c. 1997 Religion News Service

MOBILE, Ala. _ It is an art as old as the fireside, as central a part of human culture as cooking. Yet, live storytelling seems to have vanished from much of American life. Nowadays, television, videotapes, compact discs and computers have taken over the role of village yarnspinner.

But telling tales is the best way to pass on moral values from one generation to another, according to a Mobile minister, and some Mobile-area church members are beginning to teach their fellow congregants the skills necessary to deliver those values well through stories that entertain, stories that inspire, and even stories that touch, and sadden, the heart.”To tell a story is to tell the truth, one way or another,”said the Rev. Camille Hegg, vicar of Mobile’s Episcopal Church of the Redeemer and a veteran storyteller.

Hegg and Episcopal Bishop Charles Duvall of the Diocese of the Central Gulf Coast, held a storytelling workshop recently at St. John’s Episcopal Church. About 15 participants came _ some novices, some professionals. Most were local but some came from as far away as Panama City, Fla., to learn how to turn a series of events into a story.

The diocese has also founded a storytellers guild, and later this month some of the participants from this workshop will meet to strut their stuff, telling new tales based on the lives of women of the Bible.

Duvall said storytelling is central to the religions of Western civilization.”Any religious person in the tradition of the Bible _ for Jewish people, Christian people, Muslim people _ stories are one of the main ways that God reveals himself to us,”the bishop said.

Jesus was a storyteller in the tradition of Jewish midrash, Hegg said. Midrash is a method of rabbinic commentary and interpretation of the Bible.”The rabbis were the teachers, and they would interpret or expand on Scripture, and the way they did that was through stories. They interpreted the Bible for their own time,”he said.

Even though the pace of modern life has made personal storytelling seem like an anachronism, Lynn Ferren, a workshop participant from Panama City, said she finds children and adults all seem to respond to her tales, but in different ways, according to their abilities.”(Listeners) can fill in to whatever degree they want to,”she said.”When I tell a scary story, they can make it as scary as they want to in their own imagination. They can pull whatever they need out of a story.” A teacher at Holy Nativity, an Episcopal school in Panama City, Ferren agrees with Hegg that stories provide the best way to pass on moral values. Rather than lecture on a certain moral point, she uses stories that seep into the children’s memories, and, she hopes, remain for years.

At the end of the storytelling workshop, several participants shared stories they had brought with them. Ferren told a story _ its contours old and familiar, its details new _ of a poor boy who learns what contentment means. He discovers a magic vase, and as he rubs it clean, a dragon appears, offering to grant him three wishes. After the first two wishes cause trouble, the boy wishes he had never found the curious vase. The dragon grants his last wish, and _ poof! _ the boy is back to normal. He doesn’t remember a thing that has happened, but he’s glad to be who he is.

In an age where video games, cartoons and blockbuster movies dominate children’s lives, slowing the speed down a bit helps them retain the moral aspect of the story, rather than just the plot, Ferren said.”Television and movies do it all for them. With a story, they have to use their own imagination to fill in the meaning,”she said.

Ferren said she has attended storytelling workshops for about 15 years, searching for new tales and good suggestions on how to make those stories come alive.

One thing she’s learned is that there is a fine line between acting a story out and interpreting it.”With acting, you more or less become one of the characters, and you tell the story from that point of view. When you are interpreting, you are telling the entire story, and trying to give that sense to the people who are listening.” Hegg said one mistake storytellers often make is to try to memorize all the details of a story in exact chronological order. Rather than do that, she said, it’s better to study the sequence of events, and”learn the story from the inside out _ learn the characters and the setting.”That way, she added, the teller can let the story tell itself.”It comes out differently every time, but that says something about the audience.” Hegg said she spends a good amount of time choosing the stories she tells to an audience, whether at a storytelling gathering or in a sermon.”You have to let the story choose you. You find a story that you love or that just beckons to you, and you may not know why you want to tell it, but something about it just captures you.”

DEA END LONG