Storytelling Starters ~ Reflections on the sand
Whitesands Beach is a favourite place for both Paul and me in the same way that, years before I met Paul, it was a favourite place of mine while I still lived full-time in St David’s in Pembrokeshire before I went off to do VSO (Voluntary Service Overseas) in Kenya and then on to be a student at Girton College, Cambridge.
There’s something quite ravishing about Whitesands Beach. When the tide is out and the sands are exposed, the beach feels vast. When the tide is in, its nearness makes you look out at the sea and the islands. Sometimes I think about St David, Dewi Sant, coming here, no doubt with a group of friends and followers, in order to set sail for Ireland to continue his missionary work. The beach opens onto the Irish Sea. It seems to invite exploration. Perhaps it’s one of the things that helped Dewi Sant feel inspired to continue his work of preaching and talking with those who came to listen.
Thinking about Dewi Sant in this context makes me think about the power of storytelling. On his deathbed, Dewi Sant reportedly reminded those followers of his who were gathered around him of something he must have said to them before, perhaps often. ‘Do the little things that I have shown you’ were the words that he used. I believe that the act of telling stories invites a similar response. Storytelling can give its listeners an inner awareness of ways of behaving that are worthwhile in life. They are not necessarily the huge things that are done by heroes and heroines. They are the little things that can help us all and stir us to an understanding of what is important in our own lives.When I was thinking about these things a couple of mornings ago, some incidents from my storytelling life came back to mind. One was something that happened in South Africa in a large mixed-race session for adults. I know I’ve mentioned it before in this blog. But there’s no harm in mentioning it again. It is quite often in my mind. During the break at a storytelling workshop I was giving, a young black member of the group came to speak to me. What he said to me as he did so is something I’ve never forgotten. It was this: ‘This is the first time I have looked a white woman in the eyes.’
Speaking and doing are connected. If you can speak to someone, indeed if you can look them in the eyes, you do something important for yourself. You express yourself. Feeling the power to speak can give you the power to do, to act. It’s quite a power! This morning as I thought over what I might say in this blog today, I remembered another unforgettable incident in one of the sessions I did in what I think of as my early storytelling life. It’s one of the things that empowered me and it happened when I was employed as what was called a storyteller (it was really being a story-reader) on the Lambeth Libraries Storytelling Scheme. In this capacity, I was visiting one of my regular early-years groups and among the stories I did was a picture-book about the moon in which every page showed a huge yellow moon above a different scene. Suddenly, one of my group of listeners, a very thin black boy who had recently joined and who had reportedly remained completely silent ever since, raised his hand and spoke. What he said, over and over again, was just one word, ‘Moon’.
I can feel it to this day – how my heart turned over in my chest as that boy spoke. Such incidents can have an extremely powerful effect, perhaps on the person who has provoked them as well as on the one who witnesses what happens. Such is the power of immediacy. Such is the power of storytelling.
PS: My top picture was taken on Whitesands Beach last Monday. The bottom picture, taken that evening outside our house in Mathri, is that amazing ‘Wolf’ moon – the first full moon of the year.
Tags: Dewi Sant, Whitesands, Wolf Moon