Passing on the Stories
22/07/13 05:47
In times long ago people sat around in the evenings in their long houses or tipis or in the shelter of mud homes or igloos or other shelters and they told stories. Their stories often explained the natural world around them. If a mudslide destroyed a village and killed most of the inhabitants, a story of that event grew up and over the decades evolved into a tale about how Raven punished a village. In the story, the people are punished for their cruelty towards animals. The event that tips the balance for the village is the torture of a young goat kid by throwing rocks. The one person in the village who was kind and rescued the goat survived and his house was not destroyed. All of the rest of the village was wiped away. The story became a morality story that was used to teach children about respect and care for other living things.
There are stories about why hummingbird has a read throat, why the Okanagan Valley is so dry, why humans are not all alike, why there are so many mosquitoes and why rabbits hop. The stories were told over ad over again. In the time before printing presses and literacy among the people, the skills of storytelling were well honed. In most traditions, there was a form of group memorization that meant that stories could be conveyed from generation to generation with word for word accuracy.
The skills of storytelling and memorization have faded in our modern times of computers and television and electric lights to keep the dark out of our homes. We no longer entertain ourselves by sitting in the dark or sitting around a fire and telling stories. We no longer have patience for the same stories being told over and over and over again. We need something new and we want sound and lights and action. We like our televisions and movies and computers and YouTube. We have little patience for the skills and traditions that have been passed down from generation to generation.
Still, there are some forever stories that we are called to pass down to the next generation. In our family there are stories of the births of babies and of the moment of meeting in an adoption. There are stories of big trips and special occasions. There are stories of weddings and anniversaries. And there are stories of deaths and losses and remembrances of people who have touched our lives and then died. There are stories of how grandma met grandpa and of some of the things that they did during their lives. We tell those stories with varying amounts of accuracy. I find that my brother and I have different versions of the stories of our elders. We even have different versions of many events that happened in our lives. There is not, as yet, a single version of the story that has risen to the level of being the story for the whole family. Perhaps that takes many generations.
Our scriptures contain the forever stories of our people. While I am very grateful that they have been written down and that they have been translated into so many different languages so that they are accessible to so many people, I fear that the legacy of 500 years of printing is that we have become lazy about the stories of our people. We trust the printed word to carry the stories from one generation to the next. We don’t feel the urge to internalize the stories and make them a part of ourselves. In the time before printing, the people felt that they had to learn the stories in order to be able to pass them on. These days, we order a bible from Amazon.com or pick one up at a local bookstore and make a gift of it for a graduation or a confirmation and assume that we have done our part.
Passing the faith from one generation to the next is not that easy.
Now we stand at another of the great transitions in human history. Like the invention of the printing press, which displaced the oral tradition and created a major shift from trust in the spoken word to trust in the printed word, our time is facing a technological revolution. Our son, who is a librarian, explained to me how libraries are not very much about books any more. They are about connecting people with information. Dictionaries that contain static definitions of words no longer are useful. The meaning and proper usage of words change with the development of culture. The next generation of dictionaries will be user edited and subject to constant change. It will be more like Wikipedia than the Encyclopedia Britannica.
If books are diminishing in their role, usability and trustworthiness as our culture undergoes this revolution, the question arises of how best to preserve and pass on the stories of our people. Just as printed Bibles were an appropriate response to the invention of the printing press and the rise in literacy of the people, we will need to discover the proper response and ways to convey our stories. The Internet is filled with attempts. From YouTube to Twitter, from Facebook to cloud photo sharing, we are trying to find ways to keep our stories alive and to share them with other people.
I receive hundreds of emails each year that someone found inspirational. They pass them on without ever considering the source, without ever evaluating why they produce an emotional response or how those stories might be used by others. Some of the emails are worth saving and looking at again and again. Others are hardly worth the effort of reading the first time.
I think that in this time of transmission, there is a special need for people who can internalize the stories of our people. In addition to those who seek new forms of keeping, treasuring and sharing the stories through modern technologies, there is a need of people who simple become so familiar with the stories that they are a part of their personality and identity. I have learned some of the stories, but I have much more yet to learn. I do, however, strive to be one who has internalized the stories enough to convey their essence without the actual printed book.
Keeping and sharing the stories may become a lost art at some time in the future. But for as long as I live, I pray that I might be able to keep and treasure and share our people’s stories.
There are stories about why hummingbird has a read throat, why the Okanagan Valley is so dry, why humans are not all alike, why there are so many mosquitoes and why rabbits hop. The stories were told over ad over again. In the time before printing presses and literacy among the people, the skills of storytelling were well honed. In most traditions, there was a form of group memorization that meant that stories could be conveyed from generation to generation with word for word accuracy.
The skills of storytelling and memorization have faded in our modern times of computers and television and electric lights to keep the dark out of our homes. We no longer entertain ourselves by sitting in the dark or sitting around a fire and telling stories. We no longer have patience for the same stories being told over and over and over again. We need something new and we want sound and lights and action. We like our televisions and movies and computers and YouTube. We have little patience for the skills and traditions that have been passed down from generation to generation.
Still, there are some forever stories that we are called to pass down to the next generation. In our family there are stories of the births of babies and of the moment of meeting in an adoption. There are stories of big trips and special occasions. There are stories of weddings and anniversaries. And there are stories of deaths and losses and remembrances of people who have touched our lives and then died. There are stories of how grandma met grandpa and of some of the things that they did during their lives. We tell those stories with varying amounts of accuracy. I find that my brother and I have different versions of the stories of our elders. We even have different versions of many events that happened in our lives. There is not, as yet, a single version of the story that has risen to the level of being the story for the whole family. Perhaps that takes many generations.
Our scriptures contain the forever stories of our people. While I am very grateful that they have been written down and that they have been translated into so many different languages so that they are accessible to so many people, I fear that the legacy of 500 years of printing is that we have become lazy about the stories of our people. We trust the printed word to carry the stories from one generation to the next. We don’t feel the urge to internalize the stories and make them a part of ourselves. In the time before printing, the people felt that they had to learn the stories in order to be able to pass them on. These days, we order a bible from Amazon.com or pick one up at a local bookstore and make a gift of it for a graduation or a confirmation and assume that we have done our part.
Passing the faith from one generation to the next is not that easy.
Now we stand at another of the great transitions in human history. Like the invention of the printing press, which displaced the oral tradition and created a major shift from trust in the spoken word to trust in the printed word, our time is facing a technological revolution. Our son, who is a librarian, explained to me how libraries are not very much about books any more. They are about connecting people with information. Dictionaries that contain static definitions of words no longer are useful. The meaning and proper usage of words change with the development of culture. The next generation of dictionaries will be user edited and subject to constant change. It will be more like Wikipedia than the Encyclopedia Britannica.
If books are diminishing in their role, usability and trustworthiness as our culture undergoes this revolution, the question arises of how best to preserve and pass on the stories of our people. Just as printed Bibles were an appropriate response to the invention of the printing press and the rise in literacy of the people, we will need to discover the proper response and ways to convey our stories. The Internet is filled with attempts. From YouTube to Twitter, from Facebook to cloud photo sharing, we are trying to find ways to keep our stories alive and to share them with other people.
I receive hundreds of emails each year that someone found inspirational. They pass them on without ever considering the source, without ever evaluating why they produce an emotional response or how those stories might be used by others. Some of the emails are worth saving and looking at again and again. Others are hardly worth the effort of reading the first time.
I think that in this time of transmission, there is a special need for people who can internalize the stories of our people. In addition to those who seek new forms of keeping, treasuring and sharing the stories through modern technologies, there is a need of people who simple become so familiar with the stories that they are a part of their personality and identity. I have learned some of the stories, but I have much more yet to learn. I do, however, strive to be one who has internalized the stories enough to convey their essence without the actual printed book.
Keeping and sharing the stories may become a lost art at some time in the future. But for as long as I live, I pray that I might be able to keep and treasure and share our people’s stories.