Carol Ochs has written a powerfully impressive book on how to practice informal theology. Here's a key passage that spells out how meaning can take hold in our living.
"A useful exercise in spiritual guidance workshops begins with a reminder that we have been given the gift of story. The fact that Torah is in narrative form emphasizes the importance of the specific time, the location, and — above all — the individuals in the story. The workshop members then break up into chevrutot (pairs of partners). One of the pair relates a personal story to which the partner is asked to listen as though the story were sacred scripture. After the first person has spoken, the listener may ask how God was present in the narrative. The listener 'hears' the narrator into realizing the sacredness of the story. Finally, narrator and listener switch roles.
"Next, we recall that when Moses asked to behold God's presence, God placed him in the cleft of a rock and shielded him until God had passed by. Only then could Moses see — not the face of God, but just the back. The rabbis commenting on this text understand it to mean that we can discover God in our lives in retrospect, but cannot see where God will be in the future, or even where God is in the immediate present.
"Through the workshop exercise, participants can discover God's presence in their lives in the past. After the initial round, they redo the exercise, recounting some event from the past twenty-four hours. Their earlier experience of being 'heard' into recognizing the Torah in their own stories helps them discover, in this second exercise, that God was present as recently as yesterday.
"We can discover that each of our lives is a cosmic drama — that we are not bit players who must watch while all that is really significant happens to stars and celebrities. We begin to accept that our own lives are as important as any that have ever been lived on earth.
"Finding God in our own stories is the beginning of our task."