Our sources suggest that religion happened not just in the rituals and at the shrines of sacred beings, but also in the way people imagined their relationships with the gods, in the stories that they told about those relationships, in the ever present kharis, and the presence of sacred beings in daily life. [...] Even when not testing institutional limits, narrative provided individuals with a place to play a leading role in the telling of their own religious story and understanding of the divine. Religious storytelling can be found in the memories of past rituals told by parents (such as Isaeus’ Ciron) who trained children in proper religious comportment, in the tales told by old nurses and mothers to infants, in the images woven by women into tapestries and fabric, in the chronicle plaques posted after seeing Trophonius at Lebadeia, or the images offered at shrines that represented and recorded divine encounters. The gods were present in these stories and at the location of storytelling itself, at the altars with attentive parents, by the beds of infants, near the weaving basket and loom. Certainly, it is well-recognized that in Greek religious thought, sacred presence and absence carried important theological and philosophical significance.
"Devotionalism, Material Culture, and the Personal in Greek Religion" by K.A. Rask
