What the World Needs Now: Stories
Lynn Schweikart
Barry Lopez, who passed away from prostate cancer on Christmas Day, 2020, wrote in his book, Crow and Weasel, “If stories come to you, care for them. And learn to give them away where they are needed. Sometimes a person needs a story more than food to stay alive.”
It’s been a year since the pandemic upended our lives. Gigs have been cancelled. Venues shuttered. Friends and colleagues lost. As our world has been buffeted by economic dislocation and political, social justice, and climate-related crises, many of the cherished ideals and assumptions that had long sustained us seemed illusory.
Yet as in Pandora’s box, hope remains. Storytelling—our craft, our profession, our passion—has been proven to be more essential than ever. Stories have come. Stories have been cared for; given away. You don’t have to look further than our own NEST experience:
Sharing the Fire was cancelled; yet NEST has helped to spread story sparks far and wide.
- The Worldwide Virtual Storytelling Guild introduced us to the possibilities that come from expanding our reach into the virtual world.
- Through our newly launched FLY program—Folktales, Life Tales, Youth—experienced storytellers are connecting with and inspiring a new generation of tellers.
- In record time, we pulled together and pulled off NEST Fest, an online celebration of storytelling that brought the NEST community together with storytellers from around the world.
- NEST members and the storytelling community at large responded with online education, collaboration, and sharing.
Yet this is not a time to rest on our laurels. Our country entered 2021 in a state of civil unrest, if not outright civil war. How do we heal the fissures in our communities? How can we bind our wounds and begin to move forward together to create a world that nurtures us all? I have a one-word suggestion: stories. Rational arguments, no matter how wisely or passionately argued, do not have the power to change hearts and minds. Only story can do that. And so as storytellers, we must work even harder to unearth, create, and spread the kinds of stories that provide meaning and direction, that reveal our deepest truths as people sharing a nation and a planet. It’s about changing the world by changing the stories.
Jungian analyst and storyteller Clarissa Pinkola Estés writes: “Stories set the inner life into motion, and this is particularly important where the inner life is frightened, wedged, or cornered. Story greases the hoists and pulleys, it causes adrenaline to surge, shows us the way out, down, or up, and for our trouble, cuts for us fine wide doors in previously blank walls, openings that lead to the dreamland, that lead to love and learning, that lead us back to our own real lives.”1
If ever there was a time that calls for the power of storytelling and storytellers, this is it. So let’s continue care for the stories that find us. And let’s keep looking for the many places where our stories are needed and give them away. At NEST, we’ll do everything in our power to help you. And please, we’d love your feedback as to how we can all move forward together with this initiative. How are you helping? What more would you like to do? Please add your ideas to the comments, or email Deb Roe at nestorytelling@gmail.com.
Thanks!
Lynn Schweikart
NEST President
Lynn has been a member of the NEST Board of Directors since 2013, becoming president in 2020. She is also a marketing communications specialist, copywriter, and sole proprietor of LKS Creative Counsel. She uses stories and storytelling to help clients develop brands and content that engages, informs, and inspires.
[1] Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Women Who Run with the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype (Ballantine Books: 1992)
