International Festival Gathering - first snapshots

view of accommodation suites

While the international festival gathering of the network of biblical storytellers is predominantly a gathering for the USA network, it is an international event, with tellers from Canada, the UK, Australia and Italy, and quite a focus on the international storytelling mission of the network and members of the network with other organisations, into places like the Gambia, Papua New Guinea and South East Asia. Later this year, the first festival gathering for Canada will be held, which is a cause for some excitement, as is a gathering for 140 pastors and their partners in Cambodia, made possible by considerable fundraising efforts of the network in the USA. For the network in Australia, we are excited by emerging partnerships with Indigenous Australian storytellers and storytellers in Indonesia, and it was good to be able to share this news with our friends here, sharing the gifts we have to encourage the gift of storytelling we share with our neighbours all over the world.
One of the highlights for me this week was the telling of the story of the young David by Matteo, from Italy. Not only is he obviously a gifted storyteller who can weave music into the telling to great effect, but his telling was all the more remarkable for being carried out in a second language, struggling to find the right word very very rarely. As a young man, Matteo conveyed well the internal struggles of boys yearning to be men already and brought humour and insight into the story I had not encountered before. I have a deeper understanding of the story; can see it from David's point of view more clearly now, because of Matteo's telling.
Another story that has new images for me is the story of the man brought by friends on a mat to Jesus for healing. First, Zac told the story in worship, using a big stick - it's like a hiker's pole I guess, light wood, and engraved. Zac says it was a gift from a friend that sat in the garage until he discovered storytelling, and found it a help to sway in and out of characters, as he can't do this with his voice. In this story, Zac used the stick to 'dig' a hole in the roof - a subtle but I found very effective gesture that brought the story to life in a new way for me. Second, we used this story in a workshop on bibliodrama, that introduced to me a way of exporing biblical stories friends had mentioned to me but that I had yet to encounter. When I tell stories, I will often invite listeners to 'wonder' about the story, voicing the questions we have of the text, characters, time and place. Bibliodrama invites listeners to pause at various points in the story and imagine themselves into the story - you are the people carrying the mat, tell us who you are, why you are here, what you are feeling when the crowd won't let you through to the house. Some of the insights were unexpected - even one I voiced was something new. As we were exploring the man's response when he was healed, and moving out through the crowd, I had him thinking 'now you move' of the crowd ...

our conference building at Ridgecrest Conference Centre,
Asheville, North Carolina USA

The other lingering thought for me at this point is the last workshop I did this morning, with Rabbi Rachmiel Tobesman. We were exploring the pursuer of peace, how hard it is to work for peace, costly, and certainly not a passive inaction. And as we did, I was struck by how the Rabbi's presence with us here at this Christian gathering was itself an act of peace making, as many Jews are still guided by fear and mistrust in their relations with Christians, who have been the instigators of so much suffering for the Jewish poeple throughout history. It must take much courage to be here, and to continue in relationships with Christians in this way in the face of misunderstanding and criticism from his community. I am grateful for his model, as much as for his stories and his words.