Thoughts from an Aspiring Storyteller
Easter Story-Teller (image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons).
Part of an ongoing series that revisits different ideas I explored as part of my graduate studies in the Environmental Humanities.
Thoughts from an Aspiring Storyteller
Contemplating the importance of stories in an increasingly bewildered world.
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When my grandparents immigrated to the United States from Greece in the early 20th century they worked diligently to carve out a life in a new world that wasn’t entirely welcoming to their presence. After spending time carving out existence through a series of odd jobs, my grandfather and his older brother moved north to Salt Lake City, and went into business for themselves. Opening a small market on 620 East and First South, the James Grocery became the heart of both personal and professional life for the family. Centrally located near downtown Salt Lake the grocery store also became a hub for other newly-arrived Greek immigrants and their families. Believing that America had given them a new home and a new hope the two brothers forbade customers from speaking Greek in the grocery store during business hours. Within a generation much of my family’s attachment to a rich tradition was lost, and today the only vestiges of the Greek heritage carried by my brother and I are locked in the language of our genetics. This action makes me empathetic towards anyone at the receiving end of attempts to further colonize this country through the arrogant mandate of an “English-only” policy. If you truly want to cripple a people and their culture, begin by stripping them of their language. Soon enough the stories and traditions will follow.
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“To hell with facts! We need stories!” – Ken Kesey
Stories swirl around us. Whether it is the lingering story left by something as monumentally epic as Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty, the haunting beauty of a subject held within a Diane Arbus photograph, or the plight of characters painted in a Beatles ballad, stories can cut to the core and bind us. We collect and share them, wrapping them intricately around the framework of events to construct ideas and build meanings and motivations in the face of a chaotic and seemingly indifferent universe.
There is power to be reckoned with in our stories. The currents of human life are consistently bent and shaped by the force of the stories we choose to share, value, and build our lives around. I wonder if this reliance and need for story is something built into the architecture of our DNA - a collection of genetic switches that are flipped on and into service the moment our own life stories begin.
In her book Yellow Woman and the Beauty of the Spirit, Leslie Marmon Silko discusses the importance of stories shared in the oral tradition of her Native American culture. These are stories that form and cement kinship groups and act as a symbolic means of learning the land. The practical values of such stories dramatically improve the odds of survival in a given environment. Stories also serve as a powerful bridge linking generations. Even the very structure of a story serves as a reminder of the dynamic and changing nature of life as they bend and reshape themselves with the wind of recounting over time.
But an acknowledgment that stories have stored power demands recognition that this power can be twisted and used in ugly ways. The world is full of examples of people who have died for their stories, or used their stories to validate the exploitation and destruction of “the other” (whether it is fellow human beings, animals, or the planet itself).
Maybe by being mindfully aware of the tremendous power our stories hold we place ourselves in a better position to utilize them constructively. World storyteller Laura Simms calls this the process of understanding how the worlds of the sacred and the unsacred move together in concert within every story. Perhaps another way of saying this is that our stories need to be light on their feet and responsive to the actions of an Earth we have no true control over. Stories should be sacred enough to store our wisdom, and light enough to laugh at themselves when we inevitably get something wrong.
The truth of the matter is that stories form the very roots of human culture and civilization. National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence, Wade Davis refers to this collective archive of knowledge as the “human ethnosphere,” a veritable warehouse of lessons and collected wisdom that has emerged from the seemingly endless human attempts to understand the “how(s)” and the “why(s)” of our universe.
However, as Davis points out, in a world of rapid change large parts of this information storehouse are vanishing. With the loss of indigenous languages and stories we are losing vital component pieces of the rich tapestry that connects us and teaches us how to live wisely in the world.
But maybe human language and human stories aren’t the only place we can turn to for lessons in the deep wisdom of connection…
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The story of our dog Haley begins in the streets of Ethiopia. Packs of feral animals roam the streets there and for a time one particularly cruel solution devised by the locals involved herding them up and throwing them into a cavernous pit not far from town. Years passed and the pit slowly filled. Eventually an animal rescue advocate heard the stories of this place and went to investigate. What he discovered were four scrawny survivors named Haley, Hana, Tommy, and Maria. They had managed to survive on a combination of trapped rain water and the bodies of other rotting animals. Once the dogs were removed from this hell the pit was sealed. The next part of their journey took them far away from the streets of Africa, to America. Haley made her way to the canyon country of Southern Utah and soon enough found new life as much-loved member of our home. Today, without the benefit of hearing her story in human words, you wouldn’t know anything of the horror Haley had experienced in her short life. She carries a half smile and a subtle joy in her movements that feels analogous to the humor and wisdom often found in human survivors of similarly unreal tragedy. Haley is living proof that it is foolish to assume that only human voices and human stories hold meaning and power…
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“Man is the only animal for whom his own existence is a problem which he has to solve.” – Erich Fromm
The sheer variety of human stories and myth speak to our seemingly limitless imagination and the potent collection of characters and situations that can repeatedly be called into service. However, as the poet Robert Bringhurst articulates in The Tree of Meaning, it is pure hubris to assume that our particular expressions of language and storytelling are the only ones at play in this world.
All around us life is engaged in wildly unique and disparate forms of storytelling. Consider the dance language of bees, the budding of a flower, the hive mind connection of an ant colony, or the distinct variations of bird song. Even within the wilderness of our bodies chemical reactions are speaking a language and sharing stories that drive the biological processes that sustain us.
In Last Chance to See Douglas Adams shares his own stories of interacting with animals around the world. His words underscore the point that these creatures deserve respect and voice as co-evolved species alongside our own. A key point from that book that has always stuck with me is the need for us to understand our actions and how they can (too often ignorantly) impact non-human lives.
Take for example Adams tragic story of the white dolphins that once flourished in the Yangtze River of China. These creatures relied on a complex sonar system to model their watery world. In effect they “saw” through sound. Human activity on the water slowly filled the dolphin’s home with pollution - both chemical and noise from the myriad number of boats on the water. Too quickly a creature that had evolved slowly over time to meet the unique demands of its particular environment found that carefully constructed world thrown into complete chaos. Too often the Yangtze River dolphins met a tragic and disoriented fate at the cruel end of a boat propeller, and by 2006 this “goddess of the Yangtze” was declared functionally extinct as a species.
A story like this demonstrates a crucial truth. There are alternate ways of knowing practiced on this planet and they are continually expressed and shared in the utterly inimitable languages of the fellow species that we share our world with. A humble question from us might be what remarkable insights and reminders of profound connection are currently getting lost in translation?
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The stories and legends that surround the life of St. Francis of Assisi invariably make mention of the deep love and connection he maintained with animals and nature. One story tells of how he first preached to a flock of birds who diligently listened to the human words of St. Francis that implored them to use their distinct voices in praising the creator that gave them life. On a separate occasion St. Francis is said to have interceded on the part of a village being terrorized by a wolf. Coming upon the wolf in a wood outside the village he commanded it to stop frightening the villagers and instead come to an agreement that would allow all to coexist peacefully. It was said that the wolf agreed to these terms and lived the rest of its life in harmony with the people of the village who no longer feared nature, and instead embraced the joy of living in better balance with the world. There is a common thread weaving through the stories of St. Francis. His words gesture at an often overlooked truth that the human voice is but one of many in the vibrant, soaring song of life. But how to find the humility to not only recognize this truth, but truly embrace and practice it on a daily basis?
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“Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain’t goin’ away.” – Elvis Presley
What to make of human beings, our stories, and our behavior on this planet? Much of the discussion in contemporary environmentalism is colored by a shade of ecocentrism that demands that we set aside any antiquated anthropocentric worldview that imagines human beings as the preeminent species on the Earth. But while this call to find new stories that better fit us into our environment is intriguing I find myself asking difficult questions…
Because of the very fact that we are human beings, aren't we always doomed to function from some kind of anthropocentric perspective? Can we simply assume that ecocentrism alone has the power to overcome the assumptions and attitudes that have led us to this crazy globalized human world (and its accompanying environmental crisis)?
Our species is capable of so much simultaneous beauty and destruction. Perhaps one road is an acknowledgment of this truth and a greater focus on the hope implicitly bound in esteeming and cultivating the things we get right. There is no true distinction between nature and culture aside from the artificial constructs we build around both. One doesn't benefit at the expense of the other. As we come from nature (and speak but one language of the world) it is imperative that we figure out exactly what these sophisticated concepts mean.
In his discussion of moral philosophy Aristotle proposed an ethic called megalopsuche (or “greatness of soul”) that is envisioned as a mean between the excess of human vanity and the deficiency of human cowardice. In his introduction to ecocriticism Greg Garrard takes this example and suggests we utilize its versatility in helping the environmental movement move beyond philosophies and actions rooted firmly in either a simplistic anthropocentric or ethnocentric stance. The time has come for us to fully embrace and celebrate the best parts of our humanity at the same moment we re-imagine our place on a planet that is well beyond our full control or understanding.
While such a dynamic ethic could favorably color all parts of a human life, for myself I imagine the greatness of soul as a potent mindset that recognizes the human tendency for storytelling and embraces its multiplicity of form. After all, it is the well worn power of our stories and ability to communicate them effectively that serves as dependable currency in any given human life.
The greatness of soul cultivates humor and humility, and seeks to help us find our sustainable place within the larger web of our shared environment. The greatness of soul actively encourages us to fashion stories worthy of transmission at the same moment it demands that we listen (and treat listening as an act of mindful attention and love).
A future full of so much potential pain and turbulence will have an increasing need for stories that can positively shape the rivers of human thought and subsequent behavior. It is a place that will need the talents of storytellers who are light on their feet and capable of using powerful judgment in knowing which unique language to speak at the perfect moment. If there truly is a greatness of human soul worth preserving it will be found in the collective talent and shared power of our best stories and storytellers. As long as stories hold power there is hope.