The Mystery Feast: Thoughts on Storytelling

Stories are the highest technology of being.

they come from beyond, from some uncommon living, ever-evolving, universal storehouse of wisdom.

Stories are the infinite seeds that we have brought with us through the millennia of walking the dust of the earth. They are our celestial pods.

The historian deals with the past, but the true storyteller works with the future.

Our age is lost in sensational tales. Without genuine mystery, the mystery of art, a story will not linger in the imagination.

Stories are not innocent. We should be careful about the stories we listen to. We should be sceptical and critical. We should always ask questions about them and seek to make a distinction in our minds between good and false stories.

Stories have also been used for evil. They have been used for the denigration, the demonisation, and the extermination of peoples.

A nation is shaped by the stories its children are told. A nation is sustained by the stories it tells itself. The good stories can liberate its potential, or help it face the dragons of its evils.

It could be said that imagination is the proto-reality. A people can only create what they can imagine. If in some mysterious way we fall short of the ancients, it may be because we have long ceased to cultivate, to the highest degree, the fruits of the imagination, of the spirit. That despairing cry from the bible should always haunt us. ‘For lack