Today we are grieving and our hearts go out to the community of…
I’ll leave that blank. When you read this, who knows what community will have just been devastated by gun violence.
Saturday night, I got the news about El Paso, TX. Sunday morning, I woke to the news about Dayton, OH. In between learning about the two tragic events, I sat in our storytelling show and listened to true stories, authentic stories, personal stories.
As Zach Wilks told how much his parents’ stories shaped the man he became, I could see the love passed to him through those stories. As Jay Johnson talked about the America she grew up in, growing up black in the segregated South, I imagined this child in a community filled with love, surrounded by so many people filled with hate. As Les Schaffer revealed that he’d been called a Jew Devil in the not too deep South of Virginia, not that long ago, it was clear how his experiences were not so very different from Jay’s. As Barbara Fornoff explained how becoming a counselor taught her to listen, and how listening taught her to be better at caring for people – all people, not just her clients – I felt the healing power of story. As each new storyteller took the stage and spoke, our audience, our community, grew closer, learned to listen, to care more.
Hatred will always exist, as will violence. But it is harder to hate someone we feel we know. It is harder to hate when we feel loved.
I love our storytelling community. I wish all people who felt unloved – or who were filled with hatred, anger, hopelessness – could find a loving community to embrace, one that would embrace them, listen to their stories, share their own stories with them, learn to understand each other, and grow together. Grow in story, grow in love, and grow in community.
Storytelling is not the solution to gun violence. Community is part of the solution. Stories are part of what grows a community, strengthens a community and opens a community to all of us. When we are all us together, there is no more them. If we could learn to be – grow to be – part of one community, one people, then, perhaps, love would conquer hate.
