Storytelling and Spirituality

Spirituality and storytelling. Draft 2.0

Spirituality and storytelling is connected in at least two ways: process and role.

storytelling as Process:

1. When your words, as a storyteller:
touch someone’s heart,
sparks the dreamer in others
stirs the imagination,
invites into awareness new possibilities,
challenges the mind,
excites the emotions,
spurs enthusiasm for adventure,
with examples of
Courage,
Compassion,
Overcoming obstacles,
and problem solving,

then,

one is in a sacred shamanic role
of mediating the deep magic of the universe
hidden in the mysteries of human connectedness,
Love, Beauty, Being and Becoming,
Blessing and the giftedness of everything.

It is a sparking of the human spirit.


This is the spirituality of the storytelling process, of what happens
but there is another aspect.

Spirituality of storytelling: the role of the storyteller.

2. When the storyteller,
with gifts of imagination and of heart,
throws oneself so thoroughly
That one becomes the story,
as if the experience is just happening,
hear and now for the first time,
this is an emptying oneself
for the sake fo the story.

This risking, vulnerability and
surrendering for the sake of the story
is a holy and sacred act, joining one
to the ancient way of the Storytellers.

In this, both for performer and engaged
listener, we become
the mystery of the universe come alive
to itself.

We become connected with all that is,
in the mysterious attraction in the universe
and a vital and holy part of
the evolutionary story.

It is not only the story that can capture.
But the heart of the storyteller which
models a way of being in the world,
of being “gloriously alive,”
the prime characteristic,
according to Ruth Sawyer,
of the fine storyteller.

This is the shamanic role of the storyteller.

Historical note:

The earliest record of storytelling can be dated to at least 200,000 BCE when we have the first evidence of ceremonial graves. Early humans were found buried with tools and weapons. Mythmaking about the after life had begun

Language and storytelling were evolutionary adaptions, helping humans survive. Those primitive humans who believed their were the strongest and bravest had the edge, so to speak, a leg up in the squiggle to survive and prosper.

Language and storytelling spurred the development of the primitive imagination. The more humans could imagine, the greater their survival skills.

Those tribes whose storytellers, poets, bards, shamans, prophets told the best stories about the culture and the heritage of then tribe had the edge in survival and defense of territory and war.
The Hebrew people were the great historical example.
, "You shall dwell in the land that I gave to your fathers; and you shall be My people, and I will be YOUR GOD" (Ezekiel 36:28).

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