The Mystery Feast: Thoughts on Storytelling

Stories are the highest technology of being.

We live in a time in which we are being told that the main things of value are the things of science and the things of technology. Our lives are being compressed into this technological reality. But it is worth remembering the many-sidedness of being human. Great evil befalls us when we restrict ourselves to just one side of our being.

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

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

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.

As the world gets more confused, storytellers should become more centred. What we need in our age are not more specialists, experts, spin-doctors. What we need are people deeply rooted in the traditions of their art, but who are also at ease in the contemporary world.

Imagination dreams that which knowledge makes real. It could be said that imagination is the proto-reality.

Good stories tend us towards clarity and transcendence.

Indirection fascinates. Straight roads make the mind fall asleep. But we all love to take hidden paths, roads that bend and curve.