Remember the Time...?
The Power and Promise of Family Storytelling
by Eileen Silva Kindig
Eileen Silva Kindig has a profound grasp of the significance of storytelling in family settings, and she expresses her insights simply and elegantly.
She writes: "Storytelling is a monumental act. In its finest hour it becomes a psalm of praise and thanksgiving for the love and connection of family. No one else can tell your stories. They belong solely and absolutely to you and to those who make up your intimate circle, whether by birth or by choice. The stories you tell bind you close to one another, yet they give you wings to fly out confidently into the larger world. They teach you how the world works and where you belong in it. But most of all, they open the door to that holy and magnificent place where heaven and earth converge and time hangs in sweet suspension, if only for a moment. The storyteller is the repository of cultural information and the transmitter of history, identity and morality. But the storyteller is also the confabulator, the one who endows the ordinary with wonder, mystery and delight." (page 12)
Indeed, her book is filled with reflective paragraphs that beg to be set into a collection of essays and musings on the place of sacred storytelling in family life. The book is also a thorough gleaning of much that has been written on the power of story in the past twenty years, and is a very good resource that concludes with 16 "tips for family storytelling" and an extensive listing of resources: organizations, schools, books, tapes, etc. Finally, there are the kernels of some very powerful stories scattered all through the book. These are drawn from Kindig's treasury of her own family stories, as well as the many interviews she conducted.
But there is something missing. The book is clearly edited for marketing purposes. Its format is predictably that of a self-help book: ten themes (one for each chapter) summarized nicely, illustrated with numerous short anecdotes to illustrate the themes, and reinforced with extnesive citations from contemporary writers who are authorities in their field. There are even questions for discussion at the end of each chapter.
This is an acceptable approach in psychology or health self-help books where the brief stories are merely "illustrations" that do not need to be told artfully. But these all too many, too brief, and too undeveloped storiues fail in a book that is about storytelling itself. Put simply, much of the storytelling in her book is unsatisfying because she does not permit herself the time to enter fully and imaginatively into them. And because she fails to enchant us (her readers), she does not encounter us.
The fault is not Kindig's, but her editors who should have demanded more storytelling, more poetic reflection, and fewer citings of the authorities. Kindig's grasp of sacred storytelling is so thorough and profound, she needs to cite no authorities but speak more from her own experiences and her own native wisdom.
For example, she tells a powerful story about Ha Thuc, a Vietnamese refugee, and his family, whom the Kindigs sponsor. It is a gem of a story with another vivid tale nestled inside of it (concerning her husband's collection of Americana which is tucked-away in a mini-museum inside their family store.) This story is developed, and satisfying, and flows into her powerful reflection which begins:
"...Whenever you tell a sacred story, you attempt to express the inexpressible... All that exists before the story is the experience itself, so story is as close to God's grace and glory as it is possible to get. Besides, the heart cannot possibly hold so much awe without succumbing to the natural urge to share it." (page 74)
Perhaps her best chapter is Chapter 8, "Unraveling the Yarns: Claiming the Storytelling Tradition", in which Kindig hints at a three-step strategy for developing stories out of the ordinary events of daily life. Her springboard here is that of the Biblical Martha and Mary, and she beautifully develops a spirituality of storytelling based on the ordinary small events of everyday life. For this chapter alone, this book needs to be read by everyone who regularly works with people who struggle to understand the meaning of their lives. (And that probably includes most of us, in both categories!)
My hope is that Eileen Silva Kindig will be invited to write another book on sacred storytelling, for she has a lot more to say. And she needs more time to tell her stories. And I hope that next time, for a change, she will be asked to play the role of Mary rather than that of Martha.
Copyright©1999 Robert Bela Wilhelm
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