Creating a Healing Culture of Storytelling

Originally published here - Vibrant Faith Articles.

At a conference this month I heard John Bucher talk about our intrinsic love of stories. He described how our love affair with story goes deeper than we think. We are created from stories; we’re formed by them. We need stories to mirror back our reality—parables, fables, songwriting, novels, movies, and yes, even Netflix binging. We NEED stories. Stories help us make meaning of our lives. And that storytelling could help us heal a hurting world today.

John Bucher is a mythologist. It says so on his business card. He earned a PhD in mythology and serves as Executive Director for the Joseph Campbell Foundation. He has worked with HBO, DC Comics, and many others, including the John Maxwell Leadership Foundation and Virtual Reality projects. He knows the power of story:       
            
"People have used story to make sense of the world because part of the human experience is recognizing that there is mystery… We’re all doing the best we can to work through these issues that we all seem to share as human beings and trying to come to some sense of what it means…what does it mean to be alive? What does it mean to be conscious? What does it mean to be human?...

...We don’t know anything except for our own experience and that leaves us insecure, it leaves us unsure… But our comfort comes from exchanging stories, telling each other the stories that we have about the way the world looks to us… And even when we don’t get it right… we hear each other’s stories and we say, ah I take comfort in that, I feel better because what you said—it resonates with me, And it makes me feel like maybe I am not alone here."

In a conversation with Bucher we talked about how our culture loves Marvel movies. Even though critics have panned some of the movies, people love them. Why? He suggested that these stories speak to our “collective journey,” and perhaps in a culture deeply divided (over Covid, politics, religion, and more) we crave stories that honor what happens when we stick together. Toward the end of our conversation he said, “I would suggest to you the grand achievement of any great storyteller is making someone feel a little less alone in the world.”

An Epidemic of Isolation
The current polarizing climate in the U.S. has left many of us feeling isolated. We’re experiencing a loneliness epidemic. Maybe the healing we need will come through the nurturing of a storytelling culture our faith communities...
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Read more of this article HERE at Vibrant Faith.

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