Tale of peace-building

CASSANDRA SAVAGE

Storyteller Naomi Steinberg drew an audience of more than 80 people to the Vancouver Public Library last week for an oral performance of Amazing Healing Leaves, a Jewish fairytale from an edited volume called Elijah's Violin and Other Jewish Fairytales.

One of many presentations in the Building Bridges series, Two Sisters: An Evening with Storyteller Naomi Steinberg was equal parts entertainment and rumination. In addition to hearing stories, the audience learned how storytelling, a process of making meaning, can be used toward peace-building between Israel and the Palestinians.

Cease Wyss (T'uy'tanat), a member of the Squamish nation, started the evening with a brief talk about intergenerational storytelling and also gave a reading.

"[Stories are] gathered from many of our families and brought together in one story to share with our people. The purpose is not just to share with other cultures but for our own people, to raise our literacy rates and to encourage intergenerational storytelling," said Wyss.

Wyss collaborated with three generations of women to write the narrative she presented as part of her talk. Her mother wrote the story and her young daughter helped edit the book, so that kids her age could take part in the dialogue, while Wyss illustrated the text.

Wyss recited an excerpt from the resulting work, The Three Sisters, a tale about the North Shore Mountains. In it, a potlatch becomes a celebration when the chief's daughters ask to have their enemies attend the feast. It ends with a reward for the peacekeeping daughters.

Steinberg uses stories in a similar way, to find nuggets of wisdom in fictional worlds to reframe our way of doing things in the real world. Her website explains her motive for storytelling: "Stories create the space and time necessary for experiencing possible worlds. In this time of global crisis and opportunity, storytelling allows me to serve and work towards the world in which I want to live."

Steinberg, who has been storytelling for about eight years, also champions the art of story listening. It's a challenge, she said, to really listen. Existing anger and fear tends to block our capacity to hear, she explained, and she believes there's an art to cutting through the clutter of our existing thoughts to really hear what people are saying. If we can do that, she said, "all that which is blocked can start to move and all that which is going too fast can find its balance."

To test her theory, Steinberg travelled to Israel two years ago. She journeyed overseas to practise the art of listening. Her inspiration was a moment in the Michael Franti film I Know I'm Not Alone. In the film, two strangers greet each other by number at a checkpoint between Israel and the Palestinian territories, as part of a daily routine. "Somehow, Michael Franti got these two to introduce themselves," said Steinberg. "The next day ... they greeted each other by name, not by number. When I saw that, something inside shifted. It was like the whole world opened up. The whole word was different. The difference between a name and a number is a whole world."

Steinberg describes the art of listening as "holding space, just trying to hear, no matter what my brain is telling me."

Stories get their meaning only if we listen through to the end, she said – when she heard people's stories during her journey to the Middle East, they only made sense when she listened right through to the final sentence.

So, as Steinberg began her fairytale at the VPL, the audience listened attentively. The narrative was much like the fairytales we're familiar with: a poor woodsman, a beautiful princess, a blind (figuratively and physically) king and two devious princes. There were giants and snakes, strange lands and magical trees. Morals were questioned, queens were furious and justice was fought for and won.

The audience at the library was mixed: kids, hipsters, academics, priests, parents and grandparents came to hear Steinberg speak. And she held that audience wide-eyed for more than an hour. Everyone seemed to do well as listeners – clearly it helps when the storyteller is particularly gifted.

Donald Grayston, chair of Building Bridges, encouraged people to check out future parts of the series. "We're going to do this until there is peace in the Middle East," he said. Steinberg was part of the third event in the series.

Cassandra Savage is a Vancouver freelance writer.

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