I have been getting ready to teach a storytelling class. A burst of inspiration came and I wrote this as a love poem to storytelling. Enjoy! - Meghan
Come Rock the Village
I dream of a village
where young and old and all
gather to share stories.
The elders pass on wisdom,
the youth inspire with freshness,
and everyone digs deep, diving
into sacred listening, that ultimate act of love.
In this village, a drum beats,
a pulse low and reverberating,
awaking the subatomic particles
of our souls,
our skins,
our hearts.
Someone stands.
We hear a voice in the dark.
We see a light in the silence.
Faces lean in.
The glow of light reflects in our cheeks.
The spot lights on a teller pouring out the grains of their humanity
into the palm of their hand, throwing those grains like confetti
out into the audience gathered in sacred loving listening.
The teller offers a gift to the village: a story.
Something so simple any of us can give it.
A beginning, middle, and end.
Simple, yet powerful.
It is the Alpha and Omega.
A story has the audacity to shake and stir souls.
A story can be wielded to unify the disparate or divide the united.
A story can reveal hidden secrets or deceive with distraction.
A story can transform a dust mite into an endless universe.
So, come rock the world with your humanity.
Come rock the world standing naked and glorious, beautiful in your vulnerability.
Come rock the world with your truths so real and so raw,
and so perfectly entertaining, darling.
Come hold us in the palms of your hands,
at the edges of our seats,
craving to hear the turns in your tale,
the final resolution to your destitution.
Caress us with your words lilting.
Enfold us in a world of your riches memories,
your greenest pastures
and your darkest hours.
Give us some bright shining glimmer of hope that all our woes will not last.
Give us some reassurance that most tragedies become comedies
with enough time to pass.
Give us some connection to a common denominator,
the digital ones and zeros of our existence,
the carbon particles building all lives.
Remind us we all are these things
together.
And then remind us that we are more than
just zeros and carbon, ones and particles.
Remind us we are diving, darting, dancing beauties.
Remind us we are all swirling in this primal soup together.
Tell us we are the writers of our destinies.
Tell us we are the tellers of our tales,
not merely living,
not merely zeros and ones
and carbon and particles.
Tell us we are, like divine gods and goddess,
we are creating this planet we share, heaven, earth, hell and all.
We are forging the tools of our change,
and building the foundations of our highest towers
and our deepest temples.
We are the tellers.
We are the tellers of stories!