealth of spiritual practices that will carry us deeper into the grace we find in unexpected places.