Sublime

That story not only has Action, it has a Hero. Heroes are powerful. Before you know it, the men and women in the wild-oat patch and their kids and the skills of the makers and the thoughts of the thoughtful and the songs of the singers are all part of it, have all been pressed into service in the tale of the Hero. But it isn’t their story. It’s

the children were gazing, not at the storyteller, but at the story she was telling. The teller had become invisible, and the story worked much more effectively as a result.

THE PRINCIPLE Until we know the story we are in, we will never know the character we are called to become. It is important that young men get a sense of a larger story and tradition, so they have some context for living well and break the delusion that the world revolves around them.

A story exists in language, but lives in the imagination, in the memory. When does a story live? It lives only when it is read or heard. A story is part telling, part hearing. Part writing, part reading. It dwells in the ambiguous place between the teller and the hearer, between the writer and the reader. The greatest storytellers understand this

into a heroic story grow.

storytelling is at some level about learning; the protagonist discovers something and we do too.