Evening has become one of my favorite times of the day. This is when we give Andreas a bath and, once he’s been put in a fresh diaper and a nightie – maybe the one with monkeys on the feet, or maybe the one dotted with little colored whales, or maybe the baseball footie – we put him down and, on a non-concert night, Dave settles next to him to tell him a story. “Once upon a time was a little boy named… let’s see… let’s call him Andreas…and Andreas loved to stick his left foot up in the air.” (Oddly enough, it’s true!) Sometimes the stories are just about what happened in Andreas’ world that day. Sometimes they enumerate the rules of baseball (a guaranteed snoozer!). Often the stories contain some minor venting about an outrageous news item of the day and told more for my entertainment than for Andreas. But, no matter the content, Andreas loves listening to his daddy’s voice and inevitably drifts off to sleep, unaware that the latest tax proposal or a particularly twisted bit of political irony just helped him enter dreamland.
This got me thinking about the stories we tell. The stories we tell each other, the stories we choose to read and absorb, and the stories we tell ourselves. Stories are what make the world go ‘round. They influence, inspire, and motivate us much more than dry facts do. If the most proven of facts has no story, no way we can connect to it, it is useless as a power in our lives. One of the greatest things about a story is that it doesn’t have to be factual in order to be true. Perhaps, rather than existing for the relaying of information, the best stories are there for sharing inner realities and to help us understand each other and our world better.
One of my favorite series to read as a little girl were the Laura Ingalls Wilder books. My grandmother, who lived on farmland in northwest Pennsylvania, started reading them to me before I could really read them proficiently myself, but then I continued once I could read on my own. I read all of them at least six or seven times through. My aunt knew I loved them and made me one of those prairie bonnets that pioneer girls wore, and it lived on my head much of the summer, over my braided hair, as I pretended to live a life of discovery, settling unknown territory, and moving on when the time came. I also loved the Anne of Green Gables and Louisa May Alcott books. The girls and women of these books became woven into my own girlhood as I learned more about my world by reading about theirs.
So it can also be with the stories contained in the great religions of the world. If you have been steeped in a particular tradition, what power those narratives have as they plant themselves deep in the heart! As we grow, we can hold them and turn them around in our minds as we go through various stages and experiences. Like prisms, these stories can reveal different aspects of themselves as we open to what they might have to show us. They can be imagined and re-imagined on many levels, and from many places.
Another “story” moment in my life: it was the summer after ninth grade and I was at music camp. At the time, piano was my main instrument. My teacher for the week listened to me play a piece which was likely decently learned with the notes probably in place. It was alright, she said, but could I imagine a story that the piece told, as full of detail as possible, and share it with her through the music? Whether or not I performed it that much more brilliantly the next time, I knew that the experience of performing it felt completely different than before. I was absorbed and engaged. I’m not suggesting that we make every piece we play programmatic, but I do believe that we must have something we want desperately to share – an intention so vivid in our minds that it must spill over and be communicated.
One other thing about stories is that there is a middle man. A medium. And it matters what that medium is. It matters how the story is told.
True confession – I watch way too much Food Network. I was recently watching a show – the one where they are searching for the next Food Network “star.” One of the contestants was asked what her story was. What did she have to share? What was she passionate about? Now, if you weren’t an English speaker and had just been watching her body language and hearing her vocal inflection, you would have thought she had a major bone to pick with the world. She was mad! Her mission was a well-intentioned one, but the way she communicated about it turned everyone off.
She was the first one voted out of the competition.
Which brings me back to Dave’s political anecdotes-turned-bedtime story. Sometimes, the way the story is told turns out to be more important than the story itself.
In communicating our stories, be it through music or the spoken word, there’s something about speaking or performing with love, care, and respect that paves the way for sharing what is at the heart of the matter.
And just so you know, it also helps the baby fall asleep!
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P.S. For some stellar storytelling in the form of spoken word poetry, check out Sarah Kay. I loved Krista Tippet’s interview of her on her recent radio show On Being.
