Storytelling Starters ~ Reflections on the sand
Saturday, January 22nd, 2022
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. (more…)
So far as subject is concerned, today’s blog has arisen purely because, in bed this morning (and we’re still in 